Something New Under The Sun Part 3

New Goals

With all this change, one understandable question is what hasn’t changed? Well, let’s name a few things: 1) the unique saving power of Jesus Christ; 2) the changeless truth of God’s word; 3) the value of godly men and women surrendering their lives to missions; and 4) the compelling vision of all people coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ. These unchanging truths link every missionary from the Apostle Paul to the newest IMB appointee. Each one longs to see a lost world redeemed. Consequently, the IMB vision statement has never been more relevant than today: We will lead Southern Baptists to be on mission with God to bring all the peoples of the world to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

We still have a long way to go to fulfill this vision. Each generation of missionaries moves us closer to that vision by setting goals that draw us ever nearer. Goals serve as intermediate steps on our journey. If they are good goals, they stretch us as far as possible in the direction of our vision.

The history of Southern Baptist foreign missions is filled with the pursuit of new and challenging goals that bring us ever closer to a dream of seeing all peoples come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. When we began over 150 years ago, it was the goal of supporting missionaries in far-away lands that united us as a denomination and ultimately forged us into a major global missions force. It’s difficult now to realize just how radical and innovative that goal was. History records that it met with opposition, and its success was far from certain.

Through the subsequent years of the Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I and the Great Depression, it became the worthy goal of many Southern Baptists not to allow our foreign mission enterprise to collapse. Through decades of economic crises, we managed not only to sustain the work but to expand into new mission fields on five continents. By the 1950s, our agency was well along a course that would eventually send and support more missionaries than any Protestant denomination in history. The goal that fueled this growth was a vision to take the gospel to millions who had never heard it. This period of growth and expansion helped to define the current state of our Southern Baptist foreign missions enterprise by creating the largest Protestant mission agency in the history of the world.

After decades of growth, Southern Baptists in the 1980s once again looked to their vision of all peoples coming to faith in Christ and asked if more could be done. It became apparent that more than massive numbers of missionaries would be required if we were to see an entire world reached. This realization led Foreign Mission Board leaders to draw all of our missionary efforts into a united goal of evangelism that results in churches. No matter how specialized the ministry or missionary approach might be, all Southern Baptist missions would be strategically aimed at evangelism that results in churches.

The impact of this new goal was quickly felt. Initially, as with previous goals, some questioned it. Does this mean that my ministry is irrelevant? A missionary doctor in a teaching hospital asked. The same question surfaced from missionaries serving as school teachers, seminary professors and business managers. Over time, however, most missionaries came to see that the new goal didn’t bypass their ministry contribution. Instead, it offered a unifying purpose to all our missionary efforts—lighting the way ahead and moving us closer than ever to the fulfillment of our Great Commission vision. As our missionaries pursued this goal, impressive results followed. Within a decade, the number of baptisms doubled from 110,000 per year to more than 220,000. Likewise the total number of churches overseas rose in 10 years from 11,500 to more than
21,000.

Over the next few years, this concerted focus on evangelism that results in churches came to be seen as normative and definitive for all missionary personnel serving with the Foreign Mission Board. Each of the goals that have characterized our agency over the past century and a half have moved us closer to the fulfillment of our vision. As we embrace new goals, the old ones aren’t abandoned, they are subsumed into the whole. Today, we are again revisiting our vision and embracing a new goal. It is the goal of church-planting movements among every people group on earth. If our previous goal was so effective, why change it? Because we believe we can do better. By the early 1990s, our global baptism rates had peaked at around 300,000 per year.

Despite our best efforts at evangelism resulting in churches, much of our work around the world had plateaued. Although we could point to an increase in the number of new converts and new churches each year in many countries, we were falling farther and farther behind the exploding rate of population growth around the world. As long as we compared ourselves with ourselves we might feel good about ourselves. After all, we were recording some growth each year. But when we looked to the millions who were going to hell each day without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, we determined that we must do better.

Look, for example, to Kenya, one of Southern Baptists’ most productive growth fields. Over the decade stretching from 1985 to 1995, despite Baptist growth rates in excess of 14 percent, evangelical Christianity as a whole (including Baptists) grew at a rate of only 3.25 percent per year. Meanwhile, Kenya’s population grew at 3.34 percent per year. Despite a strong harvest in this country, born-again believers have not been able to keep up with the population-growth rate. In the developing countries of the world, which have 38 percent of their population under the age of 15, how can we hope to fulfill our vision?

In the midst of our search for more effective ways to reach a lost world, God has revealed some remarkable breakthroughs in evangelism and church planting that is happening in some of the most unexpected corners of our globe. In these situations, evangelism is resulting in rapidly multiplying churches in a phenomenal way that is vastly outstripping population-growth rates.

One example can be seen among a Hindu people in India. Initial evangelism and church planting began among them in the early 19th century. However, 170 years later there were still only 28 churches among this population of 90 million people. Furthermore, progress in reaching the people had ceased, with no new churches planted among them in over 40 years. Over the last few years, however, things have changed radically. Between 1989 and 1991 eight new churches were suddenly started in this formerly stagnant setting. By 1994, the number of churches had grown to 78, the following year to more than 220, a year later to 547! Then by 1997 there were more than 1,000 new churches among this predominantly Hindu population. The growth rate shows no sign of slowing, as 800 new churches have been planted in the past year. In all, a total of more than 50,000 new converts have been recorded in the decade between 1989 and 1998.

Certainly one could describe this situation in India as evangelism that results in churches, but that seems to be an understatement. A more appropriate term would be a church-planting movement. A church-planting movement is a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches within a people group. We are currently monitoring more than two dozen church-planting movements around the world in every imaginable context.

While International Mission Board missionaries around the world continue their efforts at evangelism that results in churches, God is surprising us with church-planting movements in a wide array of settings. It’s as if He is saying to us, Look to the nations, watch and be utterly amazed. We are watching. We are amazed, and we are taking notes.

What is evident is that only God can start a church-planting movement. However, we are learning how to cooperate with God in this divine activity by removing obstacles that conflict with His desires. Along the way, we are finding that church-planting movements are not limited to one type of people or cultural condition. They have broken out among literate and nonliterate peoples as well as rural and urban peoples. Churches as well as the untouchables. We are seeing church-planting movements among Muslims in the ear East, urban Han Chinese in China, Khmer Buddhists in S o u t h e a s t Asia, cultural Christians in the former Soviet Union, christopagans in Central America and animists in
Africa.

In a Buddhist country in war-torn Southeast Asia, a Strategy Coordinator found a people in desperate need of hope. Missionaries had brought the gospel to the country decades earlier, resulting in the planting of six churches, but they had never envisioned the possibilities of a church-planting movement.

Although the Strategy Coordinator was an accomplished church planter himself, he chose deliberately to work through others in this setting. Gathering ten local church planters around him, the missionary poured into them his vision, his passion and his insights into effective church planting. The results came quickly. The six churches that had not reproduced themselves in decades acquired a new vitality. Within a year they had grown to ten churches, then twenty the following year. By the end of six years the number had climbed to 194 new congregations!

Of course, the real aim of church-planting movements is not just an increase in the number of churches, but rather to see lost people come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Again and again, we’ve learned that planting new churches is the surest way to increase the number of new believers. Recently, among a Chinese people group, an explosive church-planting movement multiplied three churches into 550 in only five years’ time. More importantly, the church-planting movement resulted in some 55,000 new believers. The growth continues today with little sign of slowing!

Church-planting movements seem to be God’s way of racing ahead of the exploding number of lost people that are being added to the world’s population every day. With church-planting movements, there is a genuine hope of seeing an entire world come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Any wonder why IMB leadership has been quick to adopt this new goal of church planting movements among all peoples?

In a real sense, the leadership of the International Mission Board is continuing its tradition of embracing new goals that move us ever closer to fulfilling our Great Commission vision. This new goal of a church-planting movement among all peoples includes a commitment to evangelism that results in churches but raises the bar to a new level of expectations in hopes that all our missionary personnel will initiate and nurture church-planting movements among all peoples.

Something New Under The Sun Part 2

NEW WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES

When Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was launched into space in May 1991, he thought it would be a routine three-month mission. Instead, he was delayed in orbit for 11 months and returned to Earth to find that the whole world had changed. The
USSR that had launched him no longer existed. While Krikalev circled the Earth for 331 days, not only did the Soviet Union disintegrate, but global Communism collapsed, the Cold War came to an end and the territory he landed in, Kazakstan, had become an independent republic! Krikalev is like a lot of missionaries we’ve spoken with lately.

While I was gone, they say, someone reorganized
my denomination, dissolved my mission and even changed the
name of the Foreign Mission Board!

Change is sweeping across our world. Hold on to your hat! To the question “What happened today?” there are a million different answers. Some of these are positive, many are negative. Each of them is demanding a gospel response.

At a rapidly accelerating pace, unseen forces such as demographics, politics, commerce and technology are conspiring together to sweep us into a new world order. No sooner do we adapt to one set of changes than another one is upon us. Let’s look
at some changes and their implications.

Population and Politics

Driving much of the rapidly changing world are sheer demographics.
The world is expected to reach 6 billion inhabitants before the year 2000. Within another half century, this number may nearly double to 11 billion before it is expected to plateau. Fueling this growth is 32 percent of the world’s population below the age of 15! In less-developed countries the percentage of individuals below the age of 15 is as high as 38 percent. Nowhere is this crowding of planet Earth more pronounced than in our cities. The pace of urbanization continues to climb today with nearly half of the world’s population (43 percent) currently living in urban areas.

This human time bomb has led some sociologists, such as Robert Kaplan, to predict a bleak forecast for the coming millennium. Rather than looking to Europe or the United States for future global realities, Kaplan views the future through the lens of West Africa over the past two decades. He predicts a “world (that) faces a period of unprecedented upheaval, brought on by scarce resources . . . , overpopulation, uncontrollable disease, brutal warfare, and the widespread collapse of nation-states and indeed, of any semblance of government.” “Welcome,” says Kaplan, “to the 21st century.”

Unfortunately, many signs of the coming calamity are already here. The world’s chronic refugee population stands at more than 13 million with a further 4.9 million internally displaced persons.

Ecological disasters and global warming have led to floods in South America and Africa along with ruinous fires in Central America and Indonesia. Events in Rwanda, Liberia and the Balkans have made genocide a household word. Hostilities between Pakistan and India threaten to spill over into neighboring countries, go nuclear and possibly embroil the whole world. Meanwhile, militant Islam rolls on unabated as extremists wage a jihad against perceived Western enemies.

If there is any good news for such a troubled world, it’s only in the hope offered by the gospel. Missionaries can be assured that the need for them and their message shows no sign of diminishing in the century ahead!

Travel and Tourism

Despite this bleak side to the future, there are positive trends as well. The world is becoming increasingly interconnected. Nowhere is this more evident than in the arena of tourism and global travel by common citizens. Americans spent more on tourism last year than any other country, over $52 billion. During 1997, for example, Brazil welcomed some 2.2 million tourists, while Spain, the second most popular tourist destination in the world after France, saw more than 45 million tourists.

Countries that have long feared the outside world are opening their doors today, but not necessarily to missionaries. In 1997, an estimated 25,000 Southern Baptists visited China as tourists, businessmen or as other professionals. The allure of tourist dollars
even led relatively closed Cuba to welcome 1.2 million foreign visitors last year, causing tourism to surpass sugar as the No.1 currency earner for the country.

If tourism is opening countries all over the globe, could it be that God is trying to tell us something? Can tourists be missionaries? Can missionaries be tourists?

Communications

In addition to the flood of tourists worldwide, the peoples of the world are becoming interconnected through communications channels. Where formerly people were insulated from one another by political and geographical barriers, today they are engaged in a flood of invisible interaction. At an international conference in Berlin in 1998, Renato Ruggiero, executive-secretary of the World Trade Organization, observed that “thousands of miles of fiberoptic cables now join oceans and continents together, as do the millions of sound waves and electromagnetic signals that crisscross the atmosphere above our planet. Twenty-four hours a day this global network carries the world’s business contracts, currency transactions, medical information and educational resources instantly across time zones, borders and cultures.”

A network that can carry business contracts and currency transactions surely can carry a more precious cargo. Today’s communications networks may be the equivalent of the first century’s Roman roads, allowing the gospel to stream into places where missionaries are restricted.

Commerce

This interconnected globe is creating the closest thing yet to a single, borderless global economy—an economy which will have profound implications for the way national systems operate in the future. With NAFTA, the European Economic Community and the World Trade Organization, we already can see the trend toward freer global trade.

By early next century, almost 60 percent of world trade is scheduled to be tariff free. Already, American companies employ roughly 3 million workers in Europe alone. The implications of all this global interconnectedness for Christian missions is enormous. If we are able to enter the flow of international business activity, virtually no country on earth will be closed to us.

Computers and Technology

It’s hard to believe that only 30 years ago, in 1969, the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) went online connecting four major U.S. universities, and the Internet was born. Since that time, the Internet has doubled in size almost every year. In
January 1997, an estimated 16 million computers were connected to form the Internet. In 1998, more than 50 million people were using the Internet.By the year 2000, that number should climb to 300 million users. Small wonder that as early as 1982, rather
than choosing a “Person of the Year,” Time magazine declared the personal computer the “Machine of the Year.”

The implications of this computer interconnectedness are astounding. According to the Net. Journal Directory, in 1997 there were at least 10,000 magazines and journals available on-line.

Today’s communications networks may be the equivalent of the first century’s Roman roads, allowing the gospel to stream into places where missionaries are restricted.

Already emerging satellite downloads promise speeds that will be up to 14 times faster than conventional telephone modems. This high-speed delivery makes it possible to transmit the text of 35,000 full-length novels every second. The cost of this transmission
is virtually the same whether it is going across town or around the world.

For gospel proclamation, this burgeoning computer network truly has been a God-send. It has enabled us to put the Bible in dozens of languages online so that university students and private citizens in countries around the world can down-load the Word of God in the privacy of their own home or dormitory room. Campus Crusade already has put the Jesus film in more than 20 languages online for computer access. Dozens more language translations of the Jesus film are being digitized now and will be accessible via the Internet soon.

Knowledge and Action

Few would argue that the information age has resulted in far more information than we can ever digest. In addition to the remarkable opportunities afforded by the technology and information boom comes additional responsibility. As never before,
Christians are able to view the world in all of its complexity, diversity and lostness.

Today, we know that roughly 1.7 billion individuals living in 2,000 distinct language communities around the world have little or no access to the gospel. This would have been news to any generation of believers prior to our own. But for us, it is more than
news, it is a haunting reminder of the unfinished task ahead. As the Apostle James wrote: Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins (James 4:17). It is this awareness that drives us with a renewed sense of urgency.

The International Mission Board is changing so that we can take full advantage of today’s possibilities and meet the full range of tomorrow’s challenges. Despite the perils that lie ahead for believers everywhere, the knowledge that millions are still perishing
in darkness carries with it a responsibility to do whatever it takes to finish the course set before us. Let’s press on!

3 Weeks in Texas

Hey friends, family and prayer partners. We are in Texas for 3 weeks. we fly out to Costa Rica on the 23rd. We hope to see and spend time with as many of you as possible. When we leave on the 23rd we will not be back on US soil for at least 2 years. So we want to spend time with you all if possible. It feels so good to be back. We miss you all so much.

Thank you all for you prayers these past 3 months as we completed the first phase of service. Next comes our language acquisition!

Fellowship Baptist

We attended Fellowship Baptist in Thomston, Georgia today. We enjoyed the fellowship and worship and will add them as prayer partners. Thanks to all those at Fellowship who have covenanted to pray for us.
We head home to Texas Tuesday morning. Plan to be at First Baptist and Faith Temple to fellowship with all our prayer warriors there.

Something New Under The Sun Part 1

What’s new at your Southern Baptist International Mission
Board?

Over the past year, the International Mission Board has
turned its world upside down: revitalizing the overseas operations,
renovating the Richmond offices and reorganizing throughout.
Even our name has changed! Meanwhile, the entire denomination
has restructured itself agency by agency! In light of all this
change, a more appropriate question might be What’s not new at
the International Mission Board?

Newness and change, however, are relative. King Solomon
observed, What has been will be again, what has been done will be done
again, there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl. 1:9). Solomon knew
that every generation is a new beginning, yet the cycle of renewal
returns again and again. No doubt his own kingdom’s reorganization
and building plans left him and his colleagues a little jaded
about change! While it’s true that one can say in the broad scope
of things that nothing is new, it also is important to see through the
eyes of faith that God is doing something new all the time. In
Jeremiah’s words, His mercies are new every morning (Lam. 3:23)!
This paradox is like the waves that break on the seashore.

On the one hand, waves are a routine and regular occurrence—
nothing to get excited about. A wave is a wave is a wave. On the
other hand, every wave is unique and brand new, an awesome
display of God’s power and might and, for some, an opportunity
waiting to be seized!

God has been at work all over the world for ages. There’s
nothing new about this. But today’s work is also unique. It is
filled with new and exciting possibilities. Our challenge is to grab
the wave that is cresting today, to maximize its potential, and to
ride its might as far as He chooses to carry us.

This is why we are reorganizing, revitalizing, retooling and
recommitting ourselves to new directions. It’s not an indictment
of the past, rather it‘s an affirmation of the present and a preparation
for the future. Yesterday’s strategies were once new and
pioneering, too, but yesterday’s strategies can’t keep up with
today’s possibilities. They may be comfortable to us, but they
may not be what is needed today. God’s will and direction for
today’s generation of lost people is already unfolding. Like a new
wave building on the horizon, we can see it beginning to surge
our way. Let’s not miss it!

Alongside Solomon’s views on change is a completely different
perspective from the prophet Habakkuk. Though living
in difficult times, Habakkuk looked ahead to a new day and a
new epoch of remarkable saving activity by God. Look to the
nations, he wrote, watch and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do
something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were
told (Hab. 1:5).

There are four insights we can draw from Habakkuk’s
words. First, his words transcended their historical setting. The
book of Habakkuk is addressing a time of dire crisis. Habakkuk
warned his readers of imminent judgment prompted by their
disobedience. However, in the midst of this coming judgment,

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'Great Commission demands sacrifice,' Rankin tells SBC in Louisville

By Shawn Hendricks LOUISVILLE, Ky.

(BP)—An evening of testimonies conveyed both miracles and the remaining challenges of a lost world. And Southern Baptists responded on their knees with prayer — and a gift of more than $100,000 to international missions June 23 at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Louisville, Ky. Following recent news that the International Mission Board had to suspend appointments to two short-term programs and reduce its missionary force, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention presented a check to help put more missionaries on the field. Another offering of about $43,000 — the average annual salary of a missionary — was collected during the Southern Baptist Convention’s Pastor’s Conference earlier this week. “Just a few weeks ago we received the sad news … that we had more missionaries that wanted to go than we had funds to send them,” said Jim Richards, executive director of Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. “[We] decided to take action … to begin making up the difference.” Despite the economic challenges and growing hostility toward Christianity, Southern Baptist missionaries are changing lives in difficult places or “pockets of lostness” — areas around the world that represent various government restrictions, persecution and logistical challenges. ‘PRAY FOR A THOUSAND’ Several missionaries — unable to be identified for security reasons — stood on an unlit area of the stage to share their stories. One recounted how she and her husband struggled for three years to find one believer in the Muslim-dominated area where they live. One day she began praying that God would raise up 100 new believers. “God immediately put in my mind — pray for a thousand,” she said. “I said, ‘I don’t know a thousand.’ [But] He did.” Before the couple retired from the field this past May, more than 1,600 people had accepted Christ. “God said it, we believed it, He did it,” she said. Brad Bessent, pastor of Beulah Baptist Church in Hopkins, S.C., shared about how his church entered into a missions partnership with the IMB in 2006 to reach Mali’s Bambara people, who are less than 2 percent evangelical. The church has now started churches in six villages. The congregation, which averages about 200 people each Sunday, has made multiple trips each year and seen more than 150 professions of faith. “What God has allowed us to do,” Bessent said, “He can do through any church that is willing to step out in faith and obey the commission.” Beulah is just one example of churches finding a way in a harsh economy to make an impact for Christ. “I know these difficult economic times are impacting families and churches, but has not the Great Commission always demanded sacrifice?” Rankin asked. “There are vast pockets of lostness where multitudes have yet to even hear the name of Jesus.” STANDING ACCOUNTABLE The SBC should take a closer look at its use of resources, Rankin contended. Last year, Southern Baptist churches reported receipts of almost $12 billion, he said. Of that amount, less than 2.5 percent was channeled through the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering to reach a lost world for Christ. “Is it more important to maintain our institutions, sustain church programs and support a denominational structure centered on 5 percent of the world’s population that is already well-churched than to send the missionaries God is calling out of our own churches to reach the 95 percent of the world who are deprived of an opportunity to know Jesus?” he asked. “Is it really a problem with the economy or rather distorted priorities and hearts that are not aligned with our Lord’s passion to be glorified among the nations and peoples of the world?” In May, IMB trustees approved the suspension of new appointments to two short-term missionary programs and cut back on the overall number of missionaries to be appointed for the remainder of 2009. The $141 million collected for the 2008 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions fell $29 million short of the $170 million goal and more than $9 million short of the 2007 offering total. The IMB’s missionary force — which stands at more than 5,600 — will be 400 fewer than it is now by the end of 2009. It could be 700 fewer by this time next year. The reductions will occur through retirements and completions of service. “Are we saying that 5,000 missionaries are enough … to evangelize the rest of the world while we support over 100,000 pastors, church staff and denominational workers in our own country?” Rankin asked. Southern Baptists face a critical choice, Rankin said. “We can examine our priorities, restructure an outdated bureaucracy, support the missionaries being called to reach our world or allow our hearts to become hardened, our future to decline, our influence to crumble and our witness fade into insignificance as we focus on maintaining the status quo and strive to sustain that which is increasingly irrelevant. “Let us not dilute the Great Commission to mean less than our Lord’s mandate to disciple the nations and to be His witness to the ends of the earth.” ‘RADICAL RESTRUCTURING’ The organization currently is in the midst of what Rankin called “the most radical restructuring of [IMB’s] 164-year history.” In 1997, IMB launched “New Directions,” an effort to tighten the organization’s focus on unreached people groups. Though thousands of people have come to Christ as a result, Rankin said the organization must take new approaches to continue that success. “We cannot presume that past methods and structures will produce the same results in a changing world,” he said. “We find our own society polarized, fighting cultural battles we never dreamed would be viable issues of political debate. Denominational loyalty is fragile, and our churches are seeing diminishing success in trying to evangelize a post-modern society.” Restructuring changes include: consolidating administrative field structures and intensifying communication between churches and their missionaries on the field. Once assigned to 11 regions, missionaries now will be able to reach out to their designated people groups anywhere and everywhere they are accessible. “Geographic boundaries are irrelevant in our world today,” Rankin said. Increased partnerships with Southern Baptist churches also will be a key to the success of the reorganization, he said. “Will we not one day stand accountable before God for failure to fulfill the mission for which He blessed us in numbers and resources?” Rankin asked. “How will we explain our unwillingness to send and support the missionaries He calls from our churches?” At the end of the IMB’s presentation, more than 50 messengers and guests gathered at the front of the convention hall to pray and seek God’s plan for missions in their life.

Final Lottie Moon Total falls short of Goal by 30 Million

Lottie Moon offering falls short of goal, totals $141 million for 2008

6/4/2009
By Shawn Hendricks
RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Despite financial hardships caused by the economic downturn, Southern Baptists gave $141 million to support the work of missionaries through the 2008 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. But the total, which fell nearly $30 million short of the $170 million goal, is not enough to fund many of those who are ready to go.
The $30 million shortfall is equivalent to what it costs to support the work of approximately 667 international missionaries for a year. The final figure for the 2008 offering is $141,315,110.24, which is more than $9 million below of the record 2007 offering of $150.4 million.
“We are grateful that in these difficult economic times Southern Baptists displayed amazing generosity in giving $141 million to the 2008 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering,” said Jerry Rankin, International Mission Board president.
“When many families are hurting financially and churches are experiencing a decline in giving, faithfulness to the support of the International Mission Board reflects the high priority given to global missions and our responsibility to reach a lost world for Jesus Christ.”
The final offering results follow a May 19-20 IMB trustee meeting in Denver, where trustees approved the suspension of new appointments to the International Service Corps and Masters programs. They also approved reducing the number of new appointments to the career, apprentice, associate and journeyman programs.
New appointments will continue on a more selective basis, involving the most strategic assignments.
One hundred percent of the Lottie Moon offering goes to the International Mission Board’s overseas budget to support missionary work. The IMB spends 71 percent of its total budget, including a major portion of funds received from the Cooperative Program, on missionary support. That percentage includes salary, housing, medical care and children’s education. It averages approximately $43,000 annually per missionary.
By the end of 2010, the IMB’s missionary force of 5,656 is expected to fall to a level “compatible with financial resources,” said Rankin. The reduction will occur through retirements and completion of service.
“We will not be able to replace short-term personnel completing their assignments and will have to restrict the number of new personnel that can be appointed,” he added.
Just a year ago, the IMB celebrated the offering hitting a historic mark. Cumulative gifts to the offering, which was initiated by the Woman’s Missionary Union in 1888, topped $3 billion.
"We are grateful for the sacrificial giving of Southern Baptists to missions,” said Wanda Lee, executive director-treasurer of Woman’s Missionary Union.
“This year's giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering may be more sacrificial for some than ever before considering the level of unemployment and loss of income experienced by many in our churches. And yet, Christ's command to go into all the world compels us to give in support of our missionaries during these challenging times.
“I believe if we keep our hearts focused on the mandate of the Great Commission, God will be faithful in providing the people and financial resources needed to reach a world desperately in need of the hope found in Christ."
In November 2008, IMB trustees adopted a $319.8 million budget for 2009 — $10 million of which was earmarked to offset the rising cost of support for the missionaries already on the field. The 2009 budget made no provision for an increase in the number of missionaries, which rose to more than 5,400 at the beginning of the year.
Though the number of Southern Baptists who want to go — and are qualified — keeps growing, there are not enough funds to support them.
With the growing number of job losses and the decline in financial markets, David Steverson, IMB treasurer, said the organization’s situation could have been far worse.
“When you consider the number of our constituency who have lost jobs and are directly affected by this economy,” Steverson adds, “we are grateful that the offering experienced only a 6 percent decline.”
That translates into the largest dollar decrease in the history of the offering.
Rankin said the opportunity has never been greater to take those resources to a lost world, and the stakes have never been higher.
“Never before have we seen such unprecedented response to the Gospel and opportunity to disciple the nations,” he said. “God is moving through global events to open opportunities to share the Gospel as never before.”
According to the 2008 IMB Annual Statistical Report, 565,967 people were baptized, and 26,970 churches were started overseas through IMB missionaries and their Baptist partners.
The Gospel also was shared among more than 1,190 people groups — 100 of these groups heard about Jesus for the first time.
“We need to realize that God has blessed Southern Baptists with numbers and resources to be His instrument to fulfill His mission to the ends of the earth,” Rankin continued. “One day we will stand accountable to Him for how we have used our resources.
“It breaks my heart that God-called people want to go — and millions need to hear the Gospel message from them — yet we don’t have the funds to send them. I pray this situation will convict our hearts and challenge His people to do whatever it takes to get the Gospel to the whole world.”
To learn more about the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, visit imb.org/main/give.