Will the Trustees choose to continue to divide conservative Southern Baptists around tertiary doctrines? Frank Page and Johnny Hunt oppose the guidelines that have created no small furor and plenty of ink, type or computer screen material.

We know that four entity heads oppose them, including Jerry Rankin. We lived without them for a century. They became an issue in the recent election in the BP questionairre. Those who supported the policies were roundly defeated. This is dividing the convention.

Paul Chitwood has called for unity and that is what we need. But that will not come as long as these divisive guidelines are in place. We know, Trustees, that many of you genuinely believe these things. We are not asking you to change your beliefs. We are asking you to return to the BFM as the standard. Listen to Jerry Rankin, Morris Chapman, Frank Page and Johnny Hunt … do it for unity around missions.

General Observations

The 2008 annual session of the Southern Baptist Convention proved to be the anticlimactic end to the very long roller coaster ride I have enjoyed for more than a decade. When I first started attending the convention as a young assistant to Judge Paul Pressler – who graciously paid my way for a number of years – I was overwhelmed by the gathering of thousands of Baptists to conduct what seemed to me to be the most important business on the planet. Now, having just entered my 33rd year, I am bored with Baptists.

In 1995, I would not miss one session. I sat in the Georgia Dome and listened to every sermon preached in the Pastor’s Conference. I took notes during the Executive Committee Report. I studied the bylaws of the convention, and carefully memorized parliamentary procedure. I even sat through the WMU report, and the American Bible Society.

In those early years, I met men like Miles Seaborn, Carroll Karkalits, Ted Tedder, and Russell Kaemmerling. I sat at lunch with Rudy Hernandez and Olin Collins and Neal Griffin. Many of those men who shaped the direction of the conservative movement are now retired, or dead, or out of the ministry for one reason or another. I was privileged to see the SBC in the halcyon days of resurgent euphoria. I listened to the stories about liberals and how the convention was “saved.” I memorized names and dates, places and events. At times, I felt like I was born ten years too late. Like I had come of age only to see the dust of conflict settle.

This year, the convention was a dud. As everyone settles into the fact that the conservative shift didn’t produce the beatific vision it was prophesied to have accomplished, only a few stalwarts remain who voluntarily drink the old elixir of Pattersonian pathos. Like the stubby, ruddy architect who led the takeover, the convention has become grayer, slower, and fatter.

In the next few paragraphs, I will offer my observations – biased and brazen as they are – in what shall be my final post-convention analysis. In a subsequent post entitled “Exit Strategy” I will ruminate publicly on my four year plan that has now matured to fruition. Until then, here are my thoughts:

Pastors Conference

I have not attended an entire session of the SBC Pastor’s Conference for several years. The canned voices, the scripted applause lines, the hubris of it all became as distasteful to me as my blogging has become to so many others. It’s the same song, sung over and over again. We need revival. We need to be relevant. We need to preach expository sermons. We need this or that. While the SBC Pastor’s Conference used to be a campaign tour bus for conservative candidates, it is now something of a broken down jalopy along the denominational highway. This year I did not hear a single sermon. I did not join in a single anthem. I did not enter the hall whatsoever during the gathering. And I feel quite good about it.

I’m sure there were motivational moments or tear-jerking tales. I’m sure some people were moved or challenged or changed. My skepticism has not carried me to a point where I doubt the power of the proclaimed Word to accomplish a sovereign purpose. For those who find the Pastor’s Conference a blessing, I’m thankful. For the growing numbers who find it superfluous, expensive, and predictable, I echo their benign disinterest.

Presidential Election

The election of the Southern Baptist Convention president was bizarre. Six candidates, only three of whom had any hope of winning, vied for the coveted position of leading a tired and waning flock of convention-goers for the next two years. Never again will the convention president represent “16 Million Southern Baptists.” The two party system of “liberals” and “fundamentalists” has given way to a Balkanized convention where Calvinists, and Revivalists, and Progressives, and Bureaucrats, and Bloggers, and Anti-bloggers, and every other competing interest under the sun has entrenched themselves on a few issues with very little prospect of intramural collaboration.

I had very different thoughts about the candidates. Johnny Hunt is a passionate man who often comes across as angry. Frank Cox looks the presidential part, though his regional appeal never seemed enough to turn out the vote. Avery Willis is too old to fire up the base of “missional leaders” who might have otherwise been a factor in the election. Wiley Drake should have taken his 2nd Vice Presidency and been satisfied. Les Puryear had a good issue – increased participation of small churches – though he himself knew the uphill battle before him. Bill Wagner’s odd campaign for the presidency, and his students in the trenches distributing fliers with the intensity of SoulForce, never stood a chance.

For me, honestly, I had no idea how I would vote until I heard the nomination speeches. My pastor and friend, Wade Burleson, had determined to nominate Bill Wagner for reasons that I understood but were insufficient to garner my support. Wade is an articulate speaker, and there is little doubt that most of the 400 votes that Wager received owe more to Burleson’s nomination than to Wagner’s popular appeal.

Wiley’s nominator – whoever he was – did a superb job making a speech for a candidate who hadn’t a chance. It was clear and careful, highlighting Wiley’s accomplishments and capturing some of his hopes for the SBC. Listening to it I thought it was something like hearing a nomination speech for Ron Paul and the Republican National Convention.

Dwight McKissic would have been a great nominator for Les Puryear, and I regret that my friend’s health kept him from attending the SBC. Dwight’s associate, Alan Stoddard, is a prince of a man with a huge heart and a genuine enthusiasm for reaching lost souls. When I see men like him at the convention, my single prayer is that they get out as fast as possible before the denominational nonsense creates the inevitable disillusionment. Churches who have staff members like Alan Stoddard should forbid them from attending denominational meetings or reading denominational news. They are too great an asset to the Kingdom to get entangled with convention business.

John Marshall is a great leader in Missouri, and his balanced and peaceable demeanor has done as much as anything else to retrieve the Missouri Baptist Convention from the partisan precipice toward which Roger Moran et al have been driving it. His nomination of Avery Willis was good, but not great. He stared into the camera like he was reading a teleprompter. The speech came off as memorized, which it probably was. In truth, John Marshall would have been a better candidate and Avery a better nominator. But hindsight is 20/20. Look for Avery Willis to fade from the scene, and John Marshall to rise as a new generation of leaders in the SBC.

Junior Hill, the much-beloved evangelist, was looking gaunt and pale when he assayed the platform to offer one of the most half-hearted nomination speeches I’ve ever heard in my life. Basically, Hill suffered a moment of divided loyalty between Frank Cox and Johnny Hunt. Rather than trumpet the virtues of his candidate with unqualified endorsement, Hill threw Frank Cox under the bus. Many of us were disappointed that Junior Hill took the course he did, though no person doubts that he sincerely struggled through a personal commitment to two friends running for the same convention office. Frank Cox should have known the dilemma Hill faced, and offered him an exit in order to solicit a more passionate and unambiguous nominator in Hill’s place.

And then there is Ted Traylor’s puckered-face nomination of Johnny Hunt. I felt that Traylor’s speech contained too many potentially deceptive “truths” about Hunt’s qualification for office. Not only did Traylor slip in an intentionally unclear reference to Hunt’s Cooperative Program support, he also fudged the number of pastors who have been mentored by Hunt. If Hunt has mentored more than 25,000 pastors through his Timothy Barnabas conferences, then he has single handedly trained more than half the pastors in the SBC. I know of some pastors who have attended these conferences four or five times, which means that they have probably been counted four or five times. This is not to undermine the degree to which Hunt has taken a personal interest in the ministries of young pastors, but only to highlight the degree to which his nomination provides another example of Southern Baptists inability to present accurate numbers when denominational grandstanding.

I think what bothered me most about Johnny Hunt’s candidacy is that I have known of his personal assurance to Frank Cox of both his unambiguous decision not to run this year, and of his personal support. I’m always willing to let a man change his mind, but it seems to me that honor was at stake. I had opportunities before Indianapolis to raise questions about Hunt’s nomination. There were some who wanted me to profile the excerpts from Spending God’s Money that chronicle Johnny Hunt’s receipt of $92,000 from Bob Reccord’s slush fund at NAMB. Questions about his honorary doctorates were raised. I refused, however, to crank up the machine to oppose Hunt’s candidacy – if for no other reason that I wasn’t certain myself whether or not I would vote for him.

After the convention, I was called by several reporters for a comment about Hunt’s election. My comment was the same to them all: Johnny Hunt is a passionate catalyst and a hero to many Southern Baptist pastors. When interviewed by a major national newspaper about Hunt’s suspect academic credentials, I did my part to kill the story. “No Southern Baptists in Indianapolis thought we were voting for a theologian or a college professor when we voted for Johnny Hunt. We know he’s not a doctor. But we also know he’s not a fraud.”

I’m not enthusiastic about Johnny Hunt’s presidency. But I don’t think anybody is enthusiastic about very much in the SBC these days. If Hunt uses his passionate, energetic hortatory gifts to mobilize Southern Baptists toward ends more eternally significant than teetotaling campaigns, Calvinist-mongering, Emergent church paranoia, or Republican initiatives, then it will be a good thing. If he gives in to a fundamentalist impulse, Southern Baptists will reap more of what they have sown.

I distinctly remember sitting with Paige Patterson a few years ago outside his Wake Forest office and talking about the line up of future SBC presidential contenders. James Merritt would succeed him, and then probably Jack Graham and Johnny Hunt. He never foresaw Bobby Welch, and he certainly overlooked Frank Page. When I asked Paige what he thought about Johnny Hunt’s ability to lead the convention, he told me that he would do well but would need “theological supervision.” “The problem with so many of Hunt’s generation is that they came through the seminaries during liberal administrations,” Paige explained. Their hearts were hot for conservatism, but their heads lacked the theological grounding to understand all the issues. They were nursed on Bultmann and Barth, rather than Broadus and Boyce, so to speak. They were faithful lieutenants, but they seldom made good generals.

Whatever the case, time will tell whether or not Johnny Hunt will eschew the fundamentalist fringe and get the Southern Baptist Convention back in the hands of the churches rather than charismatic megachurch pastors and overpaid bureaucratic clowns.

One final thought about the election of SBC President. The day cannot hasten soon enough that John Sullivan is no longer a platform personality with so immense a responsibility as clock-watcher and shoulder-patter. Frank Page did a remarkable job as convention president. He could have done us one additional favor by refusing to appoint Sullivan to the team of parliamentarians.

To be continued . . .

While the party of the establishment tried to collect itself in the wake of the unsettling victory, precious news time was wasted waiting for Rogers’ first press conference. I took the initiative and began querying Pressler and Dorothy Patterson about arranging a private interview for me with Rogers. By this point I had observed that Dorothy Patterson was much, much more than “the little woman behind the scenes” as some try erroneously to portray the wives of SBC conservative leaders. While Smith College grad Nancy Pressler functioned as the epitome of well-heeled wife who hostessed in the skybox with the grace and skills of an uppercrust Houston Junior Leaguer, Dorothy Patterson was more of a behind-the-scenes, can-do, take-charge, nuts-and-bolts political strategist. One of my most perplexing memories of the 1979 SBC meeting occurred on Wednesday morning when Paige Patterson slept late — much to the disdain of just about everyone in the skybox — while Dorothy Patterson seemed, in the absence of her husband, to literally function as an equal partner with Pressler.

June 11, 2008

Convention Finale: Does the SBC Have a Future?

For an explanation of this photo, please await the convention summary.

The convention was in a stalemate regarding the Cooperative Program as the Executive Committee squared off with megachurch pastors over the 10% clause. Entity heads were lining up behind candidates and issuing endorsements, while other entity heads publicly criticized the appearance of partisanship by convention employees. Bloggers were gripping the convention by the throat, and we had done our part to severely cripple the other nominees with an endless barrage of posts about things that really didn’t matter but served a politically useful purpose. “Younger leaders” were engaged, whoever they were.

Johnny Hunt, a man whose Ross Perot-like candidacy (he’s in . . . he’s out . . . he’s back in) did his own part to help elect Frank Page by offering a weak nomination speech for Ronnie Floyd. Similarly, Calvin Whitman nominated Jerry Sutton of Two Rivers in Nashville with a speech that was as forgettable as the nominator himself.

(To prove my point, I’ve asked a number of 2008 convention messengers if they remember who nominated Jerry Sutton. Nobody. Not one person in ten could recall.)

And then there was Forrest Pollock, whose speech to nominate Frank Page was delivered so flawlessly and with such finesse as to make it immediately apparent to most in the convention hall that Page was going to be elected by a considerable margin. We could literally hear the chad popping in greater numbers as Frank Page’s name was read by Registration Secretary Jim Wells.

Had the Lord not taken him home to a greater reward, it is very likely that Forrest Pollock would have become president of the convention within two years. His great service to the Southern Baptist Convention will be remembered by all of us who were there. It is to him, as much as any human factor, that Page’s presidency is owed.

Today I sit looking back over the last two years of convention life, and realize what a terrible burden leading us must have been for Frank Page. He’s had to deal with sniping from his alma mater, Southwestern Seminary. He’s had to deal with rumor mongering about his theological commitments. He’s had to deal with the fallout of moral compromise in the convention, and he’s had the frustration of having to present a positive appeal to an international audience predisposed to think of Southern Baptists as backwards, bickering, culture crusaders with neither the sincerity nor the sanctity of the Christ whose ambassador they would purport to be.

At every turn Frank Page has been gracious. He has been courteous to his critics and loyal to his friends. He’s had the courage to tell the IMB trustees that the infamous policies were foolish, and he’s had the audacity to confront bloggers — even those who supported him — about their attitudes and rancorous strife.

To be honest, he has set the bar high for convention president. In an election year of historic proportion, he has maintained a neutrality becoming his office. He’s been prophetic with the priestly class when they’ve needed their ears pinned back. He’s been compassionate when the circumstance necessitated a tender hand. He has, in my estimation, both admonished the unruly and encouraged the fainthearted.

His wife hasn’t marched into convention hotels and demanded a certain kind of table linen or tea service or floral arrangement. We’ve hardly known she was there at all. Quietly, in his shadow, she has been a true First Lady. She alone has heard his prayers at night. She alone has seen his tears and held his hand and walked beside him all the way.

As I look over the appointments that have come thus far from Frank Page’s tenure, I see balance. He committed to leading all Southern Baptists, and he has brought us all along. One is hard pressed to find anybody with anything unflattering to say about Frank Page’s two terms at the SBC helm.

Thirty years after the Conservative Resurgence began, you can still find messengers who were there in Houston on that historic day when Adrian Rogers was elected to the position that started the processes of change in a convention that was staring death in the face. They get a little teary eyed when they recount the stories of that year, and to this day they think of Adrian Rogers as the face and the voice of the movement he launched.

Thirty years from now, if any of us are still Southern Baptists, I imagine we will look back to Greensboro 2006 and Frank Page with a similarly fond nostalgia. He was our candidate. He became our president. He remains the standard by which we will judge his successors.

When he was elected, Frank Page told us that he was conservative but he wasn’t angry about it. Through two years of incredible pressure and conflict, he’s as solidly conservative as he was the day he was elected. And he’s still not angry. Not at the people who opposed him — either secretly or publicly. And not at those of us who by our support gave him more headaches than he ever deserved.

When I was in seminary, a group of friends and I spent an evening typecasting our own version of the SBC using the characters of the Wizard of Oz.  There was the heartless and increasingly immobile tin man who wishes to cut down every tree of the forest in a massive programme of anti-global warming deforestation, the dimwitted and overstuffed scarecrow, and the cowardly lion who preens with verdant robes and picks fights he cannot finish and fancies himself a courageous king of the jungle.

The role of Dorothy was a tossup between the lead character and another prominent part of the broom-riding kind.  The munchkins, of course, are all those happy little Southern Baptists who are card carrying members of the lollipop guild and whose loyalty to the Great and Powerful Wizard is quite pitiable.  If they only knew the wizard was a charlatan equipped with little smoke and few mirrors they would probably defect.  Nobody, however, seems willing to break their little hearts and tell them the truth.

But all of that aside, I have come to realize that the Southern Baptist Convention is much like the Wizard of Oz and his Emerald City not because of the similarities to be found between the fictional characters and the real life personalities and caricatures that keep most of us snickering under our breath, but because the metanarrative is frighteningly familiar.

The whole thing is an illusion.  It is an institution that exists in isolation from reality.  Behind the curtain of the Southern Baptist Zion is nothing of substance.  But for a few days every June thousands of people enter the technicolor world of Oz and pretend as if what they are doing will actually make a difference back in Kansas.  For fifteen annual sessions now, I have journeyed to the land myself thinking that Oz was reality.  For fourteen of those sessions I think I was hallucinating in a field of poppies.

Which gets me to the main point of my hesitance about the longterm viability of this thing we call the Southern Baptist Convention, at least in its present form.  At the end of the tale, Dorothy and Toto go back to Kansas.  They know they cannot stay in Oz forever.  It was fun while it lasted, but there are chores to be done and family to be loved back in the wheat fields.

On the other hand, you have the professionals who live in Oz.  These are the men who lead our convention week to week, day to day.  Most of them don’t live in reality anymore.  They live in this fairy tale where the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission shapes events in Washington D.C.  They enjoy a world where theological education at a Southern Baptist seminary actually equips you for leadership in the local church.  They have gotten fat — literally and metaphorically — on the feasts and festivals of Cooperative Program supported luxuries.

The rest of us go home to reality.  But they just keep living the dream.

Which is why they are utterly impotent to do anything to address the malaise that now has swept over the convention.  And it’s why more and more of Southern Baptists are choosing to stay in Kansas with each passing year.

Saturday, June 7, 2008 — “We’re Off To See the Wizard: Attending the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Sunday, June 8, 2008 — “Thoughts on the presidency of Frank Page”

Monday, June 9, 2008 — “Of hairpieces and handkerchiefs: Casual observations about the SBC Pastors Conference.”

Tuesday, June 10, 2008 — “SBC Indy 2008: Day One Review”

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 — “SBC Indy 2008: On resolutions and other non-binding non-sense.”

Friday, June 13, 2008 — “The Exit Strategy”

UPDATE:  I’m running behind schedule on the first post, which I will finish en route to Indianapolis early Sunday morning.  Stay tuned . . .

Over the past few years, I have been very active in the blogosphere opposing the policies regarding private prayer language and baptism initiated by the IMB’s Board of Trustees in November, 2005. I was very excited to see others take up the struggle against these extra-biblical and extra- BF&M policies as seen through the Time to Change Statement, which I quickly signed. Even though I am a stateside pastor, I have had relationships with missionaries on the field for many years now. I have been a big advocate for the IMB and believe that they are doing great work. As the current IMB BoT chairman, Paul Chitwood recently said, “The work of the IMB is the primary thing that brings us together.” I agree. That is why it is so important to all of us.

Recently, I have begun to hear about the disastrous effects that these policies are having upon our missionary force in the field. We all read about the resignation of Rodney Hammer, Regional Leader for Central and Eastern Europe, over these policies. That move is akin to a theatre commander resigning during a time of war over disagreements with the White House. That is a huge story.

I am also personally hearing from missionaries telling me that morale is very low, resignations are occurring or are on their way, there is a feeling of fear amongst field personnel in relation to the trustees, and that the baptism/church planting numbers released by the IMB are questionable in the way that they are being used. Over time, I have heard the exact same thing being reported from missionaries who do not know each other in three separate regions across the world. One particular missionary made a specifically urgent plea for pastors and churches in the States to come to their aid. The situation is becoming quite desperate it seems. Seeing this pattern emerge from across the world, I felt like this story needed to be told. The information below comes from field personnel that I have personally interacted with. I know their names and regions, though for obvious reasons, I will not share that information here. You can either choose to believe this or not, but I assure you that I have received all of this first hand from people on the field.

Micromanagement by Trustees: Many missionaries are very discouraged. The new policies demoralized many missionaries on the field because it undermined the IMB leadership. The impression is that trustees want to micromanage the work on the field and those who are supposed to be setting strategy have no real authority to do so. People are now constantly looking over their shoulder. Missionaries are resigning so that they can be free of the restrictive climate of the organization and so they can do the work that they feel called to do. This type of environment has effected the morale of many missionaries.

Questionable Numbers: I have heard reports from multiple sources that the baptism/church planting numbers are difficult to verify. We work very closely with indigenous Christians. We provide training to them and the work that they do, we count as our own in many cases. The problem is that a great need for numbers and results has been created. I was not able to ascertain the absolute source of this pressure, but it is creating a great deal of angst on the field. The new policies have only added to that fear. The missionaries that I am talking with are telling stories of reported CPM’s that are not really happening, of exaggerated claims of baptisms, and of our claiming the work of national Christians that we do not work as closely with as it seems. They are not saying that this is happening everywhere, but it is happening enough to cause concern. I have received stories attesting to this happening in multiple regions. I asked Rodney Hammer, a former trustee, and a high ranking executive within the IMB about this and they all assured me that they were not aware of these things and believed the baptism numbers to be accurate, while also verifying that we do get our numbers from working with the indigenous church.

Relationship With the Indigenous Church: Relationships with nationals have been harmed since the institution of the new policies by the trustees. The majority of national Baptists that we work with do not ascribe to the doctrine of the security of the believer and they are not necessarily anti-charismatic. In other words, many of the nationals that we work with hold to doctrines that the IMB trustees have considered to be wrong. Yet, we continue to count the number of baptisms that come from our “partners” and the national churches. After interviewing people up and down the chain of command in the IMB, as I previously noted, I found out that the 609,000 baptisms that were counted for 2007 were primarily the baptisms of indigenous church planters and evangelists that we had worked with in some way. The vast majority of these numbers came from a dozen or so church planting movements in Asia.

Here are some questions about the nationals that provide the majority of our international baptisms:

1. How many of those baptisms were done by indigenous Baptists/Christians who do not hold to the security of the believer?

2. How many were done by those who believe in or practice a private prayer language?

3. How many were done by women? In East Asia, it is very common for this to occur in the house churches.

Paul Chitwood tells us that the “sky is not falling” with the work of the IMB in the world. I agree. But, to encourage Southern Baptists and buttress his point, he pointed to a record number of baptisms and church plants for last year. Again, numbers. Yet, what he did not tell us is that the majority of that work was done by national believers who would not be qualified to serve with the IMB as missionaries under the new policies. Yet, we count their numbers as our own. What is the reason for this? Also, is it not disingenuous to only say, “Look at what we are doing!” when it is actually the indigenous church that is doing the majority of the work as we assist them? Does it not paint an inaccurate picture when Paul Chitwood points to the great work that Southern Baptists are doing through the IMB without also pointing to the role of the indigenous church?

Otherwise Qualified Missionaries Kept From the Field: Rodney Hammer, through a phone interview, told me that he did some independent research in November, 2006, because the IMB does not keep these numbers in a centralized location. He told me that at that point, approximately 200 otherwise qualified applicants for the mission field had been denied service because they were in violation of one of the two policies. That was a year and a half ago. How many more have been denied since then, or have not bothered to apply? He reiterated that there was no problem on the field with charismatic issues that the rules on the books did not address. One of the missionaries that I corresponded with told me that he personally knew people rejected by the Board because they were baptized as children on the field while their family served as IMB missionaries. The couple is now serving with a different missions agency.

All of these issues have caused great consternation among some missionaries on the field. I have obviously not spoken with every missionary with the IMB, so I do not pretend that these issues are universal. But, since I have learned of the exact same things happening in multiple regions, I thought it would be prudent to examine all angles. To be fair, I recently contacted a very high ranking executive with the IMB and told him what I was finding. I asked him for his opinion on these things and he said that he was aware of some low morale among missionaries, but overall, the morale was high around the world. He also confirmed that our baptism/church planting numbers came from partnerships with Great Commission Christians all over the world as IMB missionaries worked with them and trained them. As one would expect, he was very positive about the work of the IMB.

He did not say this, but we are obviously working with many who were already believers when we showed up in their locale. To expect everyone that we work with to have the exact same theology as us is stretching things, but for trustees to count numbers from groups that would not be appointed as missionaries with the IMB seems to smack of a double standard. From all that I can tell, to not count the numbers from the national churches the way that we do would reduce baptism numbers from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. Is anyone willing to do that?

As best as I can tell from direct and some indirect information from almost a dozen sources, there is a growing level of frustration on the field related to the new policies/guidelines and the work of the trustees. There is so much more that I could tell from information that I received, but this post would have to go in multiple different directions. I only shared perspectives that were verified by at least two other sources. There is other information that is very discouraging that I could not verify through multiple sources so I left it in my notes and out of this post. Based on what I have learned, it seems that there are many missionaries who believe that these policies should be overturned and that the IMB trustees should return to their role as the chief supporters of the missionaries on the field, instead of their perceived current role as suspicious managers.

I am encouraged that more and more people are speaking out about this issue. Our missionaries are some of the best people on the planet. They are laying their lives down to serve the Lord everyday. Those of us who are called to stay here should lay our lives down to support them in every way possible. We should also celebrate the work that God is doing in the indigenous church. The time has come for us to truly see ourselves as partners with what God is doing around the world instead of seeing ourselves as God’s last, best shining hope for world evangelization. We are all in this together.

I hope that each person who reads this will say a prayer for our missionaries and find some way to encourage them and support them over the next few months. They are doing hard work and they need us to be behind them, not ignoring them or criticizing them. I also hope that many prayers will be uttered to the Lord so that these guidelines will be overturned.

June 2, 2008

Pastors, former missionaries join former IMB trustees in calling for removal of controversial, superfluous ‘guidelines’

‘Time to Change’ group opposes policies on baptism, private prayer practices

NORTH CAROLINA –– A group of 37 former Southern Baptist missionaries, former International Mission Board trustees and Southern Baptist pastors has issued a call for rank and file Southern Baptists to reverse “guidelines” enacted by IMB trustees in 2005 that prohibited appointment of missionaries whose baptisms and private prayer lives do not meet those guidelines.

“We express our concern over the restrictions that have been put in place in the form of additional ‘guidelines’ concerning a missionary candidate’s private prayer life and baptism,” says the statement, which was released June 2, 2008. “Our conviction is that these guidelines stray far beyond the parameters set forth by our denominational confession of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message.”

One position adopted by IMB trustees prohibited appointment of missionary candidates who were not baptized in conformity with a narrow, extra-biblical definition of baptism. The second position prohibited appointment of missionary candidates who practice a “private prayer language.”

The group objects that those restrictions amount to “intrusive scrutiny into the sanctity of the personal prayer closet” and “dictating to local churches what constitutes a legitimate Christian baptism.”

The result of adopting those “guidelines” – with no evidence they were needed – was that “otherwise worthy candidates” for missionary service are unnecessarily rejected and “valuable, faithful IMB personnel” are leaving the field at a time when the overseas missions harvest is greater than ever, the group says.

“Each day, we are all made painfully aware of the scope of the lostness of our world. We agree with the words of our Lord that, indeed, the harvest is abundant. We also, with great sadness, agree with His assessment that the workers are few,” the statement says. “There are good, loyal Southern Baptists who see the multitudes also, and just as Christ did, feel compassion for them. Let us as Southern Baptists not purposefully turn away any qualified worker who has heard and obeyed the call to ‘Go.’”

The group plainly asserts that their opposition to the “guidelines” should not be read as a lack of support for IMB missionaries, staff or administration. They “commend the obedience and commitment to God’s call of the more than 5,000 dedicated brothers and sisters who have been appointed, sent, and supported by Southern Baptists to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth” and declare that they “enthusiastically support our IMB missionaries through their praying, giving, and going.”

They also affirm that the IMB’s candidate approval process “has been fair, thorough, and complete, producing a dedicated, well-trained missionary force” that meet the criteria set out by the SBC Constitution that “all missionaries appointed by the Convention’s boards must, previous to their appointment, furnish evidence of piety, zeal for the Master’s kingdom, conviction of truth as held by Baptists, and talents for missionary service.”

The group “call(s) on Southern Baptists to hold the entities of the SBC accountable to the direction of the convention’s churches, not the churches to the sentiments of their entities” and “strongly urge(s) Southern Baptists to seek the removal of these controversial and superfluous guidelines from use in the candidate approval process.”

The group has created a Web site at imbchange.info to “encourage appropriate principles and guidelines for missionary service through the International Mission Board of the SBC.”

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For more information, contact:

Concern4Missions@bellsouth.net
Allan & Pam Blume 828-265-0220 or 828-266-9700
Steve Hardy 336-714-5468