May 7, 2001

BGCT study identifies six concerns about IMB's operation
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___While not recommending any funding changes for the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, a study committee of the Baptist General Convention of Texas has noted six concerns about the IMB's operation.
___The concerns are detailed in the 21-page report of the Missions-sending Agencies Study Committee, released May 4. The committee, created by vote of messengers to the 1999 BGCT annual session, has been working more than a year.
___A subcommittee chaired by Ron Lyles of Pasadena met for two days with key IMB leadership, including IMB President Jerry Rankin and five vice presidents. The committee also interviewed current and former IMB missionaries and conducted independent research.
___Out of this research, the BGCT committee noted six concerns:
___ That the current strategy of the IMB has abandoned meeting the "total needs of humanity" in order to focus almost exclusively on church starting. This new focus, adopted by IMB administrators three years ago, is called New Directions and has been somewhat controversial among missionaries and some IMB trustees.
___"We affirm all efforts to plant churches and believe everyone should have the opportunity to hear, understand and respond to the gospel in each person's own language," the committee explains. "However, we are concerned that missionaries who trained and have served as doctors or administrators or teachers are being required to redirect their work into church starting at the expense of their training and calling."
___An accelerated redirection of personnel and funding by the IMB has created hardships for some leaders of national Baptist conventions, who are scrambling to assume responsibility for ministries started and previously staffed and funded by the IMB, the committee said.
___"While we believe New Directions does have positive qualities, we have significant concerns about repercussions from the implementation of this strategy," the report concludes.
___ A decrease in the number of people appointed career missionaries through the IMB.
___While the IMB has reported an increase in total missionary numbers, "the number of career missionaries has not grown for some years," the committee notes. For example, the IMB had 3,365 career missionaries in 1990 and 3,323 in 1999.
___Most of the increase in the IMB's missionary count has come through short-term workers who serve for two years, the committee explains.
___The committee calls on the IMB to be more clear in its public reporting of missionary totals and to begin replenishing the dwindling ranks of career missionaries.
___ Reports by IMB missionaries that they have experienced a "less meaningful voice in strategy planning and determining how to do their work" as a result of the New Directions strategy.
___Some missionaries report that New Directions has created a centralized decision-making post at IMB headquarters in Richmond, Va., and that they now feel more like corporate employees than God-called missionaries.
___ The role of women in IMB leadership. "We see a neglect of the leadership gifts of women in the IMB," the committee notes. "No woman serves as part of the senior administration, nor does a woman serve as one of the 14 regional leaders."
___This is important to the BGCT, the committee explains, because "Texas Baptists will continue to encourage women who are called to missions, whether married or single, and will urge them to continue doing the work of God. We will pray for and hold up the hands of all who follow the example of Lottie Moon, who served God by starting churches, witnessing for Christ and seeing people come to salvation."
___ Relation to Woman's Missionary Union. "We encourage the IMB to value and to strengthen its relationship with this necessary and vital organization," the report urges.
___ Baptist Faith & Message 2000. Although IMB officials have said the controversial 2000 version of the Baptist Faith & Message will not be imposed upon anyone, the committee notes that the revised faith statement is used by the IMB as a primary doctrinal statement missionary candidates must affirm.
___"For the first time, the Southern Baptist international missions agency is examining candidates with reference to a specific theological document with which many Texas Baptists disagree and which the BGCT has chosen not to endorse," the report explains.
___"Based upon dialogue with IMB leadership, the committee understands that a candidate who does not agree in totality with the new Baptist Faith & Message would experience greater scrutiny. We call upon those who screen missionary candidates from Texas and other states to hear carefully their biblical convictions ... and to measure them by Scripture alone."

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