Don KirklandAn Oklahoma pastor with solid conservative credentials and a trustee of the International Mission Board is at the center of a controversy over IMB’s new policy adopted in November that missionary appointment will be denied to those who practice a “private prayer language” – in other words, speaking in tongues – in personal devotions.
Wade Burleson, who stands to lose his position on the board is not the only IMB trustee who opposes the tongues policy, but he has been the most vocal in public. A player in the Southern Baptist Convention’s conservative resurgence and a former president of the Oklahoma Baptist convention, Burleson carried his criticism of the board’s decision to his website, leading to the charges that he has “broken trust.”
Out of this internal conflict arise the obvious questions of whether the trustees of the IMB acted wisely in adopting a policy that places such a restriction on the language used in private prayer and devotions and whether Burleson acted appropriately in going online to voice his own objections to the new stance by the IMB.
Making this whole matter even more interesting is the fact that Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board, has acknowledged using what now is the prohibited type of private prayer language when he served as a missionary in Southeast Asia.
James Guenther, a Nashville attorney who counsels both the Southern Baptist and South Carolina Baptist conventions, has come to South Carolina for the orientation of new trustees beginning service on the boards of our convention’s entities, and he has offered his opinion that what he termed “minority reports” are inappropriate once trustees have made their decisions concerning institutional business. It certainly can be argued that Burleson is properly faulted for taking his opposition to a policy established by the trustees out of the boardroom and into a public forum.
As for whether the board’s action in setting the tongues policy was appropriate, that is another question altogether which surely is open to debate. The International Mission Board already had in place a policy disallowing public speaking in tongues by its missionaries, and for good reason. Such ecstatic utterances, which many no doubt would declare are personally edifying, are more likely to be disruptive of, rather than contributing to, the building of the kingdom of God.
Language practiced in prayer – and the Holy Spirit understands us even when all we can do is groan – appears to be something entirely different. Whatever language, or even the lack of words at all, is practiced in a person’s prayer and devotional life should remain the business of God and the believer alone.
It is significant, and especially troubling as well, that this controversy spawned by the action of the board of trustees of the IMB and the reaction of Wade Burleson to the establishment of this new policy has pit conservatives against conservatives, thus continuing to foster a spirit of separatism which some of the leaders in our Southern Baptist Convention have rightly warned against.
Our Southern Baptist Convention already has endured more than enough division, more than enough fracture in our fellowship for the good of our denomination and the cause of Christ. Conservatives holding the positions of leadership in the SBC and the rest of us as well must find ways to nurture unity in Jesus Christ without pushing for a forced conformity in the practice of our faith in every facet of Baptist life. The International Mission Board, in its all important work of carrying out the Great Commission, must not become shackled with overly restrictive policies that hamper rather than enhance its far-reaching ministry and seek to limit the ways that missionaries can relate privately to their God.