International Mission Board (IMB) officials have reinstated Wyman and Michelle Dobbs, the missionary couple who had faced termination for establishing a “baptistic” church in the west African nation of Guinea.
The Dobbses had received an April 15 ultimatum for resigning or being fired for starting a church in cooperation with non-Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) missionaries.
IMB leaders issued the mandate because the church the Dobbses started wasn’t explicitly Baptist and because they had cooperated with a missionary couple from The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA). However, C&MA is a conservative evangelical denomination, and the couple had reportedly stated their agreement with SBC doctrinal standards.
The congregation was one of only a handful in the heavily Muslim nation and the only one affiliated with IMB missionaries.
The Dobbses had signed a church-planting partnership document called the Tinka Agreement in 2003 along with C&MA, the Assemblies of God, Christian Reformed Church, Pioneer Bible Translators, WEC International, Youth With A Mission and the Swiss Evangelical Alliance Mission.
The agreement had not been endorsed by the West Africa regional leadership and was reported to not have followed appropriate guidelines set out for IMB missionaries partnering with other groups.
The IMB guidelines state that missionaries do not enter into strategic relationships randomly with non-SBC missions groups.
Partnerships are launched with the intention of supporting church-planting movements and in accordance with the biblical principles of the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message.
The church guidelines document states that in church-planting ministries, missionaries “will seek to lay a foundation of beliefs and practices that are consistent with the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, although local churches overseas may express those beliefs and practices in different ways according to the needs of their cultural settings.”
After an April 29 appeal to Gordon Fort, the IMB vice president for overseas operations, the Dobbses told Fort they would agree to plant Baptist churches under the authority of IMB guidelines.
Wyman Dobbs said he and his wife were “very excited” that IMB officials had allowed them — under the guideline policy — to work with non-SBC churches “in fulfilling the Great Commission.”
They will return to Guinea in early 2007. (ABP, BP)
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