By Robert Dilday
A bright financial picture and new facilities for its staff contributed to an upbeat General Assembly for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia Sept. 19.
“We are in the best financial situation this organization has been in since it began,” CBFVA treasurer Dennis Sacrey told participants at the annual event. Sacrey has been treasurer of the 20-year-old organization for nine years.
Just prior to the one-day meeting, held this year at First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., participants toured the CBFVA’s new offices on the campus of Union Theological Seminary, to which staff moved last month. The assembly’s agenda also included election of officers and addresses by three staff members of the national CBF in Decatur, Ga.
Sacrey, who is church administrator at Fredericksburg (Va.) Baptist Church, said individual and church contributions to the state affiliate have increased 400 percent over the past year. In addition, the annual “rebate” from CBF national — which forwards to the CBFVA 10 percent of all national contributions from Virginia CBF-affiliated churches — has increased by 8 percent.
In 2015, that funding arrangement with the national organization will be replaced by a set amount of $250,000 each year, a decision made by the CBF’s Governing Board earlier this month.
“That’s the result of efforts by Suzii Paynter [executive coordinator of CBF] for national to be supportive of states and regions to do hands-on ministry,” said Sacrey. “We’re grateful for her leadership there.”
The increased national allocation, along with larger individual and church contributions, will secure funding for two CBFVA staff members employed in the past year. It also spurred an increase in the 2014-2015 budget, which will increase to about $250,000 from this year’s $190,000.
At the end of the assembly, moderator-elect Kathy Shereda, pastor of Purdy Baptist Church in Emporia, Va., became moderator, succeeding David Turner, pastor of Central Baptist Church in Richmond. Scott Spencer, professor of New Testament and biblical interpretation at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, was elected moderator-elect. Re-elected were Sacrey as treasurer and Bland Campbell, pastor of Hull’s Memorial Baptist Church in Fredericksburg, as secretary.
All five will work closely with the 17-member coordinating council and the four-person staff, including field coordinator Rob Fox.
In early August the staff moved to new quarters in renovated space across the street from Union Seminary, on Richmond’s Northside. For more than a decade CBFVA had leased office space from Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, first at its campus near Union and more recently in the seminary’s new location several miles north.
But additional staff meant the CBFVA needed additional space, said Fox, and the organization secured offices on the second floor of a building owned by the Presbytery of the James, a regional jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Featured speakers at this year’s General Assembly were three national CBF staff members: Steven Porter, recently named global missions coordinator; Stephen Reeves, associated coordinator for partnerships and advocacy; and Stephanie Vance, manager of the CBF’s Together for Hope rural poverty initiative.