During a virtual meeting on August 6, CMBA Advisory Team members celebrated ways that God is at work throughout the association and heard important updates regarding CMBA’s partnership with Spain and local ministries, including the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at Benedict College and Allen University.
Members heard Huddle Reports covering summer communications and progress in efforts to assist in church health and pastoral encouragement, and about local partnerships for strategic church planting and missions, including the development of an International Mission Board-sponsored Southeastern Slavic Baptist association to address regional immigrant and refugee migration.
The CMBA Family of Churches will be interested in an update given by Associational Missions Strategist Jamie Rogers on the Baptist Collegiate Ministry begun at Benedict College and Allen University. Former Director Morgan Allen and her husband are relocating out of the area, and Rogers announced the South Carolina Baptist Convention has decided to hire a full-time director because it recognizes the strong existing local church support for the ministry within the CMBA footprint.
In his report to the Advisory Team, Rogers referenced his Q&A discussion on the 2025 SBC meeting and encouraged the Family of Churches to access it. He shared exciting church staff developments across the association including new pastors having been called to Rockton, Sawney’s Creek, and Blaney, which has a unique pastoral story he hopes to share in the coming days. Rogers reports having made meaningful church connections through CMBA’s ministry to international teachers who have arrived here in recent weeks to serve in Richland School Districts One and Two.
Several Spain partnership updates have occurred since the last Advisory Team meeting. Rogers announced a collegiate missions experience planned for Summer 2026, and invites churches to refer college students who have a passion for evangelism to contact him directly to request an interest form to participate. Small groups of college students will be sent to different Spanish capital cities to conduct mapping and compile critical information for local missionaries, while engaging in regular evangelism.
Rogers also announced that, as a direct result of CMBA’s partnership, the IMB is sending two church planting couples to Segovia. Calling the move “huge,” he underscored that “if CMBA had not had this partnership, the IMB would not have sent these couples to Segovia.”
In other news, Rogers shared an update to ongoing work related to an associational residency program for first-time pastors without formal ministry training or those identified by a CMBA congregation as a potential pastoral leader. Rob Nickles, the college minister at First Baptist Columbia, has experience guiding a similar program and agreed to lead this new CMBA program. Rogers will share more information at CMBA’s Executive Team Meeting in September.
During the business session, Advisory Team members approved scholarship requests from three CMBA members pursuing ministry degrees.
The CMBA Family of Churches are encouraged to participate in several important upcoming events:
- The NAMB Serve Tour will be held August 22-23 in locations throughout the Midlands. Please be in prayer for favorable weather and for several key projects awaiting local approvals. Updated information about this event may be found at Columbia Serve Tour Stop – Send Relief.
- The Executive Team Meeting (Annual Meeting) will be held on Tuesday, September 16, at 6:30pm at Palmetto Life Church. The meeting includes a pot-luck fellowship with participants asked to bring food that would serve at least five people. Palmetto Life Church is located at 2204 Park Street in Columbia, which is the former Park Street Baptist location.
The next Advisory Team meeting will be held on September 16.