After 30 years as a Baptist pastor proudly promoting Southern Baptist Convention missions, I can’t believe I am actually writing this: I no longer have confidence in the distribution of Cooperative Program monies through the SBC.
My reasoning has to do with both national and state Southern Baptists embracing the Great Commission Resurgence, with results affecting our missionary sending agencies. The North American Mission Board is eliminating missionary salaries – not due to budget cuts, but because of a change in philosophy. Their website clearly reveals church planting is now their mission. It would be fully appropriate for NAMB to change their name to reflect their new purpose. I plan to research how many of our NAMB missionaries will have lost their homes in one year due to the elimination of their salaries.
This new direction is leading us away from cooperative mission support to a more societal and independent methodology. What most SBC pastors and churches do not understand is that we are slowly abandoning what God has blessed for almost 100 years: cooperating together denominationally for kingdom growth. In my view, this means that eventually NAMB will no longer need CP monies, as churches will turn their support directly to the missionaries they like, while church planting will remain the focus at NAMB.
Many Southern Baptists are unaware of the impact of the GCR movement and feel uncomfortable opposing something that has the words, “Great Commission,” in it. However, each SBC congregation will now need to evaluate how they support missionaries in the future.
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