What IMB message did the SBC messengers stay away from in droves on Wednesday?

Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board, told the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on June 15:

...there are 11,000-plus distinct, ethnic people groups in the world, and more than 6,400 of those are still unreached with less than 2 percent of them who have heard the gospel. ... [and] after sending out more than 900 new missionaries in 2008 and reaching a record level of 5,624 missionary personnel overseas, the IMB is having to cut back to no more than 5,000 missionaries by the end of 2010 due to budget restrictions.

Read the complete account by Lonnie Wilkey of the Tennessee Baptist and Reflector [here].

Farewell NAMB/IMB merger

Merger of the big, troubled North American Mission Board (NAMB) with the big, troubled International Mission Board (IMB) is apparently off the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) drawing boards.

Thus spake the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) Chairman Ronnie Floyd in a speech Monday at a Florida pastor's conference. Although SBC President Johnny Hunt once called stories reporting the possibility of such a merger "ludicrous," Floyd confessed:

There was great, great, great discussion studying, planning and even to the point of having strategic formation of the possibility of the other. But we just really sensed in our heart that wasn’t right at this time.

"Sensed" presumably means heard the uproar set off by the GCRTF's fog-enshrouded considerations of merger and objection by SBC elder statesman Duke K. McCall and others to the further concentration of SBC executive authority such a merger would entail.

Fundamentalist vs. even-more-fundamentalist [Addendum]

John Pierce of Baptists Today grieves the wrestling among fundamentalists for spoils set off by announced retirement of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)'s besieged International Mission Board chairman, Jerry Rankin.

When Rankin leaves next year there will be vacancies at the top of both the IMB and the scandal-plagued, resignation-rocked, domestically focused North American Mission Board (NAMB). Of that Pierce writes:

The top leadership vacancies at the two SBC mission boards will have the boys who run the denominational show now wrestling to (1) perhaps combine the two boards and (2) get a person(s) into the top post(s) who reflect their side's political bent. That's a battle between the Fundamentalists and the even-more Fundamentalists. . . . the ever-narrowing, suspicious, fear-based nature of Fundamentalism has played out as it always does: turning inward to find enemies.

Pierce does not touch upon the inflated and some say fabricated IMB statistics, focusing instead on the effect of "doctrinal restrictions on SBC missionaries." Private prayer languages were a key issue. They were barred. This for missionaries some of whom had just a few years earlier had to sign the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 or be fired.

The conflicts driving those restrictions are also evident in divinity school inquisitions, sometimes acrimonious public debate among Batholics and Cathists and the online equivalent of rock-throwing which is part of discussion among Southern Baptist luminaries.

All of which is, Wade Burleson predicted after June SBC Convention, getting worse. Michael Spencer developed a list of factors driving the SBC as younger inerrantists make themselves felt. Further repression was implied by SBC President Johnny D. Hunt's recent quiet indication that already retreating Baptist state newspaper editors pull their journalistic horns in even more.

Part of the prescribed cure for SBC maladies is the Great Commission Resurgence approved at this year’s annual meeting of the SBC, whose complex paper trail Timmy Briester has mapped.

The resurgence governing group meets behind closed doors, however. Some of the questions directed at SBC President Hunt about where it is actually going, however, were answered with questions and mockery recently.

Closed doors and anger about unwelcome reports? The resulting message may be heard from distant seats in uncushioned pews as, "Trust us. We've been fighting continuously among ourselves as the SBC imploded. We've led you into a morass each time we promised renewal. We know what we're doing."

Addendum:

Wade Burleson captures the flavor of the SBC political struggle in his Sept. 16 post when he writes:

I found myself in 2008, at times, questioning whether or not the Christ I follow is actually represented by the Convention with which we choose to affiliate. I recently spoke with J.C. Watts, former United States Congressman from Oklahoma and a life-long Southern Baptist, about our mutual affiliation and affection for the SBC. He said that politics in Washington D.C. is rough and tumble, but he has never seen anything as vicious as Southern Baptist politics. Though I have no experience with D.C. politics, I can echo similar sentiments regarding the SBC and the utter lack of civility among some.

Read the entire post here.

Lost Shepherd Ted Haggard's lessons for SBC leadership

Wade Burleson is able defender of the faith as he reviews Newsweek's profile of Ted Haggard

It is when he turns to leadership that the Oklahoma Southern Baptist pastor is most eloquent:

We Christians should take an honest look at what it is we think qualifies a person to lead. I sometimes wonder if one of the problems of modern Christianity is that we have created such a false sense of super-spirituality that we succumb to a certain mode of pretending that we never struggle. Christians, especially we who lead, sometimes try to act as if we are perfect. We have pastors who bully those who question them, denominational leaders who call those who oppose their decisions "liberals" and other actions that lead me to believe we have a God-complex among some of our leaders. This false sense of moral invincibility has led to a climate where transparency, honesty, and personal integrity are no longer a part of our corporate faith. ... .

Southern Baptist International Mission Board inflated, sometimes fabricated statistics of missionary accomplishment certainly raise those issues. Former IMB Trustee Burleson is expert on those problems. But his point is more general.

Burleson concludes:

The SBC church, institution or agency that believes the "leader" is beyond simple accountablity will find that leader has the capability to ruin the organization. When and if that happens, the fault will reside not only with the leader, but those laymen who were unable to see that a lack of transparency is the first indication that something is wrong.

Will his call to Southern Baptist reform be answered?

Inefficient IMB Board refused reform

Enid, Okla., Southern Baptist Pastor Wade Burleson argues that the International Mission Board (IMB) system of trustee oversight is unnecessarily expensive in structure and process.

Frink summarizes:

The 89 IMB Trustees who are ultimately responsible for the statistics serve, Burleson reports, eight-year terms rich in expense-paid travel whose "costs are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."

Burleson, a vocal former IMB trustee who has blogged about the Southern Baptist Convention agency for years, recently wrote that during his tenure:

The waste associated with such an archaic system of oversight caused me and a handful of other trustees to advocate the reduction of trustees meetings to two a year; the first would be in January and held in Richmond and the second would be in June in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Convention. I further argued that the "commissioning" service for each missionary should be held at missionary's "home" church, and that the "selection" of qualified Southern Baptist applicants should be up to the professional missiologists at the IMB who are paid to interview, train, and support missionaries across the Convention.

The money-saving proposals got nowhere:

Trustees opposed to such a radical reduction in trustee meetings and numbers argued against it by spiritualizing, as is the Southern Baptist habit, by saying: "We have such a HUGE ministry at the IMB that we have to constantly meet to provide proper oversight."

This from a board whose "key mission numbers are inflated and some are fabricated" as a result of the pressure of a long-standing SBC drive to reverse decline.

With their budget tight and tightening, making such logical changes toward greater efficiency of board operation seems like the least they could do.

Inflated/fabricated Baptist mission numbers

Former Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board member Wade Burleson persuasively argues that key mission numbers are inflated and some are fabricated.

In a Jan. 2 blog entry A Proposed New Year's Resolution for the Southern Baptist Convention: Integrity in Numbers, he writes:

For example, in the Fast Facts posted on the International Mission Board web site, one reads that 5,551 missionaries were responsible, either directly or indirectly, for 25,497 new church starts in 2007, and 609,968 baptisms.

He explains that "planting" a church is a complex, time-consuming, typically expensive process.

Likewise, the conversion and Christian nurture process which attends baptism is also complex and time-consuming.

Yet IMB numbers suggest that each of the 5,551 missionaries in the field:

• Plants an average of five new churches per missionary in 2007.
• Baptises an average of 120 new members per missionary in 2007.

The numbers defy belief, he and some of those who commented on the blog suggested, and are not supported by the documenting data required to answer questions like:

"Where do these churches exist?", "How many people attend?", "Who pastors them?", "How many are still in existence?" etc . . .

He reports having inquired:

I have asked some of our SBC missionary personnel to give me the names of those baptized under their care as reported on the Annual Statistical Report - only to be given a blank stare by many. It seems there is no record of either the names of those baptized or churches they attend. The baptism number is simply that - a number.

How are the numbers padded?

. . . all that IMB field missionary personnel have to do is simply say they started a church, and it is recorded as a "new" church start. Or, sometimes, as reported to me by several field missionaries, they report on some excellent Bible study groups they have started, and "presto" - several new churches are born and wind up being reported by their supervisors on the Annual Statistical Report. Or, as has happened in various regions, statistics are given about "new" church starts that have nothing to do with SBC personnel; they have been started by indigenous people groups that have absolutely no connection with SBC personnel in the area.

He bases his views on confidential reports from those in the field:

I have had missionary personnel from different regions in the world write me with concerns about the reporting process and ask "When is somebody going to challenge the numbers?"

His view is supported by comments from Montgomery, AL., pastor Alan Cross, who wrote:

I wrote a similar post on the now defunct SBC Outpost last May. To back up what you are saying, I communicated with missionaries from 4 different regions before writing my post. None of them were connected but they all told the same story. Pressure from superiors (both administration and trustees) had created an environment where numbers were being exaggerated and sometimes fabricated.

Cross also indicated sweeping problems with the reported numbers. He wrote:

There are CPM's (church planting movements) that have been reported that do not exist presently, or if they ever did, they are not able to be found now. There are church plants that have been reported that do not exist, or if they do, they are totally the work of indigenous believers. The baptism numbers are totally wrong.

They seem to agree about why numbers are being exaggerated and fabricated. As Burleson wrote:

The fault lies with the system we have constructed that puts such an ungodly emphasis on numbers.

Their desire for simple reform is painfully clear.

Such systems are, unfortunately, rarely self-correcting.