President's Blog

The Vote, Bible Engagement Project, and Day of Prayer

FNC 2017 has begun! Hundreds of delegates from our churches across Canada have arrived for our Fellowship National Conference (FNC) in Toronto.

Online Live Streaming and Voting at FNC 2017

This year we are voting on the Fellowship National Council’s motion below; an issue we have been discussing and debating for three years:

“To change section 4.1(a)(ii) in the Fellowship Bylaws from “Demonstrates agreement with the Affirmation of Faith” to “Demonstrates agreement with the Affirmation of Faith. The definition of baptism as ‘the immersion of the believer’ (in the Ordinances Article) and the definition of a local church as a ‘company of immersed believers’ (in the Local Church Article) are intended to describe the normative practice of baptism and the resultant nature of the church. Notwithstanding those definitions, it is recognized that MEMBER churches may choose, in exceptional circumstances to practise believers’ baptism where an individual cannot be physically immersed or to accept into membership an individual baptized as a believer by another mode.”

In the event member churches were not able to send delegates to FNC 2017, an opportunity to register remote delegates was given to our Fellowship constituency. While it is too late to register voting delegates, please be in prayer as our Fellowship family discusses and votes in the Tuesday afternoon (November 14) business session.

The Fellowship Bible Engagement Project: #TheGreatestBook

We’re right in the middle of our Bible Engagement Project #TheGreatestBook (Nov. 5-19) and I am hoping you and your church are involved in this endeavour. For the past 18 months we have been promoting involvement in #TheGreatestBook as a way to encourage all Fellowship Baptists to be in God’s Word daily.

I have a favour to ASK:

I would love to receive some brief testimonials from those who benefited from this Fellowship Canada-wide project. I plan to share these in a future Word from Steve blog. Ways to share:

Post on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) — use #TheGreatestBook and @FellowshipNatl to join the conversation. Send me your feedback — Send me a line or two about your personal or your church’s experience (click HERE). Replies that make it to me before November 30th will be considered for an upcoming Word from Steve blog post. By the way, if you missed participating in the #TheGreatestBook project in November, I encourage you to pick another two week/three Sunday period of time which fits your schedule. The study toolkit, sample sermons and promotional resources and video are all available at www.thegreatestbook.ca

Fellowship Day of Prayer

Just a quick reminder that our Fellowship Day of Prayer is coming up this Sunday, November 19. This is one Sunday where all Fellowship churches are encouraged to pray for our movement of churches — church health, church planting and leadership development — along with our Regional National ministries — international, humanitarian relief and social justice, francophone, and chaplaincy ministries.

We are stronger together and all success is due to our collective commitment to prayer. Thanks for praying for our amazing Fellowship family this Sunday (November 19).