To be terminated: ‘Why we couldn’t affirm’
Missionaries who refuse to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) as mandated by International Mission Board (IMB) President Jerry Rankin face a variety of outcomes following their termination date of May 5.
Alabama Baptists Rick and Nancy Dill found a way to return to their missions field in Germany. They formed a nonprofit organization — funded by individuals and churches both in America and in Germany — to support them. Rick Dill said knowing they could go back without IMB support made the result of their decision not to affirm the 2000 BF&M easier to face.
But another Alabama Baptist IMB missionary, Mary Swedenburg, will not get to return. With less than two years until retirement, the 60-year-old diabetic faces loss of income, medical insurance and housing.
“I will need a place to live and have to find work for a year and a half,” said Swedenburg in a phone interview with The Alabama Baptist. Currently working in Japan, Swedenburg said, “The medical question has really tested my faith. I have to have medical coverage. Who hires people in America my age?”
The Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church, Hueytown, member also wonders where she will live. “I don’t think Alabama Baptist churches will allow a fired missionary to live in one of their houses,” she said. “Now that I am a terminated missionary, I will not be allowed to speak again in a Southern Baptist Convention church.
“I am grateful to Southern Baptists and to the IMB for appointing me to serve in Japan,” said Swedenburg, who has served as an IMB missionary for 34 years. “I will be grateful … all of my life. (But) I did not [affirm] the Baptist Faith and Message. I will be leaving Japan but not of my own initiative.
“Like many missionaries, I gave my theological reasons in my first letter of response,” she said. “Most of those letters, including mine, never got to (IMB headquarters). They stopped at the regional office.
“I have not given great theological definition of why I would not sign (the affirmation),” Swedenburg said. “I thought I would be able to defend myself if it ever came to that … but I was not given that opportunity. I have only said I would not give my [consciousness] over to any other than the Lord Jesus Christ,” she said.
“Now it has come down to ‘sign or be terminated,’” she noted. “That seems to be putting trust in something other than the Lord Jesus Christ. I could not bow to such a threat.”
When missionaries were asked to resign if they would not affirm the statement, Swedenburg asked, “How do you resign the calling of the Lord Jesus Christ?
“To resign the IMB, I would have to resign the calling of the Lord Jesus Christ,” she said. “I want Southern Baptists to know I did not walk away from my calling.”
A church planter, Swedenburg’s title is “mission responsible person for the church start.”
“The essence of what I do is the work of a pastor,” she said. “I am not ordained. I have been able to do the work as a commissioned missionary. I am not an official pastor. I preach and teach. I call it ‘proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ that there is no other way of salvation,’” she said through tears. “Whatever Southern Baptists want to call that, I will let them, but I am not going to stop proclaiming Jesus in this country because of what some people have said.”
As Swedenburg concludes her work, she continues to express appreciation to Baptists. “I am putting my whole trust in God to keep those things which I have committed unto Him,” she said.
Swedenburg is among six missionary units in Japan on the list to be terminated. Those units consist of two single people and four couples, including Alabama Baptists Ron and Lydia Hankins.
In an e-mail release Ron Hankins said, “We cannot sign the BF&M because of the blatant sexual discrimination. The IMB appointed and sent both of us with a ‘general evangelist’ designation to Japan 22 years ago.
“In the last few years, the IMB has more and more claimed to be our ‘employer,’ rather than the sending agency the IMB used to be,” Hankins said. “They have claimed as our employer to have the right to restructure at will, to change policy, to demand obedience and now to require acquiescence to a single theological statement.
“That statement rewrites the role of every missionary woman on the field,” he explained. “Lydia and I cannot sign a document that would deny her call as a minister/preacher of the gospel. Neither of us could sign a document that requires that we not encourage young women to follow God’s call in their lives, including the call to the pastorate.
“As an employer, the IMB should be held to basic standards of moral decency and responsibility toward employees,” Hankins said. “A company cannot hire a woman to do a job, and then 20 years later, after she has done that job as well or better than most, fire her because she is a woman.”
Lydia Barrows-Hankins said, “The question of signing (the affirmation of) the Baptist Faith and Message has been touted as an issue of accountability. That’s the spin.
“Accountability is not the issue,” she noted. “On the contrary, the Southern Baptists that raised me in the church and educated me would disown me if I did sign (the affirmation). … The reality is (that) the BF&M 2000 raises some serious theological concerns which Baptists of the past would never have allowed,” she said.
“I realize there are those who do not allow for a woman preaching and being senior pastor,” she admitted. “The view from the mission field is: Do you want the gospel preached and people to be saved? Or do you want to create a controversy that will eliminate effective, experienced missionaries and tie the hands of all the rest left on the field? … I made my choice. God and Japan can do without me, but the mission of God will suffer if we compromise on either the gospel message or personal integrity.”
The Dills said in their letter to Rankin, “It is not possible with integrity to terminate missionaries who are guilty of nothing but years of faithful service and having a deep sense of love for God’s word. … We are being fired not because we have done anything wrong, but only because we can’t sign.” (TAB )
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