In Southern Baptist life, the North American Mission Board (NAMB) has the lead responsibility for mission and evangelism in the United States and Canada. But each of the 43 state or regional conventions and fellowships cooperating with the Southern Baptist Convention has the primary responsibility for mission and evangelism in its own geographical area.
How can two separate and autonomous bodies do the same work in the same place at the same time? The answer is through cooperation.
Cooperation is the key to how Baptists do mission. That is why the primary giving channel for mission support for Baptists is called the Cooperative Program. Our methodology is cooperation. Our motivation (or program) is mission and evangelism.
The relationship between NAMB, state conventions, associations and local churches clearly illustrates the kind of cooperation Baptists practice.
At the end of 2006, NAMB reported 5,153 missionaries under appointment. Yet only 38 of those were national missionaries who were fully funded by NAMB. In fact, 2,211 of the appointed missionaries were Mission Service Corps volunteers who raised their own salary and support through another program. The designation of "missionary" does not necessarily mean funding by NAMB.
However, there were 2,904 missionaries who received some funding from NAMB at the end of 2006. But in every case, these 2,904 missionaries also received funding from other sources. Most of the time, the majority of their financial support came through state conventions and other partners such as associations and local churches.
For example, seven staff positions of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions received some funding from NAMB. These seven employees and their spouses were counted among the 2,942 missionaries funded by NAMB. The amount of funding varied, but Alabama Baptists provided more than half the funding for each position.
NAMB also helped fund certain mission projects and programs in Alabama during 2006. These ranged from resort ministries on the Gulf Coast to church starting among Hispanics to inner-city ministries in Birmingham to intentional evangelism efforts on college campuses. What will be funded is negotiated annually between Alabama and NAMB officials through what is called a cooperative agreement. Where the priorities of Alabama Baptists match the priorities of NAMB, joint funding can result.
By agreement, no project in Alabama can receive more than 48 percent funding from NAMB. Many projects receive a much lower percentage. That means the state convention, associations and churches must "cooperate" in order to financially underwrite the remaining costs. Practically every mission effort in the state that received NAMB funding in 2006 also received support from the state convention, local associations and interested churches.
The individual carrying out a funded mission effort could have been called a NAMB missionary, a state missionary, an associational missionary and a local church missionary.
NAMB works with all state conventions through cooperative agreements, and the agreements vary from state to state. In some established states, for example, directors of missions receive some NAMB funding and are counted among the NAMB missionaries. In other established state conventions, directors of missions receive no funding from NAMB and are not counted.
In areas where Southern Baptist work is newer, NAMB may pay a higher percentage of the total costs. A NAMB spokesman indicated that in a few places, NAMB may furnish as much as 95 percent of the cost. But no matter the amount, the principle is the same. Wherever NAMB puts money into a position, that person is considered a "funded missionary" by NAMB.
If one looked only at the $124 million NAMB budget for 2006, one might conclude that was all Baptists provided to do mission and evangelism in the United States and Canada. But such a conclusion would miss the Baptist genius of cooperation. The Alabama Baptist State Convention spent several times more than the $712,201.72 spent in Alabama by NAMB to do mission and evangelism in the state. On top of that, one must consider the support for joint mission projects and programs provided by associations and local churches.
When one looks at the big picture and recognizes the cooperativeness of Baptists, one sees that Baptists are putting two or three times as much into mission and evangelism in the United States and Canada than the NAMB budget indicates.
Of course, these calculations deal only with those projects that others partner with NAMB to accomplish. It does not consider the funds spent by local churches and associations in the United States and Canada on mission and evangelism efforts of which NAMB is not a participant.
It is not the number of missionaries under appointment that shows NAMB is doing good work. The value of NAMB is how it uses its resources as seed money to help state conventions, associations and churches work together in mission and evangelism in the United States and Canada.
As such, NAMB is a clear illustration of the "cooperative" part of the Cooperative Program.
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