The special meeting of the entire HCBAV was called and held on February 19, 2026. There were 11 churches represented, which gave us a quorum. The only action taken was the motion to dissolve the association (see the text of the motion in the background section below). After discussion, the vote was called and came in at 27 Yay and 20 Nay votes, without amendment. The motion to dissolve according to the provisions outlined in the motion. The meeting was adjourned, and the era of the Henry County Baptist Association of Virginia was relegated to the history books. Here are the Minutes of the Special Called Meeting.
Background:
At the January 15, 2026 quarterly meeting of our Executive Committee, the decision was made to call for a special meeting to determine the fate of HCBAV. Because part of our effort requires the amendment of our constitution, we are required to get this material to the churches 30 days before such a meeting, which was done on January 16 by way of attachments to an email. Therefore, we have set this meeting to be:
Special Association Meeting – 6:00 pm Thursday, February 19.
First Baptist Church of Collinsville, 3339 Virginia Ave, Collinsville
HCBAV had been contemplating our future for some time. At the September quarterly meeting of the Executive Committee, we discussed dissolving the Association and distributing all assets to our ministry partners. We decided, instead, to form a ‘New Directions Committee’ to draw up a viable path forward as an alternative to full dissolution. This committee has worked diligently, and we believe that we have that viable path forward that can bring the association back to effective ministry. All of the documents to be considered at this meeting are linked in bold font within the text below, and will take you to the full text of each – starting with this Introduction to the Called Meeting of HCBAV.
The plan for the meeting was to begin by putting forward an Initial Motion to Dissolve HCBAV, giving everyone a chance to decide whether they wanted to examine the new viable path forward, or simply dissolve without further consideration, which is what happened at the meeting, and we adjourned without examining the new viable path further.
Here are the three motions by which we would have considered the new viable path, which were put on the website as of January 15, 2026, to give everyone a full month to study the plan:
The first was a Motion to Adopt the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 as the association’s statement of faith. Please read through this motion, including the explanation on the second page.
The second will be ta Motion to Amend the HCBAV Constitution to adopt all changes necessary to build in the new statement of faith. For this motion, we will use a Side-by-Side Comparison of Our Current Constitution and Proposed Constitution. to go through it line-by-line in as much detail as necessary to assure that everyone fully understands, and to allow us to consider amendments from the members as we go.
The third will be a Motion to Sell the HCBAV Office Building and move our operation into one of the association churches to save the association $15,000 per year and, more importantly, to use the proceeds to largely operate the association while the account grows through capital gains.
At any time, as we go through the these three motions, if the will of the association is to stop moving forward and simply dissolve the association, we will put forward another Motion to Dissolve HCBAV completely.
Between January 16 and the February 19 meeting, we encouraged you to be in prayer that God will guide us to the decisions that best meet His desire for the churches in our association and for our community. We also encourage you to get all of this out to your church members, discuss it among yourselves, and plan on having your church represented at this crucially important meeting. The number of potential voting messengers will be the same as for our annual meetings, and all other church members are welcome to come and participate in the discussion. If you have any questions or would like to discuss the viable path forward, please talk to your pastor, any other pastor in the association or call Associational Missionary Rev Rocky Rockwell directly on his mobile phone – 276-224-0979.