The most effective missionary organization

That is exactly why I said that God is a big enough God for all of us to have different methods and yet still He can use us in missions.

 

I would also disagree with the OP comments. None of us can say for sure which method is better. I see nothing at all wrong with IB way of doing missions but that said it just seems to me that the SBC way of doing things is more efficient that said I realize the weaknesses that each method has. Our church is huge into missions our Pastor has always said the biggest reason he is SBC is because of it's missions program.

 

I will say this, since it hasn't been said yet. We are good Baptists, so we believe in the autonomy of the local church, right? If this isn't a Baptist distinctive, nothing is.

Therefore, we should agree that as a Biblical principle any method or mission board which promotes denominationalism, and hinders the autonomy of the local church being planted on the mission board is wrong.

I don't know much about SBC missions, so I can't comment on you guys' methodology. I went to language school with the SBC missionaries, but we were all trying to figure out this crazy language and didn't talk much about methodology. And no SBC missionary has worked anywhere near me my whole time in Japan. (Hmm, wonder why? )

Among IFB missions, though, here is what I've seen that promotes denominationalism. First of all, several boards have field councils, and these have great power. They can actually tell a missionary where he should and should not plant his church, and make other decisions affecting the local churches. Secondly, I know an independent (his local church handles everything) who actually considers his church a branch work of the home church, and makes his home church pastor the ultimate authority over his work. These things ought not to be.

 

In the second paragraph of the previous post I should have said, "the local church being planted on the mission field" instead of "the mission board." I doubt if the mission board wants a church planted on the building.

 

I've met with some IMB missionaries on the field myself and all of them have adequate housing/transportation. In some cases, the digs are better than others.

The IMB expects stateside missionaries (i.e. "on furlough") to support the missionary effort by going to churches, teaching in seminaries, working to train future missionaries, etc... Our church supports both the IMB and some Baptist Faith Missions missionaries. The primary difference between the two is the time the BFM folks spend stateside raising funds. The IMB way of funding allows for the missionaries to spend their time on the field doing missionary work and the time in the US supporting the effort for all IMB missionaries. The secondary difference is the administrative costs. The IMB missionaries are primarily funded by the annual Christmas IMB offering. 100% of those funds go to the field. The administrative costs of the IMB are covered by their portion of the Cooperative Program funding that is usually budgeted by each church. So when a member of our church designates funds for IMB missionaries, every dollar goes to the field. When the same member designates fund to a BFM missionary, some of each dollar is going to support the costs of the effort of deputation (going from church to church raising funds).

At the very least, the IMB way is much more cost effective than the BFM way.

As others have said, each IMB missionary is sent out by a single church but all cooperative SBC churches join funds for the entire IMB missionary force. Both the BFM and the IBM methods are in line with the example (read: not mandate) of Paul and Barnabas.

Regardless of methods, I thank God for each of the Baptist missionaries that He purposes to send. These folks are the true heroes of the Baptist faith.

As good Baptists we surely ought to believe in the autonomy of the local church and that anything that does damage to this is not in keeping with Baptist principles. However, there is nothing about the IMB that is contrary to or does damage to local church autonomy. The churches that send the missionaries out are autonomous (the IMB cannot send a missionary unless he or she has been commissioned by a cooperative SBC church), the churches that send funds to support IMB missionaries are autonomous (they hold the IMB doctrinally and fiscally accountable for the funds sent), and any church that is planted on the field is autonomous.

I'm not sure where you see damage to local church autonomy. After all, there is nothing stopping a church from send an independent mission and supporting him or her fully, outside of any other organization.

 

Thanks for the information and elucidation, Jonathan. You've answered some important questions for me.

The word "hero" is nice to hear, but none of us missionaries think we are one. I for one just keeping plodding along unheroically, trying to win a few to the lord and hopefully plant an indigenous church some day.

God bless.

 

By being faithful to the Christian call to go into all the nations (people groups, ethnolinguistic peoples, etc...) you are the tip of the spear of the Kingdom. I greatly admire those who pastor churches but I consider missionaries the true heroes of our faith.

 

From the age of 5 until I went to bible college at the age of 21 I was a member of a SBC church.
Good, Bible preaching ones at that.
I never saw a missionary in person in a church, speaking about his/her field until I was involved in a independent baptist church.
Who pays Jerry Rankin's salary? Does it come out of Lottie Moon giving?
Trying to get into the IMB as a missionary is like applying to the secret service. I looked into it when I attended undergrad school at Southeastern in Wake Forest. They won't even look twice at you as a career missionary unless you have a M.Div. If you don't have one then you have got to go out as somekind of short term person or something.
Also, they even do a credit check. I'm not saying that is right or wrong just a little over the top if you ask me.
Now they even have people on the field called
"strategy coordinators" or something like that. They go out and I suppose you would call it scouting out the land etc... Then they can better "place" the missionary according to his/her gifts or talents. I'm afraid that is way to much control for me. The Holy Spirit can do the directing.
Also, have you been reading the big stink between the executive committee members and Jerry Rankin along with the "private prayer language" debate.
If you ask me there are quite a few people that have a say so concerning the IMB than just the "local church".
I don't hate the SBC or anything of the sort but if you've been involved at all in SBC life you'll know that there is plenty of totem pole climbing , good ole boy stuff that goes on near the top of the convention. I've seen that sort of stuff my whole life as a Southern Bapt. whether it was in a association or state convention or the seminary I attended for awhile.
RlVaughn makes a good point. As well as the SBC may take care of its missionaries I promise you that they could do way more if they could cut back on the eminities of the fat cats back at headquarters.
I have friends that are stateside missionaries with the NAMB. He has to work a side job along with trying to plant a church and take care of his 4 kids. His wife is working as well.
In the ole SBC the cream always rises to the top.
Their missions program has its flaws.
Now let us sit back and see who wins the battle over requirments or disqualifications for missionary candidates. Will the IMB let candidates who have a "private prayer lanquage" (speaking in tongues) for you laymen. be accepted into the IMB? (Can't remember that one being a baptist distinctive) BTW, where is private prayer lanquage found in Scripture?
Seems to me if Rankin stays, then closet charismatics will be accepted into the IMB. Maybe this is just an attack on Rankin I don't know what goes on "inside the beltway" up in Richmond or out in Nashville at any rate looks to me like something like that issue ought to be brought up at the next convention and voted on by the messengers of the "local churches" not decided in hotel rooms with executive committee members holding private meetings.

 

As good Baptists we surely ought to believe in the autonomy of the local church and that anything that does damage to this is not in keeping with Baptist principles. However, there is nothing about the IMB that is contrary to or does damage to local church autonomy. The churches that send the missionaries out are autonomous (the IMB cannot send a missionary unless he or she has been commissioned by a cooperative SBC church), the churches that send funds to support IMB missionaries are autonomous (they hold the IMB doctrinally and fiscally accountable for the funds sent), and any church that is planted on the field is autonomous.

I'm not sure where you see damage to local church autonomy. After all, there is nothing stopping a church from send an independent mission and supporting him or her fully, outside of any other organization. </font>[/QUOTE]Jonathan, my statement was not aimed primarily at the IMB, but at IFB boards that have field councils. In my experience, a field council is given inordinate power over the missionaries, and thus over the churches they are trying to plant. In fact, I know a case where the field council's actions affected the autonomy not just the churches of that IFB board, but others as well, my own included.

In one case, an IFB board has now decided that on each field there should be only one missionary reporting to the head office, representing the field council, meaning that missionary has inordinate power over the other missionaries.

This is very close in methodology to how denominations operate on the field. I recently re-read the wonderful biography of Jonathan Goforth, a Presbyterian. He was greatly hindered at times in his work by the presbytery of missionaries on the field of China.

Personally, I don't know enough about the operation of the IMB on the field to criticize their methodology. Maybe you can tell me. Does the IMB have field councils, and if so, how much power do they have over the individual missionaries and how they do their work?

 

Ohayo

Hero of the Faith is a good term.

 

John of Japan

Japanese seem to be much more 'reachable' while here in the US . . . have you heard of: http://thejapannet.com/ ?

PS - it is a shame that 'Christians' did not send the thousands that Douglas asked for. Don't you hate it when an Army guy is RIGHT, and we do not trust his judgement!

 

Hi, El_Guero.

Thanks for the information on the website. I had not seen that one before. It looks great!

I do believe Japanese are easier to reach while they are in the States. I've known Japanese who got saved in the States and stayed faithful.

The caveat is, though, that this being a group-based Confucian society, when they go somewhere else the Japanese will do whatever they think they should to fit in the new group. Thus, when they go to the States many of them will go to church and even be baptized, but when they come back here they lapse back into Buddhism.

 

By this are you referring to the way of raising funds as in deputation of the BFM? What other funding is there for the IMB besides the Christmas offering mentioned below?

Doesn't this explanation somewhat take away from the ability to fairly compare the cost effectiveness of the two methods? Even though every dollar raised that you mentioned goes to the field, there must be other dollars raised to fund the administering of it all. Perhaps the BFM raises their adminstrative funds differently, but it is necessary for the SBC to also raise funds for administration. For a fair comparison, it seems we would need to look at what percentage of money to support a missionary does it take to fund the administration of supporting the missionary. Anybody have any figures on that for comparing the two?

Thanks. </font>[/QUOTE]The comparison that I was making was that the funding mechanism for IMB missionaries allows the missionaries to avoid the often costly deputation time that BFM missionaries must do (one of the missionaries that we support spent nearly a year in the US recently working to get his additional funding...the result was that our funds didn't go to the field at all).

To your other question, the Cooperative program is the joint funding mechanism where the 40,000+ SBC churches support Seminaries, mission agencies, etc... The IMB receives around 50% of this budget.

 

If you never saw a missionary in your church from age 5 to age 21, you have your church leadership to blame. With more than 5,500 current IMB missionaries and a small fraction rotated to the US for "furlough", there are always missionaries available for speaking. My church has had dozens of missionaries over just the past 4-5 years because we've simply asked them to come. And we're a church that averages less than 350 in Sunday services.

Rankin's salary comes from the Cooperative program budget, not the Lottie Moon annual offering. I'm surprised that you were in an SBC church for 16 years and didn't know that. Again, your church's leadership failed you.

In your opinion, how easy should it be to be appointed an IMB missionary? Right now there are probably 2-3 applicants for every open (i.e. fundable) position. And regarding the credit check, why shouldn't SBC church's know if a candidate is able to handle funds properly?

The Holy Spirit is involved in urging the member of an SBC church to give to the annual offering. Why should the SBC not do all it can to make sure that these funds are spent "strategically"? Do you, as a missionary candidate, have some sort of supernatural claim on such support so that you are above accountability?

Who places these trustees? If they are not in keeping with the position of the churches regarding "private prayer langugages", then they will be replaced.

I won't argue with the agency bloat that exists throughout the SBC. But that bloat is completely separated from the specific mission funds sent via the annual offerings by the churches.

The NAMB ("home missions") operates in a different way. They count their missionaries differently, fund them differently, etc...

So, if you disagree with funding folks who engage in "private prayer language" doesn't this mean that you support the recent action by the IMB trustees?

 

While the management chain has been flatened over the past 15 years, the IMB still hold the individual missionary accountable for his or her work and stewardship of funds. For example, about 10 years ago, the IMB announced a sweeping policy change to focus on unreached people groups and away from what I would call imperial mission work where we built up institutional dependencies with the locals.

If an individual missionary to, say Japan, decided that the Holy Spirit was leading him or her leave Japan and go to Macau, he or she wouldn't have complete freedom to up and take the funding stream without having been given approval by the IMB.

While this may sound restrictive, our church has some very recent experience with a specific BFM missionary who has asked us to send significant funds to develop an orphanage in one city, then he moved (without telling us beforehand) to another city and requested similar funds, then he moved to another city (without telling us beforehand), and on and on. I don't doubt that he believes that the Holy Spirit has instructed him to move (visa problems surely didn't hurt either) but I do question his unwillingness to counsel with us prior to each move.

 

Thanks for the info, Jonathan. It is encouraging to me for the IMB to see these changes. I think it is especially good that the IMB is focusing on unreached people groups.

There is not a whole lot of difference between what you are describing and how my independent, faith mission board operates. (1) If I were going to change fields or ministries, I would have to be accountable to my board, my home church and my supporting churches. (2) Also, we are required to write a minimum of 4 prayer letters a year keeping our supporters informed. (3) Again, our board has a policy against institutionalism (with exceptions). We focus on church planting.

Having said that, I'm still curious as to whether or not the IMB has field councils with jurisiction over individual missionaries. In my view, the mission board is enough administration to hold the missionary accountable in the key areas (doctrine, morals, stewardship) without directing his work on the field in any way, such as a field council does.

 

John,

I feel that working with the Campus Crusade organization is a great way to reach the Japanese college students.

Especially if focusing upon smaller regional areas, so that they are able to be encouraged into church fellowships when the go home to Japan.

God bless