While celebrating the largest number of representatives under appointment in recent years, trustees of the International Mission Board (IMB) also heard some cautionary finance reports during their Nov. 10–11 meeting in Houston.
Trustee chairman Paul Chitwood of First Baptist Church in Mount Washington, Ky., acknowledged that appointing the 105 new representatives, in spite of a touch economy, is much to the credit of Southern Baptists and God’s eternal glory. This brings the current number of IMB field personnel to 5,541.
“The question facing us now as we look to the future is: Will we again experience a setback?” Chitwood asked.
“Southern Baptists will decide the answer to that question as they give their gifts through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year.”
Trustees were given good reason to answer Chitwood’s challenge. They were presented with record numbers of church growth and gospel advance in the 2008 Annual Statistical Report, reporting missions data from the previous year.
Southern Baptist representatives and their partners worked to share the gospel among more than 1,190 people groups, about 100 of them for the first time.
Previously no one had been trying to start new churches among them. The newly engaged groups have a combined population of more than 188 million, nearly all of them less than 2 percent evangelical Christian.
In 2007 representatives and their partners also saw the number of overseas churches climb to the highest level in history — nearly 182,000, surpassing the 10-million-member mark for the first time. Of that number, 27,000 of those churches were newly started. Baptisms topped 565,900, an average of about one baptism per minute.
Gordon Fort, vice president of the IMB’s office of overseas operations, told trustees these numbers represent the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of understanding the complete picture of God’s work around the world.
He explained that church-planting movements grow quickly beyond the IMB’s ability to track them. None of this would be possible without Southern Baptist churches, he said.
“We need your partnership more than ever,” Fort told trustees. “We need your influence among your [Southern Baptist] constituency. We need you to go back to your churches and share with them the vision that God has given and how they can come alongside and be involved with us.”
West Africa regional leader Randy Arnett told trustees about the powerful impact that strategically involved churches can make on the missions field.
He shared the story of a particular area in West Africa that is home to 350,000 Bambara people. Before 2007, there were only a handful of small, struggling, Christian outreach groups among some 336 villages in this area.
But in February 2007, a partnering Southern Baptist church began to send short-term teams to the Bambara. Soon, a second church joined the effort.
By the end of 2007, five Southern Baptist churches had committed to send teams at least four times a year. One of those churches, Beulah Baptist Church in Hopkins, S.C., averages 200 in Sunday worship and sends a team every six weeks.
“Today, nearly 200 [Bambara] have been baptized, but more importantly, [the handful of] outreach groups have turned into 36 churches and outreach groups,” Arnett said. “And it’s because Southern Baptist churches have caught a vision.” (BP)
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