December 1, 1999
IMB trustees face funding needs
___SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BP) --Trustees of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board approved a record budget for the coming year but still authorized a $3 million expenditure from reserves to meet urgent requests from the field.
___The trustees met Nov. 15-17 in Sacramento, Calif. They approved a record $256.6million budget but had to make a $3 million special appropriation from reserves for special non-recurring projects. And even that was $4 million less than what missionaries had requested.
ORPHA AND WILLIAM ORTEGA visit with well-wishers after appointment as Southern Baptist missionaries Nov. 17 in Sacramento, Calif. Ortega is a graduate of Hispanic Baptist Theological School in San Antonio. Mrs. Ortega will graduate from Wayland Baptist University this month. The couple will work in Mexico City to start new churches. "I heard the gospel for the first time in Mexico through the River Ministry when I was a little girl," she explained in a testimony at the appointment service. Later she moved to Texas to live with her uncle, an evangelical Christian, to find work so that she could help support her family. While in Texas, she accepted Christ as Savior and was baptized in 1975. Her desire to become a missionary came from learning about missions in Girls in Action, she said. Later, she served as a Baptist Student Union summer missionary in Mexico. While there, a Mexican Baptist told her "Orpha, Mexico needs you." Those words "touched my heart, and I have carried a burden for Mexico ever since," she said. (IMB photo)
___The budget includes $226.4 million for operating expenses, $14.4 million for capital outlays and $811,885 for special contingencies. A $15 million "challenge" budget also was approved.
___The challenge budget would become operative if Southern Baptist giving to the 1999 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering reaches its $125 million goal. The offering last year raised slightly more than $101 million.
___While board officials said they desperately need the $125 million goal to meet growing needs overseas, they told trustees they cannot automatically assume Southern Baptists will increase their Lottie Moon giving this year by the nearly 25 percent needed.
___Trustees also decided to delay until January action on a $22.8 million request for expanding the Missionary Learning Center in Rockville, Va. The expansion is necessary because of the swelling numbers of new missionary candidates. The total number of IMB missionaries is expected to top 5,000 by mid-2000. Five years ago, the total number hovered around 4,000.
___About 18 percent of the 5,000 are appointed for two years, which creates a constant need for training replacements, leaders said.
___On Nov. 17, at the close of the meeting, the board appointed 55 new career and associate missionaries.
___Trustees also terminated missionary Troy Haas of Kenya for "failure to maintain a lifestyle in keeping with the expectations of the International Mission Board."
___Haas' work among the Turkana people group had been widely featured in board products, and he spoke last summer at the Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference.
___The Baptist Standard featured a lengthy account of Haas' message in its June 23 issue. Haas is a native Texan.
___Meanwhlie, IMB President Jerry Rankin and other senior administrators told trustees that trying to balance rising needs overseas against known available financial resources had created one of the most difficult budgeting processes they had ever experienced.
___Trustees passed a resolution asking IMB staff to move up to September from November the presentation of a "rough draft" of the 2001 budget so they would have longer to study that budget.
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