Just got home from the third Annual Meeting of Evergreen Association of American Baptist Churches. I wish I had been there for both days; it started yesterday and ran all day today, but I (and the rest of the Fremont lay contingent) didn't get there till about 11:30 this morning, and were thrown without much preparation into the middle of discussions that had been going for 24 hours.
But all in all it was an uplifting experience. We discussed our "Vision Statement", a wordy document that urges us to "get missional" and talks about "judicatories being promotional" and other wise uses what I take to be Valley Forge bureaucratese terms that the hermaphrodite in the pew doesn't know or care about.
We admitted five new member congregations (one in Alaska, three in California, and one right here in Seattle).
We voted to give $1500 to Seattle University for American Baptist staffing in the MDiv program.
I set up an independent Yahoo! group, with the consent of Roy from Pullman, Evergreen's website guy, , to facilitate discussion and exchange of information among our churces' members. You're all welcome to join, of course.
Haruo