Rankin defends IMB against description by Parks
___By John Pierce
___Baptists Today
___WINDER, Ga.--Doctrinal conformity, not missions, was the primary agenda of fundamentalists who captured control of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s and '90s, according to former SBC missions leader Keith Parks.
___"The SBC no longer ... finds its core and cohesion around missions," Parks told members of First Baptist Church of Winder during a Sept. 25 presentation sponsored by a "mainstream" Georgia Baptist organization.
___In the presentation, Parks gave detailed descriptions of what he perceives to be a new agenda for the SBC and of changes made to the SBC's international missions program.
___Jerry Rankin, current president of the SBC International Mission Board, said in response that he is "baffled" by Parks' accusations. Rankin denies that the IMB has adopted a radically different strategy than when Park was president of the missions agency.
___After years of service as a missionary in Indonesia, Parks became president of the SBC Foreign Mission Board in 1980, one year after the concerted effort by fundamentalists to capture control of the SBC was launched. He resigned from the FMB in 1992, facing increasing pressure from newly elected trustees. Eventually, he signed on as leader of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's emerging global missions program, a post from which he now is retired.
___Parks and his wife, Helen Jean, live in Richardson.
___Soon after his election to lead the FMB in 1980, Parks said, he began to realize that the emerging group of SBC leaders had a different opinion than he did about what was the "glue" that held Southern Baptists together.
___He cited conversations with one of those SBC presidents who argued the convention had been united historically around doctrine, not missions. Parks, in turn, argued that early SBC leaders found their unity in missions.
___The argument for doctrinal agreement eventually won out over missions cooperation, Parks said. And at the FMB, that meant he increasingly had to deal with trustees who were chosen "to make sure the political takeover took place" rather than to support the missions program.
___"They weren't thinking missions," he said. "They were thinking their political agenda."
___While he faced pressure from trustees to support the fundamentalist political movement, trustees often denied they were trying to remove him as president, he said. "Control (rather than doctrine) is what they had in mind from the beginning."
___Since his departure, the FMB, now the IMB, has created "a drastic change in the kind of missions program Southern Baptists support," Parks charged.
___He said he continually hears from Southern Baptist missionaries who are deeply concerned about the changes they are witnessing.
___He cited the case of one missionary couple, serving 28 years in a country hostile to Christianity, being reassigned and told by a new IMB supervisor that he would "go back to my room and pray tonight, and tomorrow I'll tell you what God's will is for your life."
___This is just "one of dozens of stories" Parks said he could tell to illustrate "a tragic assumption of control" by current IMB leadership.
___"Most Southern Baptists don't know that things have changed, and ... will not believe you when you tell them things have changed," Parks said. "They don't want controversy."
___Among other specific changes he cited:
___ A move toward emphasizing short-term personnel over career missionaries. "There are fewer (IMB) career missionaries today than there were in 1990," he said. "You read (IMB) reports, and you assume their growth (in career appointments) is phenomenal."
___ "A drastic disregard for vocational and locational calling." The IMB's New Directions strategy, implemented four years ago with an emphasis on so-called church planting movements, has diminished the role of missionaries trained for such specialties as medicine, agriculture and education, Parks charged. "Everybody's got to be a church planter now."
___ Less control by missionaries. More decision-making is handed down from administrators in Richmond, Va., or from regional offices, Parks asserted.
___ Eschatology. Parks also expressed concern that Rankin's persistent emphasis on one Scripture passage can lead to "superficial" efforts of broadly exposing all cultures to the gospel in order to hasten the return of Christ. The passage often quoted by Rankin is Matthew 24:14, which says, "The gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a witness to every nation and then the end will come."
___Rankin flatly denies this and other suggestions of drastic changes at the IMB.
___"We really haven't changed our strategy even back to Baker James Cauthen," he said, referring to Parks' predecessor as president. "All of these (charges) just baffle me and boggle my mind."
___While an increase in volunteers and short-term workers have made the percentage of career missionaries smaller, the IMB's commitment to career missionaries has not decreased, he said.
___"We have not diminished our emphasis on career missions at all," Rankin said. "We have simply opened up channels for mission service for more Southern Baptists than ever before."
___In contradiction to Parks' assertion that short-term missions workers are less cost-effective than career missionaries, Rankin said short-term workers are effective because they receive high-level training and are assigned to projects that "free up our career missionaries" to do ministry for which they are uniquely qualified.
___The number of career missionaries is not declining, Rankin said. "We'll appoint the largest number of career missionaries ever this year."
___Charges that administrators are assuming responsibilities previously done in local settings is "absolutely untrue," Rankin said. Decision making, he added, has been pushed down to a grassroots level.
___And regarding the accusation that his emphasis on reaching all the nations quickly is an attempt to hasten the return of Christ with shallow missionary work, Rankin responded: "I've never said that, and I don't believe that."
___"What is being distorted is my often quoting Matthew 24:14," he said. "Obviously, that prophesy is being fulfilled."
___Further, to call the IMB's New Directions strategy a drastically different approach is a "distortion," Rankin said. Rather, it is "the culmination of a strategy that has been in place" for a long time, he said.
___When asked if the IMB is cutting back on, or reassigning, medical, agricultural and educational missionaries in favor of church planters, Rankin replied, "Absolutely not."
___"We're appointing more people in those areas than ever before," he added. However, fewer personnel are being used in traditional institutions as these institutions become "less dependent upon the IMB," he added.
___"Everyone" is responding to the need for starting churches, Rankin said. "There is no dichotomy in missions work."
___Many of the concerns expressed by Parks are echoed in the report of the Baptist General Convention of Texas' Missions-Sending Agencies Study Committee report, to be presented to BGCT messengers at next week's annual session. The BGCT report cited concerns about a declining number of career missionaries, less autonomy for missionaries on the field and the results of the New Directions strategy.
___Neither the IMB nor Rankin have given any formal, public response to the BGCT committee's report.
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