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The 2019 BGAV Annual Meeting
by Will Cumbia
The frigid morning air curled in around our ankles, while the smell of fresh baked cookies greeted every person who arrived. A volunteer, one of the veritable army of our hosts from Bonsack Baptist Church, greeted me enthusiastically. Already handshakes, hugs, the soft drone of conversation, and laughter filled the space.
We call it an Annual Meeting, but really it feels much more like a family reunion. Folks who come from different places and walks of life, resuming conversations from past years as if almost no time has passed at all, share hugs and handshakes and catch up on all that’s transpired since they last saw each other. There are nametags. There is a bountiful amount of food, coffee, lemonade, and cookies. Certainly business was done at the 196th Annual Meeting of the Baptist General Association of Virginia (BGAV), but it was just as much the 196th annual family reunion of Virginia Baptists. This was my third time attending the BGAV Annual Meeting. Each time I attend, the meeting becomes more and more special as I grow into my Virginia Baptist family. John Upton spoke of the deep roots of the BGAV, roots that I especially appreciate as they parallel my own. John Weatherford, a Baptist pastor jailed in 1773 for preaching without a license, is an ancestor of mine. More recently, my grandfather, Dr. Phil Cumbia, was a Baptist minister in the Northern Neck and the Richmond area his whole life. These Baptist roots indeed run deep and have continued to deepen over the course of my life. As a student at William & Mary, I was actively involved in the Baptist Collegiate Ministries (BCM), even staying on as a staff member for a year after I graduated in 2016. The BCM was crucial to my faith walk; it was an open and loving community that walked with me through a serious faith deconstruction and a deep season of anxiety and depression. I would certainly have walked away from the church had it not been for this community. It was through the BCM that I heard about the Kairos Missions Initiative (KMI), a yearly missions team of young adults sent by the BGAV. I was blessed to go on the May 2015 KMI trip to 20
Romania—my first time on a plane and my first time out of the country. This trip expanded my limited scope of mission work, helping me realize that is was never about saving people, but far more about others teaching me about the Kingdom of God. My work with Kairos reawakened a call to mission and ministry work in my life that led me to serve as a BGAV Venturer in Austria for the past two years. I continue to follow that call as I support the BGAV’s focus:refugees missions partnership as the partnership Field Coordinator in Europe. The past two years have been a wild roller coaster journey, as I have lived and worked in a foreign place with a colorful, international community. God has blown my wildest dreams out of the water, and my concept of God’s Kingdom grows daily. My heart has been set on fire for God’s righteous justice to be realized on earth. Seeing the gross injustices that too many people face in the world, I am impatient for justice to come. Serving abroad means I have experienced a great deal of reverse culture shock when visiting the U.S., especially American churches. Attending the Annual Meeting was no exception. For the past two years, I have gotten used to working in Baptist Unions of 40 churches and being surrounded by mostly refugee church members. This has given me new eyes to see the American church. To be perfectly frank, I am quite frustrated with the church in America. Just as Kristen White preached about during the meeting, I worry that our American churches are far too comfortable. Yet attending the Annual Meeting was a balm to my jaded spirit. Walking around the Annual Meeting, grace and hope chipped away at my negativity. In my anger and frustration, I had been asking so many questions of the church. What are we doing to take care of the orphans? And then I saw HopeTree Family Services, loving the fatherless and those in need of a home. How are we taking care of the widow? And I saw LifeSpire and the homes they provide for the elderly.
