NAMB missionary, money reporting error doesn’t impact GCR Task Force proposal, Floyd says

The Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force has been developing its recently released proposal for changes in Southern Baptist life based on information gathered from various work and ministries funded through the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

So when on March 5 North American Mission Board (NAMB) officials discovered an error in the missionary and funding data they gave to the GCR Task Force, many wondered if that would, in turn, change the task force’s proposal released Feb. 22 (visit www.thealabamabaptist.org/promo.php for the report).

But Ronnie Floyd, task force chairman, said the discovery did not alter the major concern of the task force.

“[W]e spend two-thirds of the Cooperative Program dollars on one-third of the population and conversely spend only one-third of the Cooperative Program dollars on two-thirds of the population in the United States.”

The incorrect data given to the task force last year indicated that two-thirds of the mission board’s missionaries and money goes to the South while one-third goes to states with little Southern Baptist presence.

But in fact, fewer than half of NAMB missionaries are in the South and more than three-fourths of the $62 million NAMB disperses goes to the 36 pioneer states and Canada.

NAMB said there are 2,733 missionaries serving in the 36 states outside the “old line” region in the southern U.S. and another 133 serving in Canada totaling 53 percent deployed in North America where there aren’t large numbers of Southern Baptists.

NAMB said $48 million goes to support work “where Southern Baptist church presence is the least.” Although referred to as “pioneer” areas for the SBC, these states and Canada contain several of the largest urban and metropolitan areas in North America.

NAMB attributed the discrepancy to double counting of missionaries in Virginia and Texas, which each have two state conventions.

Richard Harris, NAMB’s interim president, said NAMB immediately took action when the error was discovered. “We will leave it to the GCR Task Force members and others to determine the significance of these new numbers; we just wanted to provide this information as soon as we discovered it so the rest of the discussion can include the correct data.”

The Alabama Baptist asked NAMB officials if the new numbers should be taken into consideration by the task force, but there was no response at press time. (BP, TAB)