Dear EBA Friends,

I am excited and blessed to partner together in EBA. This is my first annual meeting and I look forward to all God will do in our meeting and in the coming year!

This year’s annual meeting will be a little different.
We will have a different kind of program with two parts to it. We will meet at First Southern Baptist Church of Buckeye.

The first part from 4-5:30 will be for EBA fellowship, building unity, learning, and our business meeting. This will be held in The Well/Student ministry building.

There will be food (of course:) from 4:5:30pm, bouncy houses for kids from 4-5:30pm (and also a supervised movie time for kids from 5:30-7pm).

We will have a missions fair for you to learn about our new EBA initiatives and ministry teams as well as our ministry partners from 4-4:45pm.

We will have our business session from 4:45-5:30pm. In our business session we will vote on our proposed new vision, mission and ministry plan. This involves our new ministry strategy pursuing our four objectives of church planting, church revitalization, community outreach and pastor/staff encouragement. Each ministry objective will have a ministry team led by EBA pastors and church leaders and assisted by EBA church members.

We will vote on a 2026 budget to support these objectives, amendments to our bylaws to align us with our new ministry plan, and update our personnel policy manual, job descriptions, and our accounting system for maximizing our stewardship and accountability.

The budget proposal for 2026 is reorganized to reflect our new way of working primarily through our ministry teams. You will note that our operating budget supported by receipts from EBA churches is essentially the same total budget as 2025 but with some reorganization and removal of some items and addition of others.

We also are adding a designated budget spending proposal and some potential new funds being requested from SBC partners at the state and national level. As such, our percentages of planned expenditures will increase for ministry and we will seek to continue in that direction in the years to come.

We will vote on the new ministry plan, budget, and bylaws and the supporting elements as one comprehensive motion. They all tie together and are dependent on each other.

The second part of our meeting will be held in the sanctuary and consist of worship, inspiration, celebration and commitment time. This will be from 5:30-7pm and anyone from any church is welcome to join in! Bring as many people from your church as possible and invite others to join in! People do not have to be messengers to enjoy the fellowship, learning and worship.

Worship will be led by praise bands from First Southern Buckeye and Laveen Baptist churches as well as a bilingual (Spanish and English) praise band from Yuma.

I will share about our new vision and ministry plan, and Brandon Leake will bring words of inspiration. Check him out online and in our materials for a preview of this godly and gifted young man. We will close with a time of prayer and commitment.

Please let us know if you have questions, desire clarification, or want to dialogue about any of these initiatives or the ministry plan and its supporting elements.

My desire is to provide you with the information to be voted on ahead of our meeting ten days from now, and answer as many questions as we can ahead of our business meeting since much of this is new.

Grateful to be serving with you,

Dr. Rodney L. Hammer, Associational Mission Strategist
Estrella Baptist Association