We are considering restructuring our state’s Cooperative Program money so that our North American Mission Board and our International Mission Board will get more money. The reasoning is that we spend too much money in our state and not enough where there are darker pockets of lostness. Therefore, we should spend more outside the Bible Belt (which really no longer exists) than we do inside.
Such a plan sounds good, but there are some problems with changing the way we do missions. We have been taught for years that the Southern Baptist Convention was an inverted pyramid. Positioned at the top was the local church and at the bottom our national and international entities. They exist in part to support the work of the local church and to give us a collective presence in mission endeavors around the world. We have said that we could do far more together than we ever could as individuals. Tens of thousands of our churches could never afford to send a team overseas for a week (much less for an extended period of time) in hopes that we might reach an entire people group. Yet they have faithfully and sacrificially given to the Cooperative Program in the belief that they were a part of impacting an entire world. These same churches have taught RAs and GAs to their children. They had WMUs that kept the mission conversation alive in their church. As a result, they called out thousands of potential missionaries, and, with the support of their local association and state convention, were able to expose them to some outstanding equipping events that the local church could not provide on its own.
Another issue with redirecting money comes into play when we realize that the huge waste of resources in our convention has always happened at the national level, not at the state or associational levels. One failed multimillion-dollar strategy after another at NAMB has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars being paid out to remove leaders. In fact, there has not been a strategy that has come from NAMB in the last 10 years which has impacted lostness that was not first the strategy developed and piloted by a state convention.
Now some want to do away with much of our state convention’s budget dollars, which are used to support and equip the majority of our churches. There is even talk that we no longer need local associations. It will be a sad day if we radically change the proven strategy of how we go about reaching the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ while reducing the role of our convention’s larger, medium and smaller churches in that effort.
Should we continue the course laid out for us by the national GCR leaders, we will greatly reduce our abilities in evangelism training, in identifying church planters and missionaries within our churches, and in equipping church leaders for the mission of the church. In the long view, we will reduce our effectiveness with the gospel worldwide. It may be time for those of us in the 39,800-plus churches that are not identified as megachurches to elect leaders that represent the vast majority of our convention.
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