HARRISBURG, Pa. – The Baptist Resource Network (BRN) of Pennsylvania/South Jersey (PA/SJ) held its best-attended annual meeting to date with nearly 300 attendees and 90 churches represented Oct. 8 at the Holiday Inn Harrisburg-Hershey Hotel in Harrisburg.
The business session was followed by the fourth annual Accelerate Conference. At the time of the business session, 111 messengers were seated, and a total of 226 guests were present. Executive Board President Brian King Sr. opened the meeting with a time of prayer.
During business, messengers voted to increase the BRN’s external cooperative giving by 1 percentage point in 2025, bringing the total forwarded to national and international Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) ministry causes to 34%. This is the seventh consecutive year the BRN has increased its national Cooperative Program (CP) percentage.
The remaining 66% of the approved $2,353,750 budget will stay in Pennsylvania and South Jersey to support BRN churches, BRN operational costs, team salaries and executive board expenses.
This budget approval comes at a time when the BRN is experiencing an upward trend in its Cooperative Program giving. Currently, the state convention’s cooperative missions giving is 6.4% ahead of last year, accompanied by a 13.5% increase in global missions giving.
Pennsylvania/South Jersey was commended for its cooperative efforts and contribution to the CP by Brandon Porter, SBC Executive Committee vice president for convention communications, who made the trek from Nashville to Harrisburg for the meeting.
Porter reminded BRN messengers of the upcoming centennial celebration in 2025 of the Cooperative Program and encouraged the convention to continue in a spirit of unity for the sake of the gospel.
In addition to financial updates, messengers also voted on a new executive board president. Jason Hunter, current executive board vice president and pastor at First Baptist Church of Clarion, Pa., was elected unanimously.
Other notable highlights were mentioned by BRN Executive Director Barry Whitworth, such as the addition of 27 affiliated churches and a 61% increase in baptisms since 2022.
The business portion of the day wrapped up with Whitworth and his wife, Beth, presenting a special gift to King and his wife, Cynthia, as a thank you for their two years of leadership on the board.
The worship team from Fellowship CrossPoint Church in Chesterfield, N.J., then transitioned guests into the Accelerate Conference, followed by emcee Ryan Day, senior pastor at Wrightsdale Baptist Church, Peach Bottom, Pa., who introduced Whitworth as the first main session speaker.
Whitworth got right to the heart of the conference’s theme, “Bold,” by reporting the BRN’s goal to see 150 churches take one bold next step by the end of 2025.
“I am a very firm believer that whatever we promote, we practice,” said Whitworth, noting that across the two-state region there has been an increase in baptisms, use of evangelism grants and CP giving.
“The stories we’ve received from our churches are indicating that there is more and more lay involvement occurring in evangelism, disciple-making, internships, mission trips and community ministry,” said Whitworth.
He continued: “Movements might be started because of preaching, but they are birthed because people in the pews practice what Jesus commanded the church to do.”
At the administrative level, the BRN is right in step with its churches, creating new resources and taking next steps to best serve its churches and their lay people.
So far in 2024, the BRN has upgraded its affiliation process (www.brnunited.org/affiliate) to be more user friendly, created a new CP Partnership Guide, created and participated in an all new compassion ministry initiative called #ServePASJ and unveiled a Next Level conversation starter, which is intended to “help churches design and implement BOLD moves towards reaching God’s vision for their church.”
All of these new resources and more are available to BRN churches at brnunited.org.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Macala Mays is associate editor for the Baptist Resource Network. The original version of this article, which includes full coverage of the Accelerate Conference, appeared at brnunited.org.)
