Arizona Southern Baptists challenged to ‘Connect’ at annual meeting

With a theme of “Connect,” Arizona Southern Baptists were challenged to connect with God, the mission and each other at the annual meeting of the Arizona Mission Network of Southern Baptists held Nov. 14 at Cross Church, Surprise.

The 261 messengers from 161 Arizona churches quickly dispensed with business, electing all three officers by acclamation and unanimously adopting a 2025 operating budget that reflects increased Cooperative Program giving by AZMN churches in 2024. Fifty-one guests also registered for the meeting, bringing the official attendance to 312.

“Our goal is to connect with one another, because we are connected in Christ,” said David Johnson, AZMN executive director. “We also want to connect on mission together in the deepest historical sense of who Southern Baptists are. We began by connecting with mission, and that is what’s held us together for all of these years. … [Arizona Southern Baptists] are a network, and a network falls apart unless it’s connected.”

Roland Pierce, pastor of Broadway Missionary Baptist Church in Phoenix and president of the Arizona African American Fellowship, preaches at the annual meeting of the Arizona Mission Network.

Roland Pierce, pastor of Broadway Missionary Baptist Church in Phoenix and president of the Arizona African American Fellowship, spoke of being connected as he preached from Ephesians 4:11-16.

“We show unity in diversity as we grow into Christ-like maturity,” he said. “Through our connection, we have to understand that we are in this together.”

Jeff Iorg, president of the Executive Committee of the SBC, listed numerous examples of how Southern Baptists today are “a force for good.”

“Southern Baptist, Arizona Baptist, cooperation around God’s mission is a convictional mindset worth preserving,” he said.

In a charge to the convention from Acts 11:19-30, Trey VanCamp, pastor of Passion Creek Church, Queen Creek, said, “It’s not about us, it’s about the King. So whenever we gather together, I’m just reminded of the beauty and necessity of a Barnabas spirit. We’re in a world demanding celebrities, and we need to spur one another on to be servants.”

If we focus on God’s greatness, we can live large in Christ regardless of our name recognition and fame, he said.

“Our call is to be shepherds, to become leaders who are known less by impressing others but more by how we empower others,” he said. “Our convention is at its best when we outdo one another in showing honor and giving others the credit.”

Newly elected Arizona Mission Network officers are Mark Mucklow (center), senior pastor of First Southern Baptist Church at Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale, president; Mathew Mueller (right), lead pastor of Community Life Church, Peoria, first vice president; and Curtis Fahrlender (left), lead pastor of First Baptist Church, Pinetop, second vice president.

Officers

With all three current AZMN officers ending their second one-year terms at the annual meeting, new officers were elected — all by acclamation. Mark Mucklow, senior pastor of First Southern Baptist Church at Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale, was elected president. Mathew Mueller, lead pastor of Community Life Church, Peoria, was elected first vice president, and Curtis Fahrlender, lead pastor of First Baptist Church, Pinetop, was elected second vice president.

2025 budget

Messengers approved a 2025 operating budget of $4,329,101, which includes $3,741,760 in anticipated Cooperative Program giving from churches. The Cooperative Program portion of the budget is an increase of $100,000, or 2.74%, from the 2024 budget.

The operating budget — with income sources including Cooperative Program giving by Arizona churches, contributions from individual donors, North American Mission Board funding, event fees and interest income — is an increase of $163,061, or 3.91%, from the 2024 budget.

For the second consecutive year, the percentage of Arizona’s Cooperative Program giving to the Southern Baptist Convention will not be increased in 2025. Arizona Southern Baptists’ Centennial Vision goal is to give 50% of Cooperative Program receipts to SBC national and international missions and ministries outside the state by 2028. Since the launch of the Centennial Vision, the AZMN’s total rise in giving to the SBC is 14 percentage points, and a 40-60 split between the SBC and Arizona, respectively, was reached in 2023.

With the 2025 budget, Cooperative Program funds remaining in Arizona will be distributed as follows: Arizona Mission Network, 40.9%; Christian Challenge collegiate ministry, 6.2%; Arizona Baptist Children’s Services & Family Ministries, 7%; and the Arizona Campus of Gateway Seminary, 6.1%. When the value of campus expenses covered by the AZMN is included, Gateway receives an amount equal to ABCS.

Eddy Pearson (from left), Arizona Mission Network discipleship/evangelism facilitator, talks with Tom Burks, lead pastor of Stone Ridge Church in Yuma, and Scott Little, Stone Ridge associate pastor, during the mission fair at the Arizona Mission Network annual meeting.

Cooperative Program

This year, Arizona Southern Baptists’ giving through the Cooperative Program has rebounded after a decline in giving in 2023, Johnson said. Through October, churches had given $3,238,414, which was $148,008 more than the same period in 2023 and $203,614 above the budget expectation.

Next year is the 100th anniversary of the Cooperative Program, “what some have called the greatest vehicle of mission support ever known to the evangelical church,” Johnson said. While the Cooperative Program predates the beginning of the Arizona Southern Baptist Convention, since their founding in 1928, Arizona Southern Baptists have given $147 million to missions through the Cooperative Program, he said. That includes $37 million that has been forwarded to the Southern Baptist Convention for national and international missions.

Although 70% of AZMN churches give through the Cooperative Program, that means 30% do not give anything, Johnson said.
“I know that times are hard,” he said. “I know sometimes it’s difficult for local churches, but I’m telling you, you can be a part of a worldwide mission just by giving a little bit from your church. I would love to see us have 100% participation in the Cooperative Program.”

Musicians from Cross Church, Surprise, the host church for the Arizona Mission Network annual meeting, lead in worship.

Centennial Vision report

In his annual Centennial Vision report, Johnson shared 2022-2023 statistics. Even though six new churches were planted and two others affiliated with the AZMN, the total number of churches dropped from 462 to 457.

According to the numbers reported by churches that completed the Annual Church Profile, baptisms, total church membership and average worship attendance all decreased. The declines may not represent an overall decline, though, Johnson said, since fewer churches “told us what was going on in their churches” last year. About 50% of the churches turned in an Annual Church Profile last year, he said.

Johnson noted that Sunday School/Bible Study average attendance increased. “We always want to be about making disciples, and those are the primary means that our churches use to do that,” he said.

In Arizona this year, the Annual Church Profile is being recast as a “celebration report,” celebrating international and local mission projects, new life and new believers (baptisms), generosity (giving/receipts), worship (average attendance), discipleship (Sunday School/Bible Study attendance), and God’s faithfulness (through a shared story or testimony).

“We want to hear from everyone about what God is doing in your church, so we can celebrate together,” Johnson said. “Because when we celebrate it, we glorify God. … Don’t rob God of glory by not telling what He’s doing.”

AZMN Executive Director David Johnson (left) interviews Ashley Evans, senior pastor of 22nd Street Baptist Church, Tucson, about missions opportunities for Arizona Southern Baptists in Sub-Saharan African. Evans was one of seven Arizona ministers who participated in an International Mission Board vision trip to Sub-Saharan African earlier this year.

Missions partnership

In this first year of the Arizona Mission Network’s partnership with the International Mission Board’s Sub-Saharan Africa Affinity, four Arizona mission teams have traveled to Africa, and a fifth will go in December, Johnson said.

Johnson interviewed Ashley Evans, senior pastor of 22nd Street Baptist Church, Tucson, who was one of seven Arizona ministers who participated in a vision trip to Sub-Saharan African.

Evans said the trip caused a shift in how he sees missions.

“Our missionaries now have a strategy where they go into an unreached area, they begin to work, they begin to see people come to know Christ, they raise up disciples, they train up leaders, and then they release that work … to churches like ours, churches like yours,” he said. “Rather than our missionaries doing all the work, they’re getting the work started and handing it off to churches like ours.”

The opportunities for Arizona Southern Baptists are “literally limitless,” Evans said. They include teaching Sub-Saharan Africa churches how to do children’s ministry and youth ministry, sending college students to engage with college students, sending blue-collar workers to teach pastors skills they can use to earn a living, and having Arizona pastors offer pastoral training.

Messengers from churches affiliated with the Arizona African American Fellowship, which was formed late last year, enjoy a boxed lunch during the Arizona Mission Network annual meeting.

Church planting

Johnson interviewed Jackie Allen, North American Mission Board Send Network director for Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Idaho, about “how we can … move the needle in terms of how we’re reaching out state.”

“I think the days are quickly passing where we can depend on our … Southern Baptist friends from the Deep South to come here and plant our churches for us, raise up leaders for us there and send them here,” Allen said. Instead, the next wave of church planters “is coming from your church and my church.”

A new regional residency program will help pastors find men and train them to be sent out, Allen said.

“Let me just bust the myth that because you’re a small church … you can’t be involved in the mission of the gospel,” he said. If you’re winning people to Jesus and raising up leaders in your church, you’re involved in the mission of God, he said.

A church that may not have someone ready to be trained can be a supporting church, sending teams and resources and praying for someone being sent out by another church, Allen said.

Coaching for pastors, leadership teams

Monty Patton, AZMN associate executive director, and Chad Garrison, lead pastor of Calvary Baptist Church, Lake Havasu City, and AZMN pastor coach/consultant, shared about Church Boom, which offers a 10-month coaching cohort for pastors. In a video, some of the pastors who participated in Church Boom this year spoke of the value to them and their churches.

Next year, Patton and Garrison will each lead a cohort with space for 12 pastors, with one cohort for full-time vocational pastors and the other for bivocational pastors.

“It’s an opportunity for you to grow; it’s an opportunity for your church to grow and become more than what it is,” Garrison said. “And now here’s the caveat: if you do this, it’s going to require you to make some changes. … Can I just remind you that you can’t follow Jesus and stay where you are?”

AZMN Executive Director David Johnson (far left) and Associate Executive Director Monty Patton (far right) present a lifetime achievement award to Kathy Keller, AZMN business administrator, who will retire at the end of the year after 45 years of service with Arizona Southern Baptists. Keller, who is the first female recipient of the award, is joined on stage by her husband, John.

Patton and Garrison also presented The Six Types of Working Genius, a resource that can help teams be more productive.

For more information about these resources, contact Patton at mpatton@azmn.org.

Lifetime achievement award

Johnson presented a lifetime achievement award to Kathy Keller, AZMN business administrator, who will retire at the end of the year after 45 years of service with Arizona Southern Baptists. She is the first woman to receive the award.

“I have never once … had to worry about how our finances were being handled,” Johnson said. “I never had to wonder or wait even more than a few minutes for a report or for information that I needed. We never once had to stand in front of an auditor and say, ‘Oh, we’re sorry. We just didn’t do that correctly.’ Everything has been done with excellence and it’s been done well.”

During a commissioning at the close of the Arizona Mission Network annual meeting, messengers pray with pastors new to the state or new to their roles.

Commissioning of new pastors

The annual meeting closed with the commissioning of pastors new to the state or new to their roles. As the new pastors spread out in front of the stage, they were surrounded by messengers and guests who prayed for them.

“It is so hard to do ministry by ourselves, and we were never intended to,” said Mathew Mueller, pastor of Community Life Church, Peoria, introducing the prayer time. “Many of you all know this, but in the Bible, every time we see ‘you,’ we think it’s individualized, but most often the you in the Bible is a plural. It means y’all: ‘Y’all are to go do a thing.’ ‘Y’all are to do this together.’ We’re meant to do this together.”

Next year’s annual meeting will be Nov. 13 at First Southern Baptist Church at Sahuaro Ranch, Glendale.

Philip William Calvert, a freelance writer and senior pastor of Trinity Southern Baptist Church in Casa Grande, contributed to this story.

N. John Keller, a freelance photographer living in Phoenix, is a member of First Phoenix Church.

Nancy Patton, a freelance photographer living in Peoria, is a member of Mountain Ridge Baptist Church, Glendale.

Lainee Pegelow, a freelance writer and photographer, is the missions and communications catalyst for Christian Challenge AZ. She is a member of Challenge Church, Flagstaff.

Victoria White, a freelance photographer living in San Tan Valley, is the social media strategist for the Arizona Mission Network of Southern Baptists.