After a year of particularly acute trauma and loss, we are reminded of the importance of gathering, dreaming big, deepening our discipleship towards justice, and reaffirming our desire for an emancipatory future for all.
The 100% online 2021 Annual Gathering will be a unique experience in the life of the Alliance of Baptists — one where we affirm our new covenant and hold space for community in the midst of a pandemic and white supremacy. At the 2021 gathering, you will:
- Be inspired by powerhouse keynote speakers Aurelia Dâvila Pratt, Robert P. Jones and Naomi Washington-Leaphart
- Discover how to deepen your commitment to ongoing antiracist work
- Find space with fellow Alliance members — for lament, praise, conversation, seeing old friends and making new ones, and more
- Be equipped with new skills that you can use in your ministry settings
This event will be fully online, with some content available in advance. We are busy brainstorming ways to take creative advantage of the flexibility of an online conference, while staying true to the spirit of Alliance gatherings past.
Join us April 23rd and 24th as we celebrate and affirm a new era in the life of the Alliance of Baptists.
The Alliance's Annual Business Meeting will be held separately from the Annual Gathering this year. If you want to take part in the business decisions, register separately for the 2021 Annual Business Meeting April 10 from 3:00 - 5:00 PM.
At our first-ever online Alliance Business meeting on April 10, we will decide together if we’re ready to adopt the Alliance Covenant and Bylaws. For several years, members of a Covenant Task Group with input from hundreds of Alliance members have been working on a new version of our Covenant that will reflect who we are in these days and who we are seeking to become as we look to the future. At the same time, the Executive Committee, staff and others have been updating our Bylaws so they also state clearly who we are and how we want to embody our commitments as the Alliance of Baptists in the years ahead.
Our Covenant and Bylaws are significant documents that provide a framework for how we shape the life of the Alliance family among ourselves and in our witness to the world. Since the current versions of these documents were adopted by the membership years ago, the world has changed, our language has changed, and our understanding of ourselves has changed. Most importantly, our vision of who we are called to be as the Alliance of Baptists is different from what it was in the past. The proposed Covenant and Bylaws are essentially “new wineskins” for a new day and, we hope, for many days to come.
