That the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) should be led by someone who has been an international missionary seems as straightforward as the conclusion that a Baptist college should be led by someone who is a Baptist.
Today, however, that kind of thinking cannot be taken for granted. Trustees of some Baptist colleges have elected non-Baptists as president, and now the search committee of the IMB, the largest missionary-sending agency in the world, is debating the importance of international missions service for its new president.
Some argue the president’s primary role is to raise support for the missions enterprise. The biggest opportunity for financial support and volunteer involvement comes from the larger churches cooperating with the SBC, these voices contend. The president should be able to communicate with everyone but especially large-church pastors, the reasoning goes.
The IMB increasingly has moved to partnerships with larger churches. Trustees are even debating a proposal whereby the IMB and local churches would jointly appoint personnel with both providing financial support. The idea is to allow larger churches to cooperate with the denomination and still have their own missionaries.
Such approaches have led some to conclude the new president should be a large-church pastor. As “one of them,” a large-church pastor serving as IMB president would have greater access to large-church pastors and a better understanding of how to enlist large churches in the cause of missions.
This reasoning has influenced the list of people considered by the IMB search committee.
Others believe the primary responsibility of the new president will be to administer a large, worldwide organization with more than 5,000 people serving overseas and hundreds of support personnel in the United States.
Such a complex organization demands a top-notch administrator to keep everything working effectively and efficiently, this reasoning holds. This reasoning, too, has influenced the list of people considered by the IMB search committee.
Advocates of both positions suggest a second person, one with missionary experience, could serve in a role similar to an executive vice president inside the organization handling chores that require a missionary’s understanding. Missionary experience is important in the leadership team, but not essential for the president, they say.
Since 1945, the IMB (previously known as the Foreign Mission Board, FMB) has gone a different direction. All four people who have led the FMB/IMB during this time came from the missions field. M. Theron Rankin served as a missionary to China and later as secretary of the Orient (24 years total) before being called as FMB executive secretary in 1945. Baker James Cauthen served in China for 15 years before succeeding Rankin in 1954. R. Keith Parks served in Indonesia for 14 years and then as director of the FMB’s mission support division before being elected executive director in 1980. Jerry Rankin, no relation to M. Theron Rankin, served in Southeast Asia for 23 years before being elected FMB president in 1993.
The IMB president does have to promote the missions enterprise. He does have to administer a multifaceted organization. He also has to encourage missionaries and their families. He has to cast a missions vision for the denomination. Most importantly, he has to embody the cause of missions.
International missionaries with whom we talk say it is important that their president understand the unique sense of calling experienced by those serving overseas. They want to know their leader understands what it is like to have a one-way ticket to a foreign country and know that this new land is where one is called to plant one’s life.
International missionaries say it is important the IMB president understand what it is like to be the “stranger within the gates,” struggle to understand a different culture, master a foreign language, live in isolation where people fear you because you are different and overcome your own fears because you are different.
International missionaries say it is important the new leader understand the compelling love of God made known in Jesus Christ that keeps them serving through thick and thin so all may know that Jesus Christ is Lord. It is important that the new leader is a missionary at heart and his life authenticates that calling.
Whoever the new president is, he will represent the cause of global missions to all Southern Baptists. He will not be the emissary to a single target group. And the appeal of the cause he represents will not come from the strength of a winsome personality. The attraction is found in Jesus’ command to make disciples in all the world. Indeed there is a heaven to gain and a hell to shun.
Whoever the new president is, he will lead the cause of global missions for those inside the IMB and those outside. No organization can work with two heads. The nearly 17-year tenure of Jerry Rankin, like the tenure of those before him, illustrates the IMB’s vision, direction and focus is set by its president. But vision that is not molded by understanding is only fantasy.
Ultimately all Southern Baptists want the new IMB president to be the person God has called and prepared for this key position. Determining who that might be is the responsibility of the IMB trustees. Certainly Alabama Baptists will continue praying for this committee as the search process continues.
If the trustees elect a president without missionary experience, then the world will not come to an end. He will probably do a good job because the trustees would tap only a highly gifted individual. This principle has been seen when good and godly individuals who are not Baptists have been chosen to lead Baptist colleges.
Still we believe the IMB president should be one who has served as an international missionary and pray that God will raise up such a person who will quickly be affirmed by the IMB trustees.
After all, Jerry Rankin’s retirement date is July 31.
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