NORFOLK — Two Baptist associations — one in Virginia’s highly-urbanized Hampton Roads, the other on the state’s rural Eastern Shore — have merged to form a new network of 96 churches.
At separate meetings in mid-April, representatives of the Norfolk Area Baptist Association’s 75 churches and the Accomack-Northampton Baptist Association’s 21 congregations unanimously voted to create the Bridge Network of Churches.
Some details remain to be finalized, but the network is expected to be fully functioning by Jan. 1, said Roy Smith, Norfolk’s associational missionary for 11 years who will be network missionary — the top executive position — in the new staff structure.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which spans the 17 miles between Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore, inspired the name of the new network of churches in the region.
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Smith said the Bridge Network will enhance the mission engagement of churches in each of the two original associations.
“Pastors already are talking about church to church partnerships and doing mission activities together,” he said.
John Robertson, pastor of Red Bank Baptist Church in Marionville, Va., who has been serving as director of missions for the Accomack Northampton association, said he looks forward to the energy new collaboration will generate.
“There are lots of benefits and we’ll overcome the challenges,” said Robertson.
The 60-year-old Norfolk Area association included churches in Norfolk as well as Chesapeake and Virginia Beach. The cities are at the core of the sprawling Hampton Roads metropolitan area, one of the most highly urbanized regions of Virginia.
The Accomack-Northampton association, which dates to 1809, covered the two counties on the Eastern Shore, the bottom of the long peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic which Virginia shares with Maryland and Delaware. The truck farming which dominates the Shore’s economy relies on migrant workers, many of them Hispanic — a constituency the association has ministered to for years.
Connecting the two regions is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a 17-mile span at the mouth of the bay which skims the water and plunges beneath it several times between Virginia Beach and Kiptopeke, at the lower tip of the Eastern Shore.
It was the bridge, still considered a technical marvel nearly 50 years after it was completed, which inspired the name of the new church network, Smith said.
“The more we kicked it around, the more we agreed that it represents our connection,” he said, adding the metaphor also has theological implications — Christ as humanity’s bridge to God — and ecclesiological ones, as churches attempt to bridge their way into surrounding communities.
Bridging the two associations’ contrasting demographics will be challenging but beneficial, Smith and Robertson agreed. Ministry will encompass rural, suburban and inner-city contexts, and “we can both engage in missions from the Maryland line to the North Carolina line,” said Robertson.
Though the church network replaces the former associations and budgeting and strategic decision-making will be integrated, the Bridge will include two districts, each contiguous with the territory of the old organizations. Robertson will serve as the Eastern Shore district coordinator. Smith will assume responsibility for the South Hampton Roads district coordinator, in addition to his role as network missionary. Offices will be maintained in both Chesapeake and Parksley.
The other three Norfolk association staffers and Accomack’s Hispanic missionary will retain their positions in the new network.
“Our diversity is God-given and something for us to celebrate and enjoy,” said Smith. “This partnership will broaden our experiences.”
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.