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.

Unholy moly! Atheist buses are rolling

Atheist outreach is having its say via ads on 800 United Kingdom buses.

They answer Jesus Said ads which ran on London buses in June. The "Jesus Said" ads pointed to a Web site which warns that failure to accept Christ will invoke God's wrath:

God's wrath includes the prospect of eternal punishment -- it is appointed to men to die once and then comes the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). You will rise from the dead and will face the Judge and know that you rejected His kind and merciful answer. You will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell. Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire which was prepared for the devil and all his angels (demonic spirits) (Matthew 25: 41).

Comedy wrinter Adriane Sherine found that offensive and, supported by the British Humanist Association and Professor Richard Dawkins, led the campaign to raise £135,000.

This iteration of the campaigin was launched on Oct. 21, and is the successor to a failed campaign which was launched and closed in midsummer after Sherine wrote a blog post, Atheists -- gimme five, in resonse to the Jesus Said ads on the sides of London buses.

The atheists' ads say (as in the picture above):

There's probably no God.

Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.

Inspired by the British, the American Humanist Association bought ads during the Christmas season in and on 200 Washington, D.C., buses. The ads said:

Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake.

The Pennsylvania Friends of Christ responded in D.C. with ads which said:

Believe in God. Christ is Christmas for goodness' sake.

Another group, started by a stay-at-home Catholic housewife with lobbying experience who partnered with the Catholic nonprofit Center for Family Development in Bethesda, MD., quickly raised the money to run D.C. bus ads which said:

Why believe? I created you and I love you, for goodness’ sake. – God.

We don't know about the British, but in overview, U.S. atheists are more confused than evangelistic. The Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape survey found that 21% of U.S. atheists professed a belief in God.

Mayhap they're mostly backsliders who, despite the bus ads, may readily be persuaded to return to church. Or if unbaptised, to begin their walk.

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.

Calvin Jubilee

John Calvin

Presbyterians, celebrating the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth, offer two curricula for reading his Institutes of the Christian Religion in 2009:

• One online from Princeton Theological Seminary.
• Another downloadable [.pdf] from the Foundation For Reformed Theology.

Oh, yes, in English (not the 1559 Latin or 1560 French).

Princenton jumps right in on Jan. 5 with "The Appeal To Custom Against Truth:"

Even in their appeal to "custom" they accomplish nothing. To constrain us to yield to custom would be to treat us most unjustly. Indeed, if men's judgments were right, custom should have been sought of good men. But it often happens far otherwise: what is seen being done by the many soon obtains the force of custom; while the affairs of men have scarcely ever been so well regulated that the better things pleased the majority. Therefore, the private vices of the many have often caused public error, or rather a general agreement on vices, which these good men now want to make law. Those with eyes can perceive it is not one sea of evils that has flooded the earth, but many dangerous plagues have invaded it, and everything is rushing headlong. Hence, one must either completely despair of human affairs or grapple with these great evils-or rather, forcibly quell them. And this remedy is rejected for no other reason save that we have long been accustomed to such evils. But, granting public error a place in the society of men, still in the Kingdom of God his eternal truth must alone be listened to and observed, a truth that cannot be dictated to by length of time, by long-standing custom, or by the conspiracy of men. In such manner Isaiah of old instructed God's elect not to "call conspiracy all that this people call conspiracy," "not" to "fear what they fear, nor be in dread" thereof, but rather to "hallow the Lord of Hosts and let him be their fear and dread" [Isa. 8:12-13].

Enjoy.

Did your abuser talk about your market value?

Buster writes:

Do you remember, or does one of you remember, what you called your abuser?

Daddy?

Mommy?

Pastor?

Read the entire entry.

United States of Tara, Buck, Alice and T

Showtime's United States of Tara is a paradox, especially for the Southern Baptist Convention.

Toni Collette as Buck, Alice, Tara and T.

Written by Academy Award winner Diablo Cody, the dark-comic show's central character is Tara.

She suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), and when stressed cycles with comic effect between her four personalities -- Buck (a man who believes Vietnam deprived him of his male parts), Alice (an "traditional, old-fashioned" housewife), Tara (hard working mother of two who paints nursery room murals) and T (the pot-smoking, sexually avid, shoplifting teenage rebel).

The comedy is real, but derived from a disease that is caused, WebMD explains, by "severe trauma during early childhood, usually extreme, repetitive physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse."

Finding humor in that is paradoxical, as Lisa F. Smith comments at IMdb.com as part of a plea to prevent the comedy from airing:

This disturbs me greatly, because DID is caused primarily by extreme abuse or even torture of very young children. This is not a disorder which is caused by biochemical structure of the brain. Making a comedy about it is much like saying that the end result of abusing a toddler can be funny!

Yet humor may heal, as Frink says in response to Smith:

Her point is undeniable, yet I side with the artist in wishing to see the work performed. The artist who with Juno gave us an enlightening comedy whose core is an out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy -- also a painful topic.

A nation awash in prejudice toward mental illness may also laugh its way toward understanding the humanity we all share with the afflicted.

Perhaps. Grace Uncensored, written by a therapist who focuses on DID issues, says Tara may "finally be an accurate representation of the issues of someone having DID and normalizing that difference."

The Southern Baptist Convention does have a special stake in this debate. The SBC's rejection of a proposal "to create a central database of staff and clergy who have been either convicted of or indicted on charges of molesting minors" effectively adds to DID-victim numbers.

Christa Brown at Stop Baptist Predators explains that "Without even any record-keeping on credibly accused clergy, there’s nothing to prevent Baptist clergy-predators from moving church to church." And as she documents, they do.

Pedophiles leave in their wake a variety of trauma, including some DID.

United States of Tara may help us better understand DID and so reduce our misguided prejudice against mental illness, but iit cannot reduce our obligation to act against its causes.

Fire in the streets, quiet in the pews

Public conflict between those who view homosexuality as a path to hell and civil liberties activists who reject that view has apparently not built a fire in the pews of U.S. churches.

The 2006-07 National Congregations Study (Wave 2), a major survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,506 congregations from all over the United States, found:

Even though conflicts within American religion over ordaining homosexuals have received a lot of attention in recent years, and seem to be tearing some denominations apart, the overall level of conflict within congregations is about what it was in 1998, with 26 percent of congregations experiencing a conflict in the last 2 years that led some people to leave. (Interestingly, only 2 percent of congregations in the NCS-II reported a conflict over homosexuality.)

That does not mean little is happening in the average church.

Congregations have changed a great deal since the initial, 1998 snapshot (Wave I), as Mark Chaves of Duke University explained:

A second snapshot of U.S. religious congregations reveals four trends in American worship: a growing informality in worship practices, a graying of congregations and clergy (on average), churches becoming less white and more ethnically diverse, and an ever-increasing use of technology.

Change proceeds at a rapid pace -- just not the kind and direction of change implied by the pitched political battles of the past two decades.

Clerical zealots who seek to bar gay church membership, forbid homosexual marriages, keep women out of the pulpits and so on down the culture warriors' list of imponderables may be doomed by a lack of the broad, underlying support required to keep those barriers in place.