IMB would not exist without CP, Elliff says

Without Cooperative Program (CP) support, Southern Baptists would not have the International Mission Board (IMB), the largest evangelical missions entity in existence, Tom Elliff, the IMB’s new president, told the Florida Baptist Witness after his unanimous election by trustees March 16.

“We wouldn’t have our 5,000 boots on the ground,” Elliff said of the CP, Southern Baptists’ primary funding channel for missions and ministry. “We wouldn’t have our International Mission Board if it wasn’t for that.”

Asked whether the CP remains effective in getting funds to the international missions field, Elliff said, “I do not believe that the CP is antiquated.”

Elliff said Southern Baptists “cannot fulfill the Great Commission without being consumed with the Great Commission theme in the days ahead” but also that “the International Mission Board does not operate in a vacuum.”

Elliff told trustees, “[T]he simple truth behind CP [is] that we learned a long time ago we can do things together better than we can alone.”

Elliff admitted there can be confusion about the role of Southern Baptist churches in relation to support of the CP which provides support to the IMB — while the IMB is asking churches at the same time to partner with them.

“Hearing me say that we want to involve churches in no way means that I want to diminish the emphasis on the Cooperative Program,” Elliff told the Witness. “Part of the value the IMB can add to the whole equation is how [churches] can pray for and strategize and reach with and partner with us.”

As churches are engaged, “they begin to see the value of the IMB, they begin to see the value of the Cooperative Program,” said Elliff, further noting that the Southern Baptist Convention’s six seminaries and the North American Mission Board are “certainly part of this equation. They’re all essential in terms of reaching people, in reaching the unreached.”

However, Elliff said, “I do believe that it is unrealistic to believe that we will receive enough money through the CP and the Lottie Moon Christmas offering to send enough missionaries out in the world to take care of the task.

“Churches are going to have to be a part of the equation,” he said. (BP)