Shiloh Baptist Church
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Tri County Baptist Association
Tri County Baptist Association is a family of Southern Baptist churches that serve God together in Christian, Stone and Taney Counties in the beautiful Ozark highlands of southwestern Missouri.
We’re an ASSOCIATION because for over 300 years, Baptist churches have found that they can do more for Christ by working together than they can alone. Associations provide fellowship for churches and church members, training for church leaders, and a platform for communicating information about the work of the churches and the denomination.
Organized in 1975 when the Christian County Baptist Association and the Stone-Taney Baptist Associations voted to combine efforts and resources, Tri County is one of over 1200 associations in the U. S. today. We meet annually in September to elect officers and committees and to transact business. An executive board made up of ministers and laypersons from the churches serves between annual meetings.
We’re a FAMILY because we are spiritual kinfolks. As is true in all families, we are not exactly alike. Some of our churches are large and some are small. Some are traditional and some are more contemporary. Our churches meet at various times and locations.
Tri-County is not a denominational agency, but churches that choose to labor together to carry out the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.
Missouri Baptist Convention
The Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) is a network of nearly 1,800 independent Southern Baptist churches that work together to carry out the Great Commission. Missouri Baptists elect an Executive Board that oversees the convention’s ministries, which in turn are carried out by the MBC missionary staff.
MBC ministries are funded by the faithful giving of Missouri Baptists through the Cooperative Program through their local churches.
Missouri Baptists recognize eight regional areas in the state and work cooperatively with 58 Baptist associations. Each association represents a number of Baptist churches in a particular region.
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a body of like-minded local churches cooperating together to reach the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ. There are currently more than than fifty thousand Southern Baptist cooperating churches and church-type missions. Though as many as two hundred could be counted as “mega-churches,” the vast majority run less than two hundred in weekly worship. No two churches are alike; but there are certain commonalities that bind Southern Baptists together, regardless of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, language, size, or location.
Southern Baptists believe that the Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to mankind, with His ultimate revelation being the Gospel message of redemption through Jesus Christ. For that reason, Southern Baptists have summarized their biblical convictions in a statement of faith called The Baptist Faith and Message. Southern Baptists are not a creedal people, requiring churches or individuals to embrace a standardized set of beliefs; but we are a confessional people. The BF&M represents the confessional consensus of “certain definite doctrines that Baptists believe, cherish, and with which they have been and are now closely identified.”
The Baptist Faith and Message
Baptist churches, associations, and general bodies have adopted confessions of faith as a witness to the world, and as instruments of doctrinal accountability. We are not embarrassed to state before the world that these are doctrines we hold precious and as essential to the Baptist tradition of faith and practice.
As a committee, we have been charged to address the “certain needs” of our own generation. In an age increasingly hostile to Christian truth, our challenge is to express the truth as revealed in Scripture, and to bear witness to Jesus Christ, who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
The 1963 committee rightly sought to identify and affirm “certain definite doctrines that Baptists believe, cherish, and with which they have been and are now closely identified.” Our living faith is established upon eternal truths. “Thus this generation of Southern Baptists is in historic succession of intent and purpose as it endeavors to state for its time and theological climate those articles of the Christian faith which are most surely held among us.”
It is the purpose of this statement of faith and message to set forth certain teachings which we believe.”
