Florida's many Baptist associations provide encouragement and support

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JACKSONVILLE (FBW)—Baptist associations in the United States celebrate their 300th anniversary in 2007. Florida Baptist Witness is honoring Florida's 49 associations in a series of articles throughout the year that will showcase each association and its ministries.

Florida Keys Association

The Florida Keys Baptist Association is the smallest and most wide-spread of all the 49 associations in Florida, a distinction held since its founding in 1968. Its 11 congregations, eight churches and three missions, are strung from Key Largo to Key West, a distance of about 100 miles.

"When we have associational meetings, somebody has to drive a long way," said Charles Sexton, pastor of First Baptist Church Big Pine Key and interim director of missions since 2005.

The small congregations in the Keys have the task of ministering to a transient and dwindling population, according to Sexton, who said 48 percent of the residential homes in the Keys are for sale. As the most expensive place to live in Florida—higher than Palm Beach, Sexton said, Monroe County and its schools have recorded a 15 percent drop in population as families move to more affordable locations.

"People find that they can buy five acres of land and a house somewhere else for what they pay for a trailer here," Sexton said. "And the insurance is out of the ballpark."

As Key communities lose families, churches see a 75 percent turnover in membership every two years. Sexton has served the Big Pine Key congregation 15 years, which makes him the longest-term pastor in the association. He stays, he said, because of the Lord's calling and because of the mission-mindedness of the congregation. Without long-term members, the church has no "power structure" and little "fussing and fighting."

"People are getting saved consistently. It's tough, but spiritually it's tough to beat," he said.

Sexton said the biggest problem in the Keys is the moral decay of its residents. Most people who move to the Keys are looking to get away from society and its mores, he said. Homosexuality is celebrated there and taught as a lifestyle option in the schools. In ten years, the Keys may become a vacation playground for the financially elite, he said.

In the meantime, association churches offer a myriad of ministries to the less fortunate, from children's ministries to providing food and places to shower for the homeless population.

While seeking a director of missions, the association is preparing a home for him. On property in Marathon, building will begin in the fall on a duplex which will house the pastor of First Baptist Church, Marathon, and the next Florida Keys DOM.

Gulf Stream Baptist Association

Church planting and community ministries among the 2.3 million residents of Broward County are the aims of Gulf Stream Baptist Association, according to Director of Missions John Fleming. Its 175 churches and their ministries, who worship in 14 languages, reflect the diversity of the region.

"It takes 14 languages for Gulf Stream to say hello," Fleming told Florida Baptist Witness.

Spanning the differences in languages and cultures remains an "every day, 24/7" challenge, Fleming said. Because of the wide range of needs of church leadership, he said one-on-one coaching of pastors and congregations is proving to be an effective strategy in strengthening churches. Ministering to those outside the church provides a common mission for the churches.

The association sponsors two medical/ dental clinics and an eye clinic in north and south Broward County. Fourteen medical doctors, four dentists, an ophthalmologist and optometrist volunteer their services at clinics at Point of Grace Christian Fellowship in the south and at Immanuel Baptist Church in the north. First South Florida Brazilian Church will host a third clinic beginning in October. Since opening its first clinic in 1998, the clinics have ministered to 6,304 patients who have little money and no medical insurance.

Gulf Stream association also operates a community center in Plantation in the location of its former associational offices. The facility is named for Tanna Dawson, wife of the late Al Dawson who was instrumental in founding GSBA in 1948 with six member churches. Tanna Dawson continues to serve as W.M.U. director and trustee of the association. The community center bearing her name houses offices of the Florida Baptist Children's Homes and Hope Pregnancy Center, and classes are offered in job skills, literacy, conversational English, parenting.

Church planting continues to be a focus of associational leadership, although the cost of property in Broward County has put a squeeze on establishing new churches. According to Fleming, 72 of the 176 churches of the association either rent or share space, and 85 percent of those churches who own property share the space with up to four other congregations.

"We are using every means possible to create churches," he said. "I won't say that a church buying property is impossible, because I know that God deals in impossibilities." Even the associational office is housed in a six-story hospital building remodeled to accommodate 15 evangelical Christian ministries. Since 2005 GSBA offices are housed in a suite of The Forum on 3rd Street in Pompano Beach.

Though Fleming is set to retire in December, he and his wife, Kay, do not plan to leave the area they have called home 23 years. "We are just not ready to turn loose of South Florida," he said. "I guess the Lord will tell me what to do next when He is ready."

Miami Baptist Association

Only two years from its centennial year, Miami Baptist Association includes 330 churches that are home to 50,000 members, most of whom worship in a language other than English. The city expects 1 million more residents in the next few years, so about 100 church planters are now working to start new churches to accommodate the growth.

Although the association includes Portuguese, French, Chinese Filipino and Russian congregations, almost one third are English-language, a third are Spanish, and a third, Creole. Director of Missions Gary Johnson, who grew up on a farm in Miami County, Ohio, said there are no "Anglo-only" congregations in the Miami association, with most involving a blend of nationalities.

"We find that racial issues are not a problem here," he said. "Our neighborhoods, our churches and even our families are inter-racial."

The average Miami Baptist church is small, averaging 40-50 in attendance, a trend that Johnson sees as the wave of the future.

"I believe in 10 years there will be many more churches, but they will be small," he said. "The day of the big church is over."

Miami churches may meet in warehouses, schools, office complexes, apartment buildings or homes. One church is made up of homeless people who are led by a homeless pastor. Whatever the language or cultural bent of a church, all share the same struggle with finding a place to meet.

The most contentious issue in starting churches in Miami is property, according to Johnson, who previously served as pastor of Wayside Baptist Church in the city.

"If you have property, it is a problem; if you don't have property, it is a problem," he said. "Not a day goes by that I am not listening to church leaders talk about their property."

More than 2 million residents of Miami-Dade County, along with schools and universities, national and international businesses crowd into a county that offers limited room for growth. Because "you can only squeeze so much in," Johnson said builders are erecting taller structures. Property values have skyrocketed, along with insurance premiums, and insurers are hesitant to offer coverage in an area vulnerable to hurricanes.

"I know Wayside's insurance bill ran about $130,000 a year," Johnson said. "That is hard on smaller churches—if they can find an insurance company at all."

Even in the face of rising property costs, the Miami Association offers an array of ministries to city and county residents. A Florida Baptist Children's Home is located in the Kendall area of the city. The Baptist Collegiate Ministry of University of Miami serves the city's large student population, and an extension of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in Hialeah offers classes in four languages for those preparing for ministry. Horeb Baptist Church in Hialeah is home to the Urban Impact Ministry office of the Florida Baptist Convention.

"It is good to have the Florida Baptist Convention presence here. It has created an awareness [of Baptists] more than ever before. We think exposure is a good thing," Johnson said.

The new DOM credits the work of long-time association employees Mirian Lopez, who works with Hispanic ministries, and Mike Daily, a church and community missionary, for their more than 20 years of work with local ministries. Daily was instrumental in starting the Good News Care Center in Florida City which treats more than 1,000 patients monthly.

Medical ministries are not new to the association. Almost 50 years ago the association began the Baptist Hospital of Miami which became the centerpiece of Baptist Health System of South Florida. The multi-billion dollar, faith based health system is the largest health care provider in Miami-Dade, with seven hospitals, outpatient services and treatment centers. Miami Baptist pastors and laypeople, including Johnson, have served on the board of trustees of the institution.

Royal Palm Baptist Association

Eighty-five Southern Baptist churches and missions in Lee and Collier counties comprise the Royal Palm Baptist Association. Its offices in Fort Myers coordinate ministries that seek to involve more than 24,000 Baptists, "working together to accomplish more than one church can," said Director of Missions Everett Rafferty.

The association in the southwest tip of the state includes 53 Anglo congregations, 18 Haitian, nine Hispanic, two African American, and Korean, Romanian and Brazilian. The ethnic diversity reflects the ever-changing make-up of the area, Rafferty said, and the association and its congregations have experienced growth in keeping with burgeoning development in the area. Local disasters—including Hurricane Charley in 2004 and Hurricane Wilma in 2005—offered opportunities to minister to residents.

Organized in 1957, Royal Palm Baptist Association included 14 congregations, nine churches and five missions. Rafferty, who has served as director of missions 19 of its 50 years, considers "becoming a church plant center" one of the association's challenges for the future, as it has been a factor in the association's growth in the past. He said area Baptists "respond very well" to starting new congregations, an undertaking that is made easier by "the Smith Fund," a fund established by a local family for new churches, which supplements the pastoral assistance offered by the Florida Baptist Convention. Rafferty said the fund "primes the pump, so to speak."

In 1992, Royal Palm Baptist Association furnished five acres of property and a building to Florida Baptist Children's Home to begin the southwest Florida campus of the agency. The association provides property management, while FBCH "runs the programs," Rafferty said. Although the campus houses eight children in a group home, the Fort Myers administrative office oversees 27 foster homes for children. The association is currently raising funds to construct a children's service center which will house offices, classrooms and a play area for rainy days.