June 4, 2001

Mission board declines funds from
group bypassing state convention
___By Tim Palmer & Bill Webb
___Missouri Word & Way
___JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (ABP)--The Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board has said "no thanks" to missions gifts being routed around a state convention.
___IMB President Jerry Rankin reported the mission board doesn't want money from Mainstream Missouri Baptists, an organization opposed to fundamentalists who recently solidified control of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
___After failing in repeated efforts to defend the state against a takeover, Mainstream Missouri Baptists recently turned their attention to promoting alternative giving plans that support selected causes inside and outside the state while excluding others.
___In a letter to Doyle Sager, president of the Mainstream group, Rankin said accepting money from alternate channels undermines the Cooperative Program unified budget that supports the SBC and state convention simultaneously.
___An SBC agency's acceptance of money while another Southern Baptist entity--in this case the Missouri Baptist Convention--is excluded is inappropriate, Rankin said.
___"We're committed to each other," he wrote. "As much as we need that support, we're not interested in benefiting to the detriment of others."
___The decision is consistent with IMB policy of refusing gifts from the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a moderate group that supports its own missionaries and church programs but in earlier days also forwarded money to selected SBC ministries, Rankin said.
___"If a church feels led of the Lord to support the IMB, I would presume they would be obedient to the Lord's leadership and find an appropriate channel to do that," Rankin said.
___No state group other than Mainstream Missouri Baptists has offered to channel funds to the IMB, he added.
___The Mainstream group includes the IMB in one of three giving plans it promotes in the state. Despite Rankin's letter, Sager said the organization would continue to honor donor wishes.
___Because the funds had been designated for IMB by churches, "we're seeing that it gets to the IMB," Sager said.
___"There are many ways to see that that happens. We're using appropriate channels." He declined to specify how the funds were being forwarded.
___"Every penny that people are designating to IMB is getting there," Sager said. "Good accounting principles are being followed. We would pass any good CPA's audit.
___"These are giving plans that Missouri Baptists asked us to create," Sager said. "People wanted this choice. In other words, these combinations of plans didn't show up willy-nilly."
___Because of that, he said, the organization plans to continue to honor the designations.
___"The philosophy behind it was that we didn't think Jerry Rankin and his board set the giving policy for Missouri Baptists.
___"It is inconceivable to us that the IMB would refuse Baptist money that is trying to go to Baptist missionaries--that we would want to cut off funds to missionaries when faithful Baptists want to get funds to them."

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