Over the last 137 years, the name of Pilot Mt. Baptist Association has been recognized in our region, state, and beyond as a brand that represents faithfulness to the Gospel, compassion for the broken and partnership for missional activities. Over the last 137 years, the name of Pilot Mt. Baptist Association has been recognized in our region, state, and beyond as a brand that represents faithfulness to the Gospel, compassion for the broken and partnership for missional activities.
As we move forward, we recognize that in order to bridge our past to our future we not only need to adjust our vision and strategies, we also need to refine our name. To do this, we wanted to find a way to honor our past and embrace our future.
The best solution we came up with was to create a name that reflects who we are and how we want to move forward. Our current name was drawn from our regional history that hearkened to a time when various Indian tribes would descend upon the area for a big pow-wow at the foot of Pilot Mountain. Our founders used that word-picture to depict the idea of gathering and marshalling our resources for Kingdom advancement. But the older model of Associational work whereby people came to us for whatever they needed to do their work has passed us by.
No longer are we like the old General Store where people traveled in from every hamlet to get everything they needed. Rather, we are more like an Amazon Distribution Center that moves products out to customers based on their current needs and requirements. We can mourn the passing of old ways, but in the end, we need to adapt and improvise in ways that reflect an ongoing faithfulness to the Gospel while embracing innovative approaches to ministry. To depict a collaborative movement that represents who we are and where we seek to go, we have come up with the following name and graphic:
This change does not mean that we will abandon our Baptist distinctive.
Far from it.
As we move forward, we recognize that in order to bridge our past to our future we not only need to adjust our vision and strategies, we also need to refine our name. To do this, we wanted to find a way to honor our past and embrace our future.
We will retain our historic doctrinal commitments and general partnerships with the Baptist Convention of NC, North American Mission Board, International Mission Board, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and other SBC institutions.
What this new name change does mean is that we will seek to branch outward in our region and beyond for Gospel saturation, church multiplication and missional collaboration. We believe that this new name is more accurate of the direction the Association has already been heading towards for several years.
A letter from Walker:
Starting January 1, 2023 Pilot Mt. Baptist Association will be the Triad Church Network. As we discussed and affirmed in our Annual Meeting a few weeks back, your Leadership Team had been working on this proposal for months. They decided that this name change best represented who we are both geographically in the present tense and philosophically where we wanted to go in the future. Our messengers agreed.
Currently, we touch five counties and we foresee expanding in each of these areas. We also seek to bring in unaffiliated churches that match our doctrinal convictions and missional ambitions, but don’t have a home regarding networking with like-minded churches. These and other factors brought about this shift. At the same time, we decided to keep our legal or 501-C-3 name as Pilot Mt. Baptist Association to honor our past. No decision like this will please everyone or be perfect, but we feel this decision links together our past, present and future in the best way possible.
We are working at the conversion process of moving everything over to the new site. Our plan is to launch it beginning January 1st. We ask at that time for you to write checks and transfer funds to our new name Triad Church Network on that date. If you have further questions, feel free to call our office. We appreciate your partnership and look forward to even more fruitful days ahead.
Your fellow servant in Christ,
Walker Armstrong
Executive Director
