My first Baptist General Association of Virginia Annual Meeting

     Kevin and I spent the last few days at the BGAV (Baptist General Association of Virginia) Annual Meeting. It was held in Hampton, Virginia. This was my first time being able to go to the Minister's Conference with him. I usually have to work.
    The first night there was a Pastor's Conference. It was held at Freedom Life Church. Pastor Freddy Villarreal and Campus Pastor Cyon Edgerton were so gracious.  They and the volunteers from their congregation were a joy to be with. I was at the Reception table greeting the pastors. I loved meeting my husband's colleagues, some I've met before and some this was the very first time.
     Gary Nelson from Toronto, Canada was the speaker both for the Pastor's conference and the Associational Annual Meeting. I told Kevin that I liked him. He was real. He mixed scripture and personal stories together in a way that was both enjoyable and challenging.

Gary Nelson and Kevin Moen

  There were a couple of Break out sessions. My first one was on Children's Ministry. One of the ideas that the leader gave us was about a church that was discouraged that the children they picked up for VBS didn't come back to church until the next year's VBS. Because the parents didn't go to church they felt it wouldn't be good to pick up a lot of children and have no guidance for them. Can you image 20 unchurched children loose in your halls? That is stuff of nightmares, but so is 20 churched children loose in your halls.
      The church decided the solution wasn't to forget about them. But to pair each child with a "foster grandparent or parent". Each child had an adult assigned to them. That adult agreed to send the child a card every month and a gift on their birthday. They also watched over the child during the service. This wasn't said but I would be surprised if those "foster parent/grandparents" didn't pay for some outings or camps. Makes my heart leap just to think of it.
   
     My second Break Out session was on the use of Social Media. WOW! Let me just say I bought the book. #Going Social by Terrace Crawford. I have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and this BLOG. I'm getting pretty good at FaceBook, but I'm no expert at any of it. And an hour breakout session just isn't enough time for me to learn everything I want to know about Going Social.
      I want to understand this new (to me) Social age and use it for Kingdom Growth. I'm a teacher for a children's Sunday School class(1st - 5th grades) and Children's Church (Kindergarden - 5th grade), I also help the Audio visual team when needed. Technology isn't new to me, I learned to use a computer for computer drafting in the early 80's. My first computer weighed 800 lbs. The floor had holes in the tiles for the air conditioning to come through. If I wanted to work on a project from the previous week I had to give the file name to a tech and he got the reel from the vault and reloaded it. Technology changes, and the changes are mind boggling.
     Just a few years later, my husband and I struggled with whether to buy our daughter a computer or the new Nintendo for Christmas. Remember our daughter is now grown and married. She wanted a Nintendo. But we couldn't afford both. The deciding factor was one weekend our daughter was visiting a friend that had a Nintendo or some electronic game. Arielle put her book down and didn't pick it back up until she left. Our daughter was an avid reader and always had a book. We bought the computer. She was upset at first but she got to where she was very good at the computer. Once when Arielle was in I think, the fifth grade, a teacher was having a meltdown because she thought she had lost all the grades she had just entered. Arielle found them.
     Parents need to be parents. Your children are sometimes going to be upset at you for making the choices you do. My daughter told me more than once she hated me. I told her that's okay. I'm the mama and it is my job to keep you safe until you are on your own. And if that means you hate me so be it but I love you!
     In this day and age it is not uncommon for children to have cell phones, iPads, etc. I can see the logic behind that in some cases like calling to let you know where they are, or that they need a ride. I think if Arielle was young now I would still be that over protective mom and would be monitoring it. I think it would be better to have Arielle mad at me. Instead of in trouble or even bullied by someone and struggling with that on her own.

    As my husband would say, I saw that rabbit and just ran with it.

 

Have a Great Day,
Mama D

Hebrews 11:8 (NIRV) Abraham had faith. So he obeyed God. God called him to go to a place he would later receive as his own. So he went. He did it even though he didn't know where he was going.
(This was the focal passage of the BGAV Annual Meeting Nov. 11 -12, 2014)