Greetings to all our Sandhills Baptist Church Family members,

As summer is upon us and the excitement of fireworks is in the air, I want to wish you a wonderful Independence Day celebration. Whether you celebrate with a family gathering, back yard barbecues or an extended round of golf, my hope and prayer is for our joyful remembrance and reflection on the true freedom we have in Jesus Christ and the blessed dependence we have upon him for our hope of salvation.

Your ministry team at the Sandhills Baptist Association remains vigilant in our efforts to discover, discern, and develop new strategies and opportunities to help us meet the goal of taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout our communities and abroad. While each of our congregations are uniquely different, autonomous and gifted with a wide variety of ministry passions, the one uniting theme we share is our commitment and calling in obedience to the Great Commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28:18-20. In the weeks and months to come, your executive council and AMS’s will continue to evaluate the best methods, structures, and processes and bring those recommendations before our association to enable us to work with unity together for this common purpose.

With the close of June at hand and the beginning of July upon us, our latest town hall meeting offered several key recommendations for our association to be aware of. The feedback and suggestions received from our member churches and messengers has been fantastic. Thank you for offering your input in the decision-making process to help our association be stronger together. Three key decisions were shared at our July town hall meeting. First, we want to remind you that our July 2021 vote regarding the associational property sale is now scheduled for October 18, at our Fall annual meeting. This decision was made as a result of feedback received to afford greater opportunity for evaluation, feedback, and prayer to discern the best way forward for our association. Secondly, we want to ask you to join us in the month of September as we enter into 30 days of prayer asking God for guidance, discernment, wisdom, and unity as we move into the October annual meeting and vote. Your church clerks will receive a 30-day prayer guide developed by Dr. Matt Brogli in August for distribution to help us with this effort. Lastly, our associational property will be open each Wednesday in September from 9am-1pm to afford members the opportunity to visit the facility, understand the current condition of the property, the needed renovations and pray as desired on the property over the recommendation to sell the facility or keep it for future use in our association. We hope these three actions demonstrate our collective effort indeed to “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” for our association’s sake (Matthew 6:33).

Thank you for your continued prayers for our Executive Council and associational staff as we serve our churches, engage our community partners, state and national convention leaders and outside experts. If you have comments or would like to share further suggestions or opinions with us, feel free to email me or call directly. My contact information is found at the bottom of this letter. God bless you and may God’s grace shine upon you.

Dr. Virgil G. Dwyer Jr

Associational Mission Strategist

Sandhills Baptist Association