First Baptist Church of La Plata

The Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware (BCM/D): BCM/D is a cooperative missions and ministry organization made up of more than 500 autonomous Baptist churches in Maryland and Delaware. A variety of state and worldwide ministries are coordinated through its administrative offices in Columbia, MD including: missions work, disaster relief, ministry training and support, church development, evangelism and more.

The Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware is strategically located in the heart of the mid-Atlantic region. From the suburbs of the nation's Capitol, to the mountains of western Maryland, to the seashore, to the Chesapeake Bay watershed, to the urban centers of Baltimore and Wilmington, BCM/D serves its constituent churches. The two states represent a highly diverse population with nearly six million people organized in twenty-seven counties.

The Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware is organized throughout eleven geographic associations within the two states, and in cooperation with over 513 churches. We are committed to the expressed vision of planting new churches and strengthening existing ones.

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Southern Baptist Convention: Since its organization in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has grown to over 16 million members who worship in more than 42,000 churches in the United States. Southern Baptists sponsor about 5,000 home missionaries serving the United States, Canada, Guam and the Caribbean, as well as sponsoring more than 5,000 foreign missionaries in 153 nations of the world.

The term "Southern Baptist Convention" refers to both the denomination and its annual meeting. Working through 1,200 local associations and 41 state conventions and fellowships, Southern Baptists share a common bond of basic Biblical beliefs and a commitment to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the entire world.

You become a Southern Baptist by uniting with a Southern Baptist church, one in friendly cooperation with the general Southern Baptist enterprise of reaching the world for Christ. Typically church membership is a matter of accepting Jesus as your Savior and Lord and experiencing believer's baptism by immersion.

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Woman's Missionary Union (WMU):  Woman’s Missionary Union® is an organization which strives to challenge Christian believers to understand and be radically involved in the mission of God. Since its beginning in 1888, WMU has been true to its basic purpose: missions.

WMU's Web site strives to meet Christians' needs and interests by providing missions information, resources, organizations, and opportunities. WMU, through its Web sites, hopes to encourage and enable Christians to become involved in missions, both individually and as a member of a Christian group. WMU has provided missions-related information online since 1996.

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North American Mission Board (NAMB):  The North American Mission Board assists Southern Baptists in their task of fulfilling the Great Commission in the United States, Canada and their territories through a North American strategy for sharing Christ, starting churches and sending missionaries, in cooperation with Acts 1:8 Partners.

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Baptist Press: Formed in 1946 by the Southern Baptist Convention, and supported with Cooperative Program funds, Baptist Press (BP) is a daily (M-F) international news wire service. Operating from a central bureau in Nashville, Tenn., BP works with four partnering bureaus (Richmond, Va.; Atlanta, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Washington, D.C.), as well as with a large network of contributing writers, photographers and editorial providers, to produce BP News.

BP Sports, formed in September 2000, is a division of Baptist Press and provides scores and sports features from the 56 colleges and universities affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention as well as special features on Christian amateur and professional athletes and coaches across the sports spectrum.

Baptist Press circulates to 40 state Baptist newspapers with a combined circulation of 1.16 million, but also partners with a number of other Christian and secular media outlets, both in print and on the Internet, to expand the reach of both BP News and BP Sports. In addition to individual subscriptions, BP provides newsfeed and sportsfeed services that allow easy display of BP headlines, updated automatically with each new BP edition, on any website. BP News also publishes a weekly Spanish edition, BP en Español.