Unity, cooperation reign at IBSA Annual Meeting

Springfield | If 1925 was a year to remember, with the birth of a unified missions funding system and the denomination’s first official statement of faith, then 2025 was also a year to remember.

Southern Baptists celebrated the centennial anniversaries of Cooperative Program and the Baptist Faith and Message. Illinois Baptists marked the coming 20^th anniversary of Nate Adams’ service as IBSA Executive Director, and his planned retirement April 1, 2026. And 413 messengers (with 120 guests) at the 119^th Annual Meeting of the Illinois Baptist State Association approved plans for increased ministry on college campuses, as evidence grows that younger people are becoming more open to the gospel.

Tucked into Board Vice President Jeff Logsdon’s time at the podium during a business session at the Crowne Plaza in Springfield was a brief message about the search for the next Executive Director. The search team, which Logsdon chairs, had hoped to present the new leader at the annual meeting, but the team is taking its time with another round of interviews. “We had resumes from several strong candidates,” he said. And while they were interested in moving forward, “the right man” took priority over “the right time” on their timetable.

“Dozens of you responded with excellent feedback that we found very helpful as we moved forward,” Logsdon said of the search process. “We’re not quite ready to present a new Executive Director today.”

The full board will be called to meet once the search committee has agreed on a candidate. An announcement is expected fairly soon. Logsdon again urged prayer in a season of change.

Better connections

With the meeting theme of “Unity and Cooperation,” IBSA President Doug Munton called for intentional connections around three things: theology, mission, and relationships. “Our pastors, our people, and our churches would benefit greatly by better connections,” Munton said. “We are made for connection, (but) we tend towards disconnecting.”

To a room filled with pastors, Munton said, “There’s a tendency for pastors—and men—to say we don’t need connections, but we do… Not just for your benefit, but for the benefit of others.”

As pastor of 30 years at First Baptist Church of O’Fallon, a top missions-giving and sending church in Illinois, Munton pointed to support for Cooperative Program and the Baptist Faith and Message as Baptists’ main means of theological and missional connection. But it was his stories of pastors who became his friends through IBSA service that were most moving.

Munton spoke of fellow pastors Paul Westbrook at Metro Church in Edwardsville, Joel Newton at Woodland in Peoria, and Jim Queen who founded Uptown Baptist Church in Chicago and later served as Director of Missions for the local association.

Westbrook, Newton, and Queen all died within the past six months.

Of each man, he said, “How did I know him? Through IBSA, and I’m all the richer for it.”

100 and counting

Two sessions in the two-day meeting focused on the 100-year-old pillars of Southern Baptist work. Several speakers held them up as key to effective gospel advance.

Adams pointed to the rise of liberalism in the culture in the early 1900s, and the reclamation needed that made 1925 “a year to remember.” Southern Baptists responded with their first statement of faith, and with a system for funding missions that was unified and reliable.

With $20 billion given to missions since then, CP has proven effective in placing and keeping missionaries on the field. But it was adoption of the first BF&M that proved more controversial at the time. Some of the non-credal people questioned the possible creed. By 1963, the document was rewritten as a leftward drift began. By 1979, a full-fledged movement began to reclaim traditional Baptist views.

“It had never happened before, but a convention that had moved to the theological left, moved back to its conservative roots,” said Chuck Kelley, president emeritus of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

He was on the blue-ribbon committee that headed the revision of the Baptist Faith and Message (2000) chaired by the late Adrian Rogers. Kelley along with Southern Seminary President Al Mohler and former Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson, were tasked with writing revisions to the faith statement that were recommended to SBC messengers by the full committee.

He told a dramatic story about the adoption of the 2000 version in which SBC messengers debated one sentence for an hour. As time elapsed, one last messenger was recognized at a floor microphone. He said of the debate over the nature of the Bible, “After all, it’s just a book.”

“Have you ever heard 12,000 people inhale all at once,” Kelley said of the messengers’ response. After that, the statement about the Bible including the enduring description “truth without mixture of error” was overwhelmingly adopted.

That moment marked the conservative reclamation of the SBC.

“Southern Baptists have one foundation—God’s holy Word,” Kelley said. The statement of faith serves as a roadmap to that Word, not a replacement.

“Illinois Baptists, don’t ever stop reading this book. Don’t just read it, learn it. You will never stop learning from it,” Kelley said. The avuncular statesman shared his personal faith journey since losing his wife to cancer in 2024. “God will take things from it and teach you things he doesn’t teach anyone else. You may read a verse you’ve read a thousand times and he will teach you something new.”

Kelley leaned forward at the podium. “Illinois Baptists stand on this book and take what you learn from it.”

Kelley’s successor at New Orleans Seminary, Jamie Dew, challenged Illinois Baptists to be their best version rather than their worst version. Dew told about his own journey from failure to success to pride—and finally to seeing Jesus as his example for humility.

He drew from Paul’s Christological Hymn in Philippians 2, which describes Jesus as fully God and yet poured out for the sake of his mission.

Paul’s call for believers to be like-minded in Phil. 2:5 is hard. “Paul, I love ya buddy, but it just doesn’t seem possible,” Dew said. But God makes it possible.

“Listen, here’s the thing that’s got to unite us… we have to love the mission that we have from the Lord more than our particularities. The first side of the coin is a call to unity. The second side is the call of selflessness. How is it that (we) grow in unity? Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit… Let each of you look out not only for your own interests, but for the interests of others.”

Looking backward and forward

The celebration of Adams’ two decades at the helm continued throughout the meeting. After a presentation and reception on the first day, Munton nudged Adams again with references to his occasional teariness. “You’re not crying over there,” he said a one point, then got choked up himself.

Board chair Bruce Kirk commended Adams for service through difficult seasons. “I have seen him in tough times,” the Bolingbrook pastor said. “I’ve seen him rise to the occasion when things turned against him,” Kirk said, but never in a spirit of retaliation. Kirk commended Adams for his evenhandedness.

“I never saw Nate as a white man,” the African American leader said, “I saw him as a saved man.”

Messengers applauded again.

“You’re going to make me cry through my last report,” Adams said.

The report was brief. Messengers approved a $6 million CP budget for 2026. The CP ratio remains at 56.5% for Illinois and 43.5% forwarded to the national SBC for International and North American missions, theological education at six seminaries, and representation in the public square through the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

The budget includes renewed focus on campus ministry. IBSA sold the building near the U of I campus for $380,000, which Adams described as something like a run-down frat house, and unsuitable for ministry. Net proceeds will fund ministry on multiple campuses, beyond the four schools where IBSA-aided ministries have a presence.

Adams pointed out that Illinois has 176 institutions of higher learning and 700,000 students.

Adams explained that IBSA will partner with local churches that wish to field campus ministries near them. He urged messengers to contact IBSA’s Kevin Jones to start the process. IBSA budgeted $100,000 to support local campus ministry contracts, up from $60,000 in the current year.

A panel of collegiate church planters shared about their work on campuses in Champaign/Urbana and Bloomington/Normal.

Mission business

Messengers approved one round of constitutional changes and prepared for another. The amendments advertised in 2024 were approved on second reading. They bring further clarification on the relationship between IBSA the Association of churches, IBSA the non-profit organization, Baptist Children’s Home and Family Services (BCHFS), and The Baptist Foundation of Illinois (BFI).

The new amendments were offered on first reading for a vote in 2026. These bring further clarification between the Association and its entities, and separate the existing Constitution into two separate documents — a Constitution for the Association and Bylaws for IBSA the Corporation. These are legal moves that have been recommended to clarify the relationship of the Association’s component parts and to protect them legally.

BCHFS Executive Director Kevin Carrothers presented his entity’s budget and report for approval. He reviewed events in all five BCHFS ministries. Carrothers reported that the residential facility in Carmi that had graduated out half its residents in the summer was nearing capacity again.

BFI submitted a budget as well. Executive Director Doug Morrow interviewed Scott Nichols about his church’s participation in the Legacy Church Program. Nichols is pastor of Gospelife in Carol Stream. His church recently helped relaunch First Baptist Church in Washington as Gospelife Washington, with renovated facilities, and support for a new pastor and leadership teams.

BFI is regularly engaged helping struggling churches make decisions about transferring assets and supporting new congregations in their former facilities.

Both BFI and BCHFS reports will be posted online.

Messengers heard partnership reports, first from Woman’s Missionary Union. Executive Director Sandy Wisdom Martin, and Illinois native, told an inspiring story of how her campus minister from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Phil Nelson (now pastor of Lakeland Baptist Church), took a group of students to Chicago to witness over a cold vacation break. A dispiriting start turned to celebration as a young man was saved.

IBSA Missions Director Shannon Ford, former IMB missionary to Ukraine and the Czech Republic, interviewed a couple who will be serving in a country that is not welcoming of the gospel. Messengers prayed for their safety and the success of their mission.

John Yi, Qusai Mahmoud, and Scott Nichols shared about the work of NAMB partner Send Relief, the Send Relief ministry center in Chicago at the former site of the Chicagoland Baptist Association, and Send Network church planting work in northern Illinois.

Jeff Dalrymple represented the SBC Executive Committee and spoke on Cooperative Program and abuse prevention, which is his particular assignment.

Messengers approved five resolutions. Two expressed thanks: to Nate Adams on his retirement, and to the hosts and organizers of the Annual Meeting. One pledged renewed commitment to collegiate ministry and encouraged churches to engage them as a mission field. Another resolution addressed the sin of sports betting, urging Illinois Baptists to take a stand against its proliferation and its practice by our church members. The resolutions are found in the IBSA Book of Reports.

All four IBSA officers were re-elected without opposition to serve a second one-year term:

• President – Doug Munton, pastor of First Baptist Church in O’Fallon
• Vice President – Jeff Logsdon, pastor of Island City Baptist Church in Wilmington, and chair, IBSA Executive Director Search Committee
• Recording Secretary – Matt Philbrick, associate pastor at Ramsey First Baptist Church
• Assistant Recording Secretary – Nate Mason,  lead pastor at First Baptist Church in Effingham

Boxes and boxes of blessings

Baptists who love to collect things proved themselves again this year, filling and bringing to Springfield 203 large boxes of supplies for IBSA ministry partners and compassion ministries. In addition, Shannon Ford reported receiving lots of extra paper products that didn’t fit in the boxes. Ford began delivering the gifts immediately following the annual gathering with a trip to Angels Cove, the BCHFS maternity home in Mt. Vernon, then headed to Christian Activity Center in East St. Louis.

The 120^th IBSA Annual Meeting will be held at Metro Church in Edwardsville, November 3-4, 2026.

Videos of the IBSA Annual Meeting sessions are posted on IBSA’s YouTube channel.

Watch for additional reports on the 2025 IBSA Annual Meeting to be published by Illinois Baptist Media.