During a Sept. 8–10 meeting in Austin, Texas, the International Mission Board (IMB) trustees approved a major change in the way new missionaries are sent to the field, heard a preliminary report on the board’s 2004 budget and discussed how the word “Baptist” describes churches being started overseas.
Trustees approved a recommendation that all new candidates for long-term missionary service will be required to complete a three-year apprenticeship before being changed to career or associate status.
Research shows that missionaries who serve short-term overseas assignments before serving as career missionaries suffer fewer transition problems, become effective more quickly and serve longer than workers without previous experience, said Tom Hatley, chairman of the board’s missions personnel committee.
The new approach will help new missionaries by giving them a mentoring relationship with experienced workers as they adapt to cross-cultural ministry, he said. The change will not affect personnel currently serving in the board’s short-term programs or candidates already in the approval process, Hatley noted.
Trustees also heard a report that the budget to be recommended for 2004 is expected to reflect a $20 million reduction from the current budget.
Half that reduction reflects a lowered income projection, while the other half represents $10 million in capital expenditures that will not be made until the operating budget is met, said John Hatch, who is chairman of the trustees’ finance committee.
The proposed budget would reduce missionary operating budgets by 7 percent and plan no salary increases for missionary personnel or stateside employees.
The budget is based on Southern Baptists’ reaching their $133 million goal for the 2003 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions — a 15 percent increase over 2002.
Last year’s offering fell 8 percent short of its $125 million goal, forcing the board to reduce missionary appointments in the coming year by more than 40 percent. The reduction comes at a time when record numbers of church members are coming forward for missionary service.
Many Southern Baptist churches have made supplementary gifts to the offering to cut into the deficit, while others are setting even more challenging goals for this year’s offering.
Sacrificial giving
Rankin has challenged SBC congregations to give $150 million this year as a tangible expression of the sacrifice required to reach a lost world.
Reports of “church–planting movements” — the rapid multiplication of congregations among a people group — have raised questions whether churches being started overseas with the assistance of IMB personnel can be accurately described as Baptist, Rankin told the trustees.
“That is a valid question, and the answer is shaded by one’s perception,” Rankin said. “Are they Baptist in terms of their strict adherence to the pattern and teaching of the New Testament? Probably so. Are they Baptist in terms of replicating the traditions and forms of what we know as Baptist in America? Not necessarily. Are they identified as ‘Baptist’ churches? Not always.”
Wildfire church growth
Southern Baptist workers and their overseas partners reported 8,369 churches organized in 2002. Nearly 3,535 of them were started in one church planting movement in Asia.
Once started, the wildfire of a church planting movement has the potential to spread the gospel throughout an entire people group, but a missionary can only disciple, train and anchor church leaders in the Word of God, Rankin said. Because those churches are autonomous, missionaries do not control what those churches will believe and practice.
In some places, denominational labels are illegal or may cause persecution, Rankin said. In others, the new churches do not want to affiliate with older “Baptist” groups whose theology is liberal.
IMB missionaries use the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) statement to explain who Southern Baptists are and what they believe, he noted.
Sometimes churches even adopt the BF&M as their own faith statement. Such decisions, however, belong to those churches, Rankin said. If they adopt positions different from Southern Baptists, they make that decision independently of a missionary’s teaching.
“The main issue is to understand the nature and the power of the gospel,” Rankin said. “Many have identified a church planting movement as a movement that is out of control as churches plant churches. Is that not what we want to happen? Is that not the power of the gospel? Is the life-changing message of God’s Word, indwelt by God’s Holy Spirit, not something that should spread spontaneously?” (BP)
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