NAMB error distorted GCR strategy (rethinking . . . . . . . . . . )

Feb. 22's Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) interim report shocked Southern Baptist Conventioneers (SBC) with news that two-thirds of their missions money is spent in the old south. That meant they were spending the most money to spread the faith where they're already strongest. Bad.

Those dismal numbers were wrong, North Carolina Biblical Recorder Editor Norman Jameson explained in his blog today.

Actually, "53 percent of NAMB missionaries serve outside the old south states," according to Jameson's parsing of numbers in a correction issued by the SBC's North American Mission Board, from whence those numbers come.

Re-reconsideration (it has already been considered and reconsidered by the Southern Baptist Blogosphere (SBB)) of the GCR may begin.

Update Surprise

GCRTF chairman Ronnie Floyd sought to minimize the importance of the error. GCR documents have been revised to correct for the error, but Cooperative Programs funds were the major concern of the task force, he told Baptist Press. Specifically:

"[W]e spend 2/3 of the Cooperative Program dollars on 1/3 of the population and conversely spend only 1/3 of the Cooperative Program dollars on 2/3 of the population in the United States," Floyd said.

Whereupon Southern Baptist Conventioneers heaved in unison a mighty sigh of "O Rly?" (And wondered silently what the big Tuesday conference call would reveal).