GENERAL BAPTISTS
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
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Mark 12:30 (NIV)
WHO WE ARE
The General Association of General Baptist is a denomination of like-believing churches that number more than a thousand around the world.
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The World Headquarters is located in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, and the administration is done through a Leadership Team with directors of Administration/Finance, International Missions, National Missions, Congregational Ministries, Pastoral Ministries with direct accountability to an Executive Director and indirect accountability to a Council of Associations with representatives selected from among the 60 or so local associations that make up the General Association.
The General Association of General Baptist was born in the mid-nineteenth century in and around Evansville, Indiana and has spread coast to coast from there. The vast majority of its churches are located in seven Midwestern states: Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Michigan. The denomination has active missions in the Philippines, Guam, Saipan, India, China, Jamaica, Honduras, and Mexico plus many mission stations in the United States.
The denomination embraces Arminian theology and is very open in its acceptance of people from all walks of life.
OUR BELIEFS
Church Covenant
Having given ourselves to God, we now give ourselves to His church and covenant with it and with each other, as also with God:
1. That we will forsake all unrighteousness, even the appearance of evil. We will abstain from all questionable pursuits and pleasures; we will forego all hurtful habits; we will avoid all evil associations.
2. That we will follow earnestly after righteousness and true holiness in the fear and love of God. We shall seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, trusting that all needful and helpful things will be added to us; we will seek entire consecration to God; we will live a life of prayer; we will seek the constant abiding of the Divine Life within us; we will be satisfied only when we have evidence that we please God and are accepted of Him.
3. That we will faithfully improve all the means of grace. We will attend and support services of the church, the preaching, the social services, the business meetings; we will contribute freely of our means for the advancement of the Gospel, and we will cooperate with our brethren in every enterprise having for its end the glory of God and the salvation of men.
4. That we will be Christ-like in our department. We will be tender and affectionate toward each other; we will be careful of each other's reputation, thinking no evil, and backbiting not with our tongues; we will return good for evil; we will be just and honest, truthful and honorable in all our dealing; we will do unto others as we would be done by; we will be meek, loving and forgiving as we desire and hope to be forgiven.
5. That we will be faithful Christian workers. We will do whatever Christian work comes to hand, shunning no cross, shirking no duty; we will even seek opportunities to do good, glorify God and save souls; we will study to win our associates, our neighbors, our families, all whom we may influence, to become Christians; we will count it more than our meat and drink, more than all things else, to do the will of our Father in heaven, to lead souls from sin and death, and lead them to God and heaven.
6. That when we remove from this place we will, as soon as possible, unite with another church where we can continue to live by the spirit of this Covenant and the principles of the Bible.