Executive Committee Report

Southwestern Union Executive Committee Meets
December 5, 2019

BURLESON, TEX. – On Nov. 14, 2019, the Southwestern Union executive committee met for its third and final meeting of 2019. The meeting began with a devotional by Cedric Belcher, D.Min., pastor of the Grace Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church in Fort Worth.

The committee heard special reports highlighting the Texas Conference and Southwestern Adventist University. Buford Griffith, Southwestern Union executive secretary, shared the current membership report for the Southwestern Union, which stands at 122,754.

Eddie Canales, vice president for evangelism, reported that the union’s Field School of Evangelism is scheduled for May-June 2020 in the Arkansas-Louisiana Conference, and that the annual union-sponsored Fall evangelism project will take place in Albuquerque, N.M.

John Page, treasurer, shared that tithe appropriations would be returned to the conferences in 2020 in order to support evangelism and Adventist education.

The committee also heard reports from Elton DeMoraes, vice president for church ministries, regarding the numerous training events provided by church ministries training program, Equipped for Ministries, throughout 2019; Sonia Canó, children’s ministries and Sabbath School director, regarding the union’s partnership with mission work on the island of Pohnpei; and Carmen Griffith, women’s ministries director, regarding a project to provide personal items for the homeless in Orlando during the 2019 NAD’s Women’s Ministries Conference.

Buford Griffith also reported that the Southwestern Union has been allocated 18 delegates for the upcoming General Conference Session in Indianapolis.

The meeting adjourned with prayer by David Montoya, Texas Conference executive secretary. The committee will next meet in March 2020.