Messengers to the Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting voted Nov. 11 to keep the same $37.5 million budget moving into next year with a 50-50 split between Alabama Baptist and Southern Baptist ministries.
They adopted the 2026 budget during the report of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions on Nov. 11 at Whitesburg Baptist Church in Huntsville.
Messengers also voted to approve the same special offering goals as 2025:
- Lottie Moon Christmas Offering: $12 million
- Annie Armstrong Easter Offering: $6 million
- Alabama Baptist Children’s Homes & Family Ministries: $3 million
- Myers-Mallory State Missions Offering: $1.2 million
- World Hunger Offering: $800,000
Alaska partnership
During the SBOM report, Alabama Baptists also voted to extend their partnership with Alaska Baptists “indefinitely with periodic reviews assessing the effectiveness of the collaboration.”
The two state conventions established their partnership in 2021, and in a video message to Alabama Baptists on Nov. 11, Bruce Rowell, president of the Alaska Baptist Convention, shared his gratitude.
“Alabama Baptists have left a permanent mark on the Great Land, on the Last Frontier where we do ministry,” he said.
Rowell noted that Alabama Baptists have given over $300,000 in direct financial support to the Alaska Baptist Convention, as well as thousands more to individual ministries and churches.
“And so many Alabama Baptists have come to work alongside us in disaster relief, missions engagement, supporting our convention meetings, collegiate ministry, local churches, summer camps, construction teams, long and short-term missions,” he said. “You have preached in our pulpits, you have worked in our Bible schools, you’ve been our friends.”
Rowell said now Alaska Baptists are moving forward into a new season of work with Rickie Wilson, the newly called executive director/treasurer of the Alaska Baptist Resource Network.
Wilson was present for the SBOM report in Huntsville and said he wanted to “thank Alabama Baptists for this opportunity to say thank you from Alaska.”
“I want you to know Alaska Baptists are so grateful for everything you’re pouring into Alaska,” he said.
Wilson also noted that he has “worked with Alaska Baptist staff already … they have a heart for the gospel.”
One of those staff members is Jae McKee, an Alabama native who now serves as director of missions and church planting for the ABRN. He has served as a natural point of contact for Alabama Baptists throughout the partnership.
McKee also shared during the report about a road trip he took with SBOM staff this past summer to interview 15 pastors and hear “their passion and their compulsion to share the gospel with every person in the state of the Alaska.”
He thanked Alabama Baptists for their support and for the way they have been a part of all of the stories they heard from pastors across Alaska.
‘A lot of work to be done’
Scotty Goldman, director of the SBOM office of global missions, said there are many opportunities for Alabama Baptist churches to get involved in ministry in Alaska.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” he said, noting that Wilson and McKee can’t resource the whole state of Alaska by themselves. “We need to work alongside these folks in reaching people.”
In other updates:
- Goldman presented the Volunteer of the Year award to Patrick Daugherty, an oncologist and member of Woodmont Baptist Church in Florence. Daugherty has served in missions work on all seven continents.
- Mark Wakefield, state disaster relief strategist, presented the Tommy Puckett Award for Excellence to five individuals who made the “strategic contribution” of setting Alabama Baptist Disaster Relief up on a new software program, a change that was desperately needed and could have cost the ministry thousands of dollars.
Those five award recipients were three volunteers — Melinda Maddox of First Baptist Church Clanton, Mike Chandler of Hunter Street Baptist Church in Hoover and Tami Power of Willowbrook Baptist Church in Huntsville — as well as two SBOM staff members, Mickey Crawford and Scott Whittington.
