The Ministers Council

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

  

2007 Ministers Council Senate works to sustain and improve ministerial leadership

 

The 2007 Ministers Council Senate met at the American Baptist Assembly in Green Lake, Wisconsin August 11-14 to continue their work of building up the church of Jesus Christ by sustaining and improving the ministerial leadership of the American Baptist Churches in the USA.  Their strategy for this work includes encouraging monthly face-to-face collegial covenant groups as normative to faithful and effective ministry, empowering and resourcing strong constituent Councils with exciting programs, and establishing a pattern of national conferences for pastoral leaders.

Executive Director Kate Harvey announced that she would retire next fall after the 2008 Senate meeting.  Senators approved a resolution giving the Executive Committee the authority to appoint an Acting Executive Director immediately following her retirement to provide a seamless transition.  In her annual report she shared that the original 2003 Lilly Endowment Grant of $1,959,600 had been continued with an additional $979,800 grant.  This money will be used to fund the TIM (Together in Ministry) collegial groups designed to overcome pastors’ sense of personal and professional isolation and to enrich them and their congregations.

The Latino/Latina Ministerial Association within the Ministers Council of the ABC of New Jersey applied for and received recognition as a separate constituent council.

Elected were Steve Bils, Associate Executive Minister of the American Baptist Churches of Nebraska, as Vice President of Communications and Forrest Cornelius, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Waterloo, Iowa, as Secretary/Treasurer.  Their four-year terms run 2008-2011.

The five Senate committees reported on their work:

• The Professional Effectiveness Committee is working on a series of articles describing several diverse models of congregational leadership (the elder model, the ordained diaconate model, and the intentional facilitated learning model.) 
• The Communications Committee continues to work on the content and appearance of the Ministers Council web site.  They also announced the creation of a monthly email update to ministerial leaders and the desire to provide web space and links to the individual constituent councils.
• The Membership and Constituency Committee planned work to welcome and sustain the new NJ Latino/a constituent council.  They are also working on immigration issues for foreign pastors.
• The Denominational Relationships Committee is working on strengthening ties between constituent councils and the national Ministers Council as well as between the Ministers Council and the individual regions.
• The Spiritual and Personal Wholeness Committee is developing a directory of Spiritual Directors and Respite sites.  They are also compiling articles and essays on spirituality of Baptist distinctives and on the spiritual disciplines.

The Reverend Karen Gygax-Rodriguez, Pastor of The Federated Church in Green Lake, Wisconsin since 1996, was the recipient of the President’s Award, the Ralph Garfield Schell Prize. This award is presented to a person who exemplifies excellence in ministry and the purposes of the Ministers Council. She will receive a $100 gift certificate from Judson Press, and her name will be added to the recipients plaque at the Ministers Council office that recognizes recipients since the inception of the award in 1996.

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