DOM Report

Greetings and Gratitude,

I am so very blessed. I would like to thank our Moderator, Vice-Moderator, and Association leadership for all you do. Thank you to the Program Committee and all the participants who have made this year and today’s program a true blessing. I especially thank Ginny Diaz, our Administrative Assistant, and Julie Goff, Associate, for their labor of love producing the reports and their preparation for this meeting. Thank you for your continual prayer for Ginny as she battles a very serious illness. Your prayers mean so much to her and the Lord is blessing her continually.
It is a joy to have several pastors in my life. I feel like I have a multi-pastor staff. My actual membership is in Plant City FBC but I have a servant-membership in the churches where I have helped with revitalization. I am thankful for Pastor Michael Lewis because of his focus on prayer ministry and evangelism. His faith and vision includes providing training and teaching for others through his personal teaching and his teaching with Evangelical University and Seminary. I am thankful for Pastor Benny Keck and the other pastors on the Strategy Planning Committee as they give their support to the Lord and to you in the work of the Association. I am grateful for men like Pastor Mike Fredette (Liberty), Kevin Wynn (FBC Durant), and Hal Sexton (Parkway) all who have taken on the ministry of restoring congregations. In fact, I could name each of our pastors because I am blessed to have thirty-four of you. You are my heroes. God bless all of you.

New Association Promotion Brochure

A new brochure is available for you to explain the purpose, vision, and ministry of the Association. The center section lists the five things the Association offers. This current report you are reading gives a little more detail of those brochure items. We have used an additional title of Central Florida’s Shiloh Baptist Association to help define who we are and where we are located, distinguishing us from other Shiloh Baptist Associations in the SBC. I have used “Dr. Dan” as my name in the publication because it seemed too formal to call me Dr. Morris. My wife, Joyce, has nicknamed me that because it helps her distinguish between the other three Dan’s in her family; her late husband, her son, and my son. I really like Dr. Dan better than her original names of big Dan and little Dan and because my role is kind of like a church doctor. However, through my years and my studies I have learned just enough to realize how much I do not know. I want you to know you can call me what you like. I am your friend and just appreciate you so much when you do call me.

Association Vision

Our Association elected a Strategy Planning Committee to study the future vision, goals, and ministry plans of our Association. The process invited us to explore the use of our property, the possibility of partnership with adjoining Associations, and other evaluation points that will continue through 2011.
In this terrible economy, many denominational agencies, including our Association, have had 20 – 30 percent reductions in their budgets. The result for our Association is fewer resources in the coming years to accomplish our mission. In these changing times, a supportive nature and partnership is needed between the association and its member churches to discover how we can join together to maximize God’s resources given to us. We are discovering there is a greater need for the local Association or partnership ministry and support of local churches joining together.
I am very grateful and affirm the good work of the Strategy Planning Committee and their leadership. As we make these transitions, I look forward to offering a greater support and encouragement ministry to our churches. It is great to have such a competent team of leaders representing laity, ministry, and businessmen all from the variety of our churches to assist us in this endeavor. It is my joy to support them and encourage them in their ministry.

Personal

It is hard to believe that I will be 65 this December 18. I know I don’t look or act my age. It is a joy for me to serve the Lord and his church these 45 years as an ordained pastor with 10 of them as your Director of Missions. God has provided a blessing this year because I am able to get new health insurance that will save the Association budget approximately $1,000 per month, a needed thing this year when we are having to adjust our budget.
All of this brings on the question: “When are you planning to retire?” Well, I talked with Joyce about it and she indicated support for me listening to the Lord and following His will. God has blessed me with a wonderful supportive wife at a time I never dreamed possible. I listened to my physician, Dr. Robert Baskins, when he came to our minister’s meeting and spoke on how to live a long and healthy life. One of his points stated was, “Do not retire because research reveals that you won’t live over two years. You may change jobs or do transition, just don’t retire.” Some of my friends have said, “You need to retire while things are going good.” Maybe my friends are trying to kill me. I have prayed seriously about it and I have sensed the Lord saying “you stay close to Me daily and I will reveal when I want you to make a transition.” I have asked the Association leadership to be prayer partners with me. God has called me to continue ministry with you another year and has asked me to work harder and with less compensation. I appreciate your continual prayers as we follow God’s leading.

As you know my gifts and experience have been in church renewal and revitalization. I am developing a group of volunteers to bless our Association and getting the input of the most experienced men we have nationally in this area by writing a user manual. The volunteer organization is called Foundation Builders Ministry, and the user manual is called, “A User’s Guide to Church Renewal and Revitalization – A Renovation and Transformation for Pastors and Laity.”

Evangelism

This year we set a goal to have a 10% increase in our baptisms. We have five churches that have not turned in their ACP so the numbers will go up. We have a total of 555 which is already an increase by seven from last year. The previous year we had a decline. Did you meet the goal? What is your current percentage?
Fifteen of our churches reported having ten or more baptisms this past year:
Durant FBC (2), Turkey Creek (11), West Thonotosassa (12), Bethany (13), Knights (14), Midway (14), Springhead (16).
Five of our churches reported having twenty-five or more baptism: Liberty (25), Church on the Rock (33), Shiloh (34), FBC Dover (31), Plant City FBC (213).
Through our partnership with the SOS ministry we have had hundreds of professions of faith at the Strawberry Festival, car shows, church special events, community outdoor events, and various activities in Central Florida.
Let us set a goal to have at least a 10% increase in our baptisms this year. In order to do that, we have to pray and be obedient to God and His Word. Pastors and church leaders need to start doing some intentional vision, goal setting, and action plans to provide an impact with the Great Commission.
We have some God-given opportunity like nowhere else. Pastor Benny Keck and Pastor Michael Lewis have offered to train and to mentor any of our pastors in FAITH Evangelism. We have one of the SBC teachers of the materials right here in our city. Pastor Michael is teaching courses through the Evangelical University and Seminary and offers an opportunity every Tuesday evening for training. Pastor Benny offers the training every Monday evening and invites you to participate. These men have offered to guide you and your church in FAITH evangelism training and will help you customize it to your church setting. If I were pastoring and looking for an evangelism strategy I would jump on this offer. Personally, I am on my third semester of participating in Faith with Pastor Michael Lewis. I am amazed at how easy Faith is and how people I never thought could or would share their faith have learned to do so, and how God uses the opportunity for ones to come to a saving knowledge of Christ week after week. It does demand the passion, faithfulness, and focus of time and your ministry. I believe prayerful intentional evangelism is one of the essential keys to renewal and revitalization of a church.
We are so privileged to have the National SOS Ministry Evangelism organization and founders; Tom and Carolyn Curtis, here in our Association. As we speak, they are in Indiana training and facilitating hundreds coming to Christ in their personal event evangelism ministry. We are so blessed that God called them several years
ago to take leadership of our Strawberry Festival Evangelism booth. Since then we have had 100’s of people each year to make decisions for Christ. Several of our pastors have invited them to do the training at their church. Ministers and laity are encouraged to get in on one of the training events and participate in this year’s Shiloh Baptist Association booth. This year Liberty Baptist Church offered free parking to all the workers and added an additional booth at their church parking lot. Pastor Mike Fredette has been going to the Plant City downtown car show and using this approach to reach numbers of people with the gospel. He was there last Saturday night. Several have used this approach at the car show, yard sales, or at the Harvest Festival events. This is a great opportunity for church members. Ivan Cardwell is one of their Associates. He will be giving a report in our Evening Session.
The Florida Baptist Convention will be having one of their annual Evangelism conferences in Plant City in 2011. Also, David Burton is organizing a GPS evangelism outreach project that we may want to take advantage of. It is something our pastors may look at during the coming month. If you want to participate, the association will make materials and training available through the Association.

South Florida Baptist Association Partnership

Dr. Robert Roberts, Director of Missions of South Florida Baptist Association, members of our Strategy Planning Committee, and I have discussed the possibility of developing a partnership with the two Associations. Leadership, including our Moderator and Vice Moderator elect, has met on two occasions during the past two months to discuss the possibilities. Dr. Roberts, myself, and leadership from both Associations agree that we can explore a partnership with a desire to bless each other and better strengthen our churches. Just for clarification Dr. Roberts, our Association leaders, and I do not have interest in merging the Associations. We are only looking at partnership possibilities.
South Florida Baptist Association is about twice our size (80 churches), however there are some fellowship, support, events, and ministry we can do together that will be a blessing to them as it would be to us. We desire to partner because we are neighbors and need to share ideas, resources, events, and fellowship. We believe we can work together in some areas and be more effective than if we work separately. It may model some of the ways that churches effectively work together in the Association during these changing financial and cultural times.
Our Association leaders have agreed to meet together monthly and explore possibilities. Following the dialogue and exploring various opportunities we hope to develop a covenant agreement similar to what our Association had with the Richmond, Indiana three-year partnership covenant. We realize that South Florida Association has good strengths in Pastoral/Evangelism Conferences, Women Ministry/WMU ministry, and other ministries. We have good strengths in Renewal/Revitalization Ministry, SOS Strawberry Festival Evangelism, FAITH Evangelism, Men’s (Point Man) Brotherhood Ministry, and other ministries. Together we may strengthen our churches and more effectively grow the Kingdom. Other adjoining Associations include Tampa Bay, Orange Blossom, and Pasco Association. Churches closer to these areas are recognizing certain specialized ministry opportunities and may desire to network in order to get in on events or conferences they offer. We are developing healthy relationships with them to hopefully make you feel comfortable and enable you to take advantage of those opportunities. Of course we cherish our Association’s fellowship and unique relationship and ability to be a personal ministry of support to each other. We are local churches working together and affirming God’s inerrant Word with an emphasis together to impact the world with the Great Commission. We are actually one church with a diversity of locations and mission points where congregations are meeting. Obviously, a major reason we can feel comfortable sharing a partnership with adjoining Associations is because we have these strengths. Our vision, goals, and action plans will be to develop those further this coming year.