A Recap of the 126th Nashville Baptist Association Annual Meeting
Pastors, ministry leaders, messengers, and friends from across Greater Nashville gathered for the 126th Annual Meeting of the Nashville Baptist Association to celebrate God’s work among our churches and look toward the opportunities ahead.
The evening centered on one important question:
What could we do together that we could never do alone?
That question reflects the conviction on which our association was founded. In 1900, leaders from 13 churches recognized that the growing mission field around Nashville required churches to work together. They remained autonomous congregations, but they refused to become isolated congregations. They believed they could accomplish more together than they could separately.
The same conviction guides us today.
Greater Nashville continues to grow and change. Approximately 35,000 new residents moved into the Nashville area last year, including about 9,000 in Davidson County. Our neighbors represent different generations, cultures, languages, and life experiences. No single congregation can reach every neighborhood, strengthen every struggling church, encourage every ministry leader, or respond to every gospel opportunity.
But together, we can do far more than any of us can do alone.
Throughout the meeting, NBA staff shared how the association is serving churches through four ministry priorities: planting healthy churches, renewing every church, encouraging ministry leaders, and engaging every community with the gospel.
Our church planting work is helping prospective planters assess their calling, receive coaching, build healthy partnerships, and identify opportunities in rapidly growing communities. Our renewal team is walking alongside churches facing decline, leadership transitions, and questions about their future. This past year, that work included church consultations, merger conversations, transitional interim ministry, pastor search training, and the development of a former church facility into an incubator for new congregations.
We also celebrated expanded care for pastors, ministry leaders, and ministry wives. The Ministry Wife Encouragement Team has launched “Good Company,” a casual monthly gathering rotating through different parts of the city. We also introduced our new pastor ambassador, Frank Cone, whose primary work will be meeting with pastors, listening to them, encouraging them, and asking a question ministry leaders do not hear often enough: “How are you doing?”
Our growing diversity was another reason for gratitude. Twenty-five ethnic congregations and approximately 10 African American congregations now make up roughly one-quarter of the churches in our association. Through the Diaspora Missions Collective, ministry networks, cross-cultural partnerships, and shared ministry efforts, churches are learning from one another and reaching Nashville’s increasingly diverse population. One encouraging example is Mountain View Baptist Church and International Community Church, two congregations sharing a facility and serving together while maintaining their distinct identities.
These stories show that collaboration is already happening. Churches are sharing buildings, supporting planters, strengthening congregations, caring for leaders, serving neighborhoods, and creating new pathways for gospel ministry.
Messengers also conducted the annual business of the association. Drake Nosco and Nanette Ryan were reelected to three-year terms on the Executive Board, and messengers approved the 2026-2027 ministry budget of $612,455. This budget reflects a commitment to careful stewardship while sustaining the staff, systems, and ministries that provide direct service to our churches.
In his executive director’s address, Bob Bickford reminded attendees that meaningful collaboration requires more than good intentions. It requires churches to contribute resources, release control, practice humility, repair relationships, honor others, and place the mission above personal recognition.
Collaboration becomes distinctly Christian when it reflects the humility of Jesus. We do not work together simply because cooperation is efficient. We work together because Christ has made us one and entrusted us with a mission larger than any individual congregation.
Every church has something to contribute, and every church has areas where it needs help. A larger church may have financial resources but need the relationships and community knowledge of a neighborhood congregation. A historic church may have a strategically located facility, while a newer congregation brings people, energy, and missionary vision. A pastor may have years of experience to share while also needing encouragement and friendship.
This is why the Nashville Baptist Association exists.
We are ready to help churches explore planting opportunities, pursue renewal, care for their leaders, strengthen their ministry operations, build cross-cultural partnerships, and engage their communities with the gospel. Churches do not have to carry these opportunities or challenges alone.
As we begin another year of ministry together, we are asking every NBA church to consider three practical questions:
What has God given our church that could strengthen another gospel work?
Where does our church need the help of others?
What is one gospel objective we could pursue with another church that we should not attempt alone?
The needs across Greater Nashville are real, but so are the resources God has placed among our churches. The Nashville Baptist Association stands ready to help bring those needs and resources together.
The mission is larger than any one of us. The opportunity is too important for us to remain isolated. Let us bring what we have, honestly name what we need, and move forward together for the advance of the gospel in Greater Nashville.
Bob Bickford
Executive Director
Nashville Baptist Association