imb_92203

Posted: 9/19/03

IMB will require career candidates
to serve three-year apprenticeships

AUSTIN--All new candidates for long-term missionary service with the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board will be required to complete a three-year apprenticeship before achieving career or associate status.

The new policy was enacted by IMB trustees during a Sept. 8-10 meeting in Austin.

Tom Hatley, chairman of the IMB mission personnel committee, told trustees research shows that missionaries who serve short-term overseas assignments before serving as career missionaries suffer fewer transition problems, become effective more quickly and serve longer than workers without previous experience.

Trustees learned the budget that will be recommended for 2004 will reflect a $20 million reduction from the current budget.

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Posted: 9/19/03

IMB will require career candidates
to serve three-year apprenticeships

AUSTIN–All new candidates for long-term missionary service with the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board will be required to complete a three-year apprenticeship before achieving career or associate status.

The new policy was enacted by IMB trustees during a Sept. 8-10 meeting in Austin.

Tom Hatley, chairman of the IMB mission personnel committee, told trustees research shows that missionaries who serve short-term overseas assignments before serving as career missionaries suffer fewer transition problems, become effective more quickly and serve longer than workers without previous experience.

Trustees learned the budget that will be recommended for 2004 will reflect a $20 million reduction from the current budget.

The change will not affect personnel currently serving in the board's short-term programs or candidates already in the approval process, Hatley said.

Trustees also learned the budget that will be recommended for 2004 will reflect a $20 million reduction from the current budget.

Half that reduction reflects a lowered income projection, while the other half represents $10 million in capital expenditures that will not be made until the operating budget is met, said John Hatch, chairman of the trustees' finance committee.

The proposed budget would reduce missionary operating budgets by 7 percent and plans no salary increases for missionary personnel or stateside employees.

The budget assumes Southern Baptists will reach the $133 million goal for this year's Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions. That goal is 15 percent larger than last year's goal, which was not met and contributed to a financial crisis that forced staff layoffs and a reduction in missionary appointments.

IMB President Jerry Rankin discussed with trustees concerns that “church-planting movements” implemented by missionaries may not accurately be described as Baptist.

“That is a valid question, and the answer is shaded by one's perception,” Rankin said. “Are they Baptist in terms of their strict adherence to the pattern and teaching of the New Testament? Probably so. Are they Baptist in terms of replicating the traditions and forms of what we know as Baptist in America? Not necessarily. Are they identified as 'Baptist' churches? Not always.”

Southern Baptist workers and their overseas partners reported 8,369 churches organized in 2002. Nearly 3,535 of them were started in one church-planting movement in Asia.

Because those churches are autonomous, missionaries do not control what those churches will believe and practice, Rankin said. And in some places, denominational labels are illegal or may cause persecution, he added.

IMB missionaries use the Southern Baptist Convention's 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement to explain who Southern Baptists are and what they believe, Rankin said. Sometimes churches even adopt the Baptist Faith & Message as their own faith statement, he added.

“The main issue is to understand the nature and the power of the gospel,” Rankin said. “Many have identified a church-planting movement as a movement that is out of control as churches plant churches. Is that not what we want to happen?”

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