Southern Baptists in Texas and Virginia, at recent meetings of their state conventions, have approved measures that will prompt new approaches to foster missions in their states and beyond.
The Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Baptist General Association of Virginia are moderate-led state conventions in a Southern Baptist Convention that has been dominated by conservative leadership for more than two decades. But their decisions to take steps that move them further beyond the activities of the denomination’s missions boards is not solely political, some say.
“It’s not just the divisions between moderates and conservatives,” said Bill Leonard, dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C., and a Baptist church history expert. “It’s a changing paradigm for missionary support.”
Though executives of both state conventions acknowledge political differences with the leaders of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, they say the November votes in Waco, Texas, and Virginia Beach, Va., reflect a desire for more hands-on involvement in missions work.
“Folks no longer want to give somebody else the money to do missions,” said Craig Wilson, leader of the Mission Resource Group of the Virginia convention. “They want to be involved themselves in missions.”
Part of the “Kingdom Advance” initiative approved overwhelmingly on Nov. 9 is called “global missions and evangelism,” reflecting the convention’s decision to combine local and worldwide missions.
Delegates, or messengers, to the Texas Convention gave their overwhelming approval on Nov. 11 to a new world missions network that will allow churches to be involved in missions work in various ways, from sending money to a particular cause to collaborating with different mission-sending groups to help groups of individuals go abroad.
Clyde Glazener, chairman of the Missions Review and Initiatives Committee that recommended the network said the new approach gives churches more of a responsibility in missions.
Leonard said the interest in personal evangelism comes in part because people can now travel more easily across the globe for short periods of time to do missions work.
“It’s what I call ‘boutique missions,’” he said. “You can get on a 747 and go do missionary work in two weeks, whereas in the old model — 19th and early 20th centuries — it took you months to get to the foreign mission field.”
Continuing partnerships
Southern Baptist Convention officials question the need for any kind of new missions efforts when its North American Mission Board and International Mission Board already send missionaries across the country and the globe and involve church volunteers in missions efforts.
Responding in particular to Texans — who make up almost 25 percent of the International Mission Board’s 5,400 missionaries — board President Jerry Rankin said: “Southern Baptists in Texas already have — in the International Mission Board — an excellent network for personalized involvement. The IMB’s role is to facilitate churches, associations and state conventions in their efforts to be obedient to the Great Commission.”
Officials of the two state conventions say they expect to continue to work with the Southern Baptist mission boards to respond to that command by Jesus to make disciples worldwide, but they'll work with others, too.
“We’re looking for more mission partners, not less,” Wilson said. “It’s a continued illustration of the fragmentation of the old Southern Baptist connectionalism and network,” said Leonard. “As the Southern Baptist Convention has imposed … greater doctrinal guidelines on its missionaries, that’s given permission for states like Texas and Virginia to begin a disconnect of mission support and start their own.
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