Together on God's Mission - A Review

The Cooperative Program is one of the most effective funding mechanisms for worldwide gospel ministry in the history of Christianity. Annually, autonomous local congregations give millions of dollars to support the advancement of the Great Commission at state, national, and global levels. Hundreds of pastors, missionaries, and lay people graduate from the six Southern Baptist Seminaries each year, better equipped for ministry and less financially burdened that would be possible if millions of people did not give to the Cooperative Program through their local churches. Missionaries go to language school, are transported to the field, and sustained in thousands of international locations because the gifts of small congregations are pooled with those of large ones to enable men and women from any sized church to dedicate their lives to getting the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Some might say the Cooperative Program is a wonder of modern missions. It serves as a catalyst for the spread of the gospel and offers a bright future for engaging the lost with the good news of Jesus Christ. Tragically, sometimes the purpose and fruit of Cooperative Program giving are invisible to people in the local churches. If Southern Baptists are going to continue to function in a collaborative manner to fund gospel ministry in the years to come, we must work diligently to celebrate the positive impact our cooperation can have and explore the shared theology that enables congregations who differ in their understanding of some doctrines to work together to advance the Great Commission.

The SBC has needed an updated simple, brief, and theologically informed case made for continued cooperation for several years. Together on God’s Mission: How Southern Baptists Cooperate to Fulfill the Commission, which released in early 2018, is a resource that fills that need.

Scott Hildreth’s recent book on cooperation in Southern Baptist life offers a concise history of the convention, with an emphasis on the Cooperative Program, and outlines a theological foundation for the ongoing collaboration of SBC churches in advancing God’s mission on earth. In less than one hundred pages, Hildreth significantly updates previous histories of the CP and makes explicit the ecclesiology that has for generations been assumed by cooperating Southern Baptists.

Part One of this volume consists of three chapters. The first chapter of Together on God’s Mission gives an overview of the early history of the Southern Baptist Convention as they shifted from mission society to a convention cooperating in ministry on multiple levels. Chapter Two traces the evolution of the early convention to a robust network of churches joined together to efficiently fund Great Commission activities. The third chapter helpfully informs readers how the Cooperative Program works.

In Part Two Hildreth shifts from history to theology. Chapter Four succinctly outlines a theology of mission. The fifth chapter offers a basic Baptist ecclesiology for cooperation which unites the many autonomous local congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention and enables them to work together with the other churches in the convention. In Chapter Six Hildreth outlines some of the ways the local congregations of the early church—that is, those documented in Scripture—cooperated, pooled funds for ministry, and sent personnel to accomplish the common mission of advancement of the gospel.

Part Three of the volume contains a single chapter. In the seventh chapter, Hildreth summarizes his arguments and offers some proposals for continued cooperation among Southern Baptists in the future. He commends churches to consider the theological implications of the Cooperative Program, evaluate cooperation in broader, non-financial terms, and celebrate the ability to participate in CP giving rather than viewing it as membership dues.

Together on God’s Mission was published by B&H Academic because it contributes to the academic conversation within the SBC about ecclesiology and history. However, the volume is written in plain English, with short chapters, and clear argumentation. These make the volume suitable for a popular audience. This book would be helpful to pastors who are not sure exactly what the Cooperative program does. It will also make a useful resource for prospective members of SBC churches who wonder what makes Southern Baptists distinct and unites them. As tensions continue to simmer over differences in ministry methodology, political persuasions, and doctrinal debates, this book can help recall to mind the good things that keep Southern Baptists working together. Together, the local churches of the Southern Baptist Convention can do a great deal more than we can do working alone.

This is a book that fills a void for the SBC at a time when a call to unity and recognition of the powerful way God has used the Cooperative Program to get the gospel to the ends of the earth. Together on God’s Mission deserves to be read broadly and discussed carefully as the convention marches toward two centuries of cooperative missions.

Together on God's Mission: How Southern Baptists Cooperate to Fulfill the Great Commission

By Hildreth, D Scott

Buy on Amazon

NOTE: This review was originally published at the B&H Academic blog, which has since been deactivated due to changes in strategy at LifeWay. I was provided a gratis copy of the volume with the expectation of an honest review.

Endless Wars in the Southern Baptist Convention

Next week thousands of messengers from local churches associated with the Southern Baptist Convention will meet in Nashville, TN for our annual meeting. This is predicted to be the largest SBC meeting since the watershed moment in 1985 when the long effort to shift the SBC back to its doctrinal roots was culminated.

The Conservative Resurgence and the News

In 1985 the battle lines were clear. There were leaders within the SBC and professors at our seminaries that did not affirm the authority and truthfulness of the Bible. As with all such debates, there was a mushy middle, too, who did not have particularly strong opinions or didn’t see the issues at the heart of the debate as worth dividing over.

People reading the news would not know there was a difference between arguments from several decades ago and today, even though the distance between the sides are much closer together. Proximity doesn’t mean the issues are insignificant, but it seems that it should temper the tone of the debate if the doctrinal issues are really the issue.

I’m pretty confident that the debate is more about different visions of the nature of the SBC than any doctrinal issue.

Power vs. Cooperation

The biggest problem with the SBC is a fundamental understanding of what the SBC is. Common misunderstandings about the nature of the SBC have created a winner-takes-all perception for complete domination of the SBC power structures.

And that struggle illustrates the root of the problem.

There should be no SBC power structures (or, at least, as small a one as practical).

The SBC is a loose association of doctrinally similar baptistic churches who have agreed to cooperate to fulfill the Great Commission.

Encouraged by the shifts of the Industrial Revolution and the flattening of society due to technology, the SBC has become more centralized in its structure and apparent function over the last century. The SBC has come to look more and more like a denomination.

But the SBC is not a denomination.

What is the SBC?

In purist terms, the SBC exists for two days a year when messengers get together and talk, sing, pray, and vote (probably a bunch of eating in there, too) about how to fulfill the Great Commission.

In reality, based on the need for logistics and the pace of busy work, there has been a necessary growth of the Executive Committee, the entities of the SBC (ERLC, WMU, seminaries, IMB, NAMB, LifeWay), and their ongoing, daily role. Sometimes we (and they) forget it, but the people that fill these positions are not the authorities in the SBC.

At the heart of the SBC’s current woes is a lack of clarity regarding the organizational structure of the SBC. The confusion is somewhat understandable among outsiders who deal with denominations and have little background in the weird history of the SBC. However, similar confusion is even more problematic when it is pervasive in the pews and even fostered by leaders who ought to know better.

Diagnostic Questions

There are some pertinent diagnostic questions that I’ve found clarifying as I’ve wrestled with my own tendency to quarrel.

What does it mean when the President of the SBC (or a member of the SBC Executive Committee) disagrees with me politically?

Absolutely nothing other than that I have a personal disagreement with someone. They may be a social media influencer, but they have not spiritual or temporal authority over me. Because the SBC President has responsibility to appoint personnel to appoint members to the Committee on Committees, which has trickle-down effect on the leanings of those nominated as trustees and appointed as convention staff, the SBC President has the ability to influence the future, but the steering mechanism is slow and complex, so that personal opinions a few shades to the right or left of mine should not be a major cause for concern. (The history of the Conservative Resurgence taught us both the importance of and the limitations of the SBC President’s influence.)

What if a professor at a seminary says something foolish publicly? Why does that individual get to represent the SBC?

If an individual that works for an SBC entity says something foolish publicly, that individual represents themselves and, if speaking in the role of their office, maybe the entity they are employed by. That individual never represents “the SBC,” because the SBC is a collection of loosely affiliated churches that meets for two days each year. The messengers of the SBC elect trustees for the entities who are charged to make sure the seminaries remain true to their mission and calling.

If an individual feels embarrassed that a professor (or other spokesperson) at an SBC entity “misrepresents them,” they should remember and remind others that those individuals do not represent them. The organic linkage between entity employee and church member is long and convoluted. We shouldn’t assume or accept that it is close or direct.

Why doesn’t the SBC fire pastors that are accused of abuse or its cover up?

The simple answer is that the SBC has no ability to hire or fire any pastor. Nor should it. However, if the local congregation fails to adequately deal with a public problem like abuse, then the messengers of other local congregations have the authority and responsibility (and the right to delegate if so agreed upon) to disfellowship a local congregation that has not maintained its public, gospel witness.

To use a biblical analogy, the SBC is like the people of Israel during the time of the judges. The reality is that “everyone does what is right in his own eyes.” This is a feature and not a bug. It comes with blessings and curses. Our hope and prayer should be that the Holy Spirit moves within local congregations and individuals to draw people more in line with clear teachings of Scripture for their life and practice. If they don’t, then the other congregations of the SBC have the responsibility to call them to repentance and expel them from our midst if they refuse to comply. Setting up a credentials committee with the delegated authority to determine whether or not to seat messengers from a particular church or call for investigation into the handling of abuse is a matter of policy that does not fundamentally change our polity.

What is the real heart of the unending street brawl within the SBC?

One of the major issues in the ongoing SBC civil war is that a large portion of the most vocal folks on either side of the battle either think we actually have a king (the defacto judges of the day often see themselves as such) who should have the ability to appoint his own heirs. Among those that don’t think we currently have a king, there people who are clamoring for a king to lead us into battle.

I’m in the camp that believes that having a king will only make the unending struggles within the SBC stronger and more vicious. We should be looking for ways to decrease the significance of our central entities, not consolidate their power, real or perceived.

What is the solution?

Ha! If I had a perfect solution, I would be a much more important person than I am.

My responsibility as a messenger to the SBC from my local congregation is to represent my congregation as well as I can, to vote my conscience on matters theological or practical, and to try to persuade other to emphasize the importance of the local church over the convention entities.

In an ideal world, I would only know the names of the Executive Committee members with whom I am personally related. In a good world, my chief contact with pastors of other churches affiliated with the SBC would be in discussing methods of cooperation to fulfill the SBC. In other words, the task is to decentralize the SBC again and see the committees and entities of the SBC as a means of cooperation rather than a power lever to control.

I can’t make this happen for everyone else, but I can certainly work to change my own perception and the way I talk about the SBC in all venues.

Warrior Children of the Conservative Resurgence

Every year just prior to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention bloggers fire up their keyboards and social media warriors stretch their thumbs in preparation for a raging, virtual street brawl. This unhealthy fist-fight between brothers and sisters in Christ is usually over second or third order doctrines: shades of difference in soteriology, application of complementarian principles, or the way an entity is applying the gospel to life.

In recent years, for example, there has been concern over the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission working for religious liberty in a case in New Jersey. (The primary concern was that this pertained to religious liberty for Muslims instead of for Baptists.) A few years ago, the biggest battle was over “Calvinism” in the SBC and the “Calvinist takeover.” (This is hilarious, because to someone within a denomination in the direct line of the Reformed tradition, no Baptist could ever really be a Calvinist. In contrast a Nazarene friend from Oklahoma referred to all Baptists as Calvinists because of the doctrine of eternal security.)

The reality is that the difference between the two factions in both of these fights is relatively minor, especially when considered by those outside the camp. The tragedy is that the divide is pitched as cause for a winner-take-all battle to the death, where the gospel will be irrevocably distorted if the “right” side doesn’t win right now.

Public Consequences for the Ongoing Civil War

Even if the substance of the fights is not terrifically significant, the consequences of this infighting are very great.

First, battles over relatively minor differences are often fought in such a way that reconciliation afterward is difficult. Most of the arguments made are not about substance, but about the character of those who do not agree.

Second, an in a related way, these battles tend to polarize the discussion because of the terms of the debate. People will defend their own position bitterly and stridently because they feel like they are personally under attack (and often are), which often pushes them farther away from the center and from their original position. Or, sometimes, it leads people to argue against the position they previously held because they can’t abide the vicious misrepresentations offered by others who hold it.

Third, the battles are conducted in public, allowing the name of Christ to publicly shamed. When people hurl literal slander and unwarranted anathemas at other believers, it is ugly. The public shame of believers arguing in public is, it seems, part of the reason Paul urged Christians not to sue one another:

If any of you has a dispute against another, how dare you take it to court before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Or don’t you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the trivial cases? Don’t you know that we will judge angels—how much more matters of this life? So if you have such matters, do you appoint as your judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame! Can it be that there is not one wise person among you who is able to arbitrate between fellow believers? Instead, brother goes to court against brother, and that before unbelievers! As it is, to have legal disputes against one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves do wrong and cheat—and you do this to brothers and sisters! (1 Cor 5:1–8, CSB)

Fourth, the public nature of the battle, its vitriol, and its pettiness give support to the argument of the so-called Moderates who left the SBC that the fight was primarily over power, not Scripture as it was described. The Moderates point at the present squabbling and, by ignoring the historical reality of the debates during the Conservative Resurgence, say that the earlier battle is the same as these battles: Much ado about nothing.

Is Today’s Infighting like the Conservative Resurgence?

If I were someone outside the SBC, especially someone who believed that the so-called Moderates really had it right and the Conservative Resurgence was all the fault of the “Fundamentalists,” then I would see a whole lot to support my opinion. That would especially be the case if I were ignorant of the actual arguments during the Conservative Resurgence.

The Conservative Resurgence was a battle waged over the nature of Scripture and its place within the church. The Conservatives were those who argued for the inerrancy of Scripture––that the Bible is truthful and, in the original manuscripts, entirely accurate; Scripture is thus authoritative for doctrine and life for the local church. The so-called Moderates espoused a range of views from a non-confrontational inerrancy (i.e., Scripture is wholly true, but there is room for disagreement) to various stages of modernistic denials of the truthfulness and authority of Scripture.

One of the most significant differences between the Conservative Resurgence and the ongoing fight is that there is almost no doctrinal space between those on either side of the debate. For example, in the recent intra-complementarian debate in the SBC, both parties agree that the role of pastor is reserved for males. They disagree about the degree to which women can participate on the platform during congregational worship.

In another fight, there is vitriolic anger being hurled against individuals and groups that argue there is racial injustice in some systems in the United States and that the gospel has implications for fighting against those injustices. The opposite side seems to be most opposed to engaging the topic using language grounded in the Christian tradition and from within distinctly gospel-centric organizations; the major point of contention seems to be the overlap between non-Christian (and sometimes anti-Christian) language about systemic racism and concern that a focus on the implications of the gospel (which may be debated) will overshadow the actual gospel.

There are good concerns on both sides for both of these issues. For example, whether women should preach on Sundays is an important debate to have. However, it would be helpful to have a debate about it rather than simply attacking those that disagree as departing from foundational doctrines of the church without significant evidence. Given that figures like Bertha Smith (who pushed Adrian Rogers to engage in the Conservative Resurgence) and Lottie Moon (who lamented the lack of male missionaries) both were theological conservatives who valued the inerrancy of Scripture and sometimes spoke to churches on Sunday, the issue for the SBC is not as clear cut as it might seem on its face.

It may be that there is a means to gain knowledge from women in a congregational setting without violating the holy writ. However, the debate is being pitched as if the only two options are an absolute denial of the differences between males and females functionally or that women may contribute to congregational worship only as backup singers for the worship band. Both positions are caricatures.

Most of the current debates––whether over the ERLC’s work on religious liberty, the pursuit of a more just society, or a woman speaking in a local church––are about the way Scripture ought to be applied rather than a foundational debate about the nature of Scripture. This is not another Conservative Resurgence.

Double-Talk and the Current Controversies

Another major difference between the ongoing infighting and the Conservative Resurgence is that during the Conservative Resurgence the institutions of the SBC were aligned in positions that were fundamentally opposed to the majority of the individual members of churches aligned with the SBC. This disparity was no more apparent than in the use of Double-Talk by the seminary faculty when speaking in local churches: there was a fundamental difference between the actual doctrine the professors held and what they communicated to the people in the pews who had not been (in their minds) sufficiently enlightened to appropriate progressive doctrine.

There is no question that many of the faculty at SBC seminaries during the middle of the 20th century had abandoned basic biblical doctrines and appropriated a modernistic, progressive form of Christianity. Ralph Elliot, the professor who wrote the Genesis commentary that catalyzed the Conservative Resurgence, has admitted that he and others intentionally obfuscated what they really mean when speaking to congregations. This was called Double-Talk or, in Orwellian fashion, doublespeak.

Recently accusations about the same issue have arisen regarding discussions of social justice at my alma mater, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. This was particularly accelerated when a New York Times article was edited in such a way to make it sound like Walter Strickland was using double-talk to import controversial ideas of James Cone into his conservative-sounding teaching, particularly with regard to the idea of liberation within Black Theology.

Strickland wrote his dissertation on different schools of Black Theology, some of which are theological problematic and some of which are not (or at least much less so). As much as James Cone got wrong about Christianity, there are elements in Cone’s approach to race as a distinct social issue that are helpful in highlighting ways the Church (broadly speaking) has failed to appropriately engage in racial reconciliation.

To read the backlash over a quote in a newspaper, it would seem that Walter Strickland must be teaching Critical Race Theory and espousing distinctly progressive doctrines from his lectern each time he leads a class at the seminary. That is distinctly not the case; he and I have had conversations about the topic and, even if we disagree on terms (particularly redeeming the use of the term “liberation theology” in light of the negative connection with a revisionist school of theology), we agree on substance. More importantly, Strickland fully supports the BF&M 2000 and orthodox Christian beliefs about identity and anthropology.

The real substance of concerns over the recent media article is that Strickland might be leading his students to interact critically and thoughtfully with people that espouse theology incompatible to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

However, engaging with other theological traditions in a confessional environment is what healthy denominational seminaries do. It is much better to build a scaffold to understand the distinctions between our understanding of Scripture and other traditions in an environment where expert help is available. It would be tragic to lead people to believe Baptist theology has nothing to say about race. This could leave them to look for a way to deal with racial injustice from sources that undermine Christianity, believing those sources to have the only means to engage the issue. If certain themes from controversial theologians (like Cone) make it into the seminary classroom through men like Strickland, it is almost certainly in the form of “he got this right, but there are some problematic issues over here.”

A critical approach to different theological traditions in the seminary classroom is not double-speak like the bad old days. We become better theologians when we interact with dissenting voices critically, but respectfully. For example, the fact that I have been influenced in some ways by progressive theologians, especially since I write and think about environmental ethics a great deal, does not take away from my criticality when they apply incorrect doctrines to the issues.

Common grace is real. Sometimes non-Christians and even progressive Christians see things in a way that can illuminate our own blind spots. Engaging with them critically is not double-talk, it is the essence of scholarship. That is what good seminary professors are supposed to do.

Proving the Moderates Right

Controversies often draw battle lines in odd places, and they can tend to push people to defend positions they would not otherwise tolerate. In fact, the ongoing bile being spewed against Southern Baptists who lean toward a softer complementarianism has cause me to want to defend the position, even though I do not agree with it. There is a certain dishonesty in the misrepresentation of their position as “liberal” or “egalitarianism.”

As someone who loves truth, I want to step in and clarify the position, because what they are really saying is something less than the error of functional egalitarianism, which denies that God-given gender differences have implications for our roles in embodied service to God. Hard egalitarianism denies the functional differences called out in Scripture (or redefines them as specific to the patriarchal cultures in which the authors of Scripture lived and worked), whereas the current debate merely broadens the opportunities for females to teach within the local church setting under the authority of male overseers. One need not agree with either position to see there are clear differences between them.

The inability of many opponents of this softer complementarianism to deal with the actual arguments being made by those that hold those views is a mark of intellectual laziness and, in many cases, blatant dishonesty.

The so-called Moderates during the Conservative Resurgence argued that Conservatives were (1) reactionary, (2) mean-spirited, (3) anti-intellectual, and (4) more concerned about power than truth. If the ongoing debates are any sign, then they may have been correct, if not about the original participants in the Conservative Resurgence, then certainly about the warrior children of the conservative resurgence.

Truth is a worthwhile pursuit. In fact, I hope my life is defined by the pursuit of truth. However, sometimes the quest for truth is merely a poorly disguised excuse to fight. Once one victory is achieved over one issue it is easy to seek the next fight with the person closest to hand that holds any different positions. The sad result is often perpetual warfare and a continual splintering of formerly healthy alliances.

John Frame wrote an engaging chapter in a Festschrift for Alister McGrath called “Machen’s Warrior Children.” In that essay Frame outlines 21 different schisms that have occurred among conservative Presbyterians. He notes that what started out as a worthwhile battle––the battle over Modernism––morphed into a street brawl over relatively minor theological differences. He also explains that the nature of the debates has been one largely characterized by anathematizing one another when disagreement happens. In other words, Christianity is defined so narrowly that to disagree about anything is to be unorthodox. Frame recounts the sad fact that those who had initially been allied to push back against clear error continued to tear each other apart all in the name of finer and finer points of “truth.”

Right now Southern Baptists are facing their own train of schisms with anathemas hurled over points that should be debated rather than divided. In recent years we’ve seen arguments about the relative role of Calvinism in the SBC, over support for religious liberty beyond Christianity, regarding the need for racial reconciliation, dealing with the possibility of private prayer languages, surrounding the selection of material to sell in the LifeWay stores, and on and on. There have even been pitched battles over the size, complexity, and financial burden of State Conventions.

All of these issues deserve consideration and I have positions on all of them, but none of them actually divide Christians from non-Christians. And, oddly enough, I find myself in agreement with different clusters of Southern Baptists on several of the issues. The problem is not a fairly clear delineation over whether Scripture is true and authoritative for church practice, as it was during the Conservative Resurgence, but over how we live out our mission in the world. Certainly, this is important, but I do not believe it warrants the level of argument currently being offered.

At this point, the warrior children of the Conservative Resurgence are proving the “Moderates” correct: For some people, it’s more about the fight than it is about truth and the furtherance of the gospel.

Concluding Thoughts

If we are to continue as a convention––that is, a relatively loose coalition of churches centered on cooperation for missions––we have to value the gospel over worldly victory.

It might also help if those on either side of the debates took a moment to consider Paul’s words to the church in Corinth:

But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. (1 Cor 5:11)

There are a whole lot of people who have fallen into the category of “verbally abusive” in these latest debates, which makes one wonder if fellowship with them is wise, or, as Paul seems to indicate here, consistent with biblical Christianity.

NOTE: This article has been edited since the original post for clarity and to correct a few typographical errors. No changes to substance or content have been made.

The First Moon Landing 142 Years Ago

Today marks the 142nd anniversary of Lottie Moon's landing in China to take the gospel to that nation and to those millions of people.

She's been a hero to many for her willingness to leave relative comfort, social position, and a loving family behind in the United States to go to a life of discomfort and perpetual struggle.

She was fiercely orthodox, even forgoing her marriage to Crawford Toy over his abandonment of the veracity of Scripture. Lottie Moon was a woman of conviction who lived much of her life so that others might find new life in Christ.

Her faithful letter writing to raise funds for all Baptist missionaries led to her becoming the namesake of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual Christmas Offering. Because of her faithfulness, her name has become a rallying point for Southern Baptist Missions.

Lottie Moon's story is one that is compelling and should increase our faith in God's providence and renew our desire to go to tell of him to the nations.

Consider praying a prayer of thanksgiving for faithful saints like Lottie Moon.

Facts about Lottie Moon

1. She was born on December 12, 1840 into a wealthy plantation owning family in Virginia.

2. As an adult she was only about 4'3" tall. This is about the height of an average American 8 or 9 year old girl.

3. Lottie Moon was one of the earliest pioneers in women's education as a graduate of Albemarle Female Institute at Charlottesville in Virginia. She was academically gifted, particularly in languages, which would help her master Chinese. She earned an M.A. in Classics in 1861.

4. She was converted from a vehement opponent to Christianity to a faithful Christian in 1859 under the teaching of John Albert Broadus, in Charlottesville.

5. On July 7, 1873, the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed Lottie Moon as a missionary to China. She actually followed her sister, Edmonia, who had been appointed as a missionary before her.

6. She helped institute the contemporary missions policy of allowing furloughs for missionaries. Moon spent 14 years on the field before returning to the United States for a break. Prior to that innovation, missionaries who left their home country were presumed to be leaving forever.

7. Lottie Moon was a vocal advocate for ending the practice of foot binding in Chinese culture. She helped to turn the tide on that barbaric practice.

8. Her letter writing was a means of encouraging missionaries to leave home for the sake of the gospel during her day. They have continued to inspire missionaries to be faithful to God's calling to the present.

9. On December 24, 1912, Lottie Moon died on a ship off the coast of China. She weighed only 50 pounds and died of starvation because she was foregoing food to try to save her Chinese friends and neighbors during a famine.

10. In 1918, the Women's Missionary Union (WMU) named their annual Christmas offering after Lottie Moon, the woman who had strongly encouraged them to start the practice.

Some Resources

Danny Akin's 2007 sermon on the life of Lottie Moon with an exegesis of Romans 12:1: Manuscript and Audio

Christian History feature article on Lottie Moon.

A helpful book, edited by my friend, Keith Harper:

SEND THE LIGHT: LOTTIE MOON (Baptists: History, Literature, Theology, Hymns)

By Keith Harper

Buy on Amazon

What Does it Mean When the SBC is Cutting Back Missions?

Recently the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention made a huge announcement that should cause a mighty response in the denomination.

David Platt preaching at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fall 2013. Photo from SEBTS archives. See: https://www.flickr.com/photos/southeastern/9606045395/in/album-72157635183464333/

David Platt, current President of the IMB, and author of Radical, had to announce a plan to cut at least 600 employees from one of the largest Christian mission organizations in the world. This must have been an incredibly painful announcement for a man whose life purpose is to see the nations reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

As a history lesson, one of the major reasons that the SBC exists is to fund missions. In fact, the Cooperative Program was created in the early 20th Century largely to fund the missions activities of the SBC. Reducing the mission force without some major economic crisis indicates there is something terribly wrong, and that there must have been a loss of focus.

These things should make Southern Baptists begin to question where our priorities lie. 

Some Questions for Consideration

Whenever a crisis like this occurs, it should lead to some introspective questioning. Here are a few that have come to my mind:

• Is the Cooperative Program still viable?
  • I think it is. The Cooperative Program certainly needs to be reshaped somewhat to reduce the amount of money that gets spent for regional organizations that duplicate other parachurch and national denominational organizations. However, the basic method of large association of churches contributing to fund the global missions endeavors is irreplaceable. Having grown up in an Independent Baptist church, the collective sending power of the IMB is a huge improvement to the never-ending circuit of missionaries candidating individually. The CP is a good program and we need to make sure it works in a new era.
• What are the SBC churches funding instead of missions?
  • This is the $100 question. Part of reality is that since the Great Recession, the cost of living has risen while wages for the middle and lower class have largely stagnated. In many ways this economic pressure is due to bad fiscal policies at local, state, and federal levels in the United States. At the same time, I wonder if SBC churches have increased funding for global missions as much as they have funding for local priorities. Or, have they made across the board cuts that have kept more money than absolutely necessary at the local level? Local ministry is important for discipleship and growing healthy churches. However, without funding for international missions, vital ministries that take the gospel where it is currently unavailable will not happen. Local churches need to question their funding priorities.
• Are the funding problems a result of the tragedy of the commons?
  • The tragedy of the commons is the phenomena where things held in group ownership are treated less well than things held for private gain. I believe the current IMB struggles are in part a result of the tragedy of the commons. This is a natural danger of the Cooperative Program; all Southern Baptists don't know missionaries intimately, and our money doesn't fund them directly, so we don't necessarily feel obligated to fund them vigorously (or pray for them diligently). This is a circumstance that local churches as organizations, pastors, and missions-minded individuals in the church will need remedy. They need to raise the alarm, continue to tell the story of missions work, and build the missional momentum to help people engage and feel ownership for international missions conducted at the national level. We need to overcome this is we are to sustain the CP.
• What level of problem is this?
  • If this isn't five alarm fire, it is very close. They aren't shutting down the IMB, but there have been years of underfunding the IMB. If we can't fund international missions--if we can't send the gospel to places it hasn't been heard yet--then we are failing to use the gifts God has given us. We have prioritized our comfort over missional living and sacrificial giving. The man who wrote the book on living a missional lifestyle, cutting back on extras, and getting the gospel to the ends of the earth has announced cuts at a huge missions organizations. This is real and we need to be ready to respond in a big way.

What do we do now?

All is not lost. However, we need to have a gut check at the individual level and as local churches.

What are we spending our money on? What are we living for? Are we aggressive in our funding of gospel ministry? Are we critical in evaluating our personal expenditures? How about our local church expenditures? Are we asking what the gospel purpose in our giving, spending, and living is?

We need to get engaged as a people in giving from the abundance God as provided. We need to keep praying for our missionaries and our denominational leaders. We need to lay foundations of radical living and white-hot gospel focus in our daily lives that spreads the interest to our children and our neighbors.

Individual effort and sacrifice will be necessary if we are to turn the ship. It won't happen in a a few days, but the long term viability of the IMB and the need to spread the gospel demands it. Our faithfulness to God demands it.

An Open Letter from David Platt

David Platt has written an open letter to the SBC to explain the nature and reason for the forthcoming cuts. I have reposted it below:

“Dear SBC Family,

By now many of you may have heard that last week, IMB announced a plan to reduce the total number of our personnel (both here and overseas) by 600-800 people over the next six months. Since the moment this announcement was made, we have sought to communicate the details of this decision as clearly as possible to churches, state conventions, and national entities across the SBC (see this article and this FAQ document, in particular). In the middle of it all, though, I simply want to take a moment to share my heart with you.

This is certainly not an announcement that I, in any way, wanted to make. At the most recent meeting of the SBC in Columbus, I shared with messengers how IMB spent tens of millions more dollars than we received last year. In our budgeting process over the last couple of months, other leaders and I have recognized that we will have a similar shortfall this year, and we are projecting another shortfall of like magnitude next year. In fact, when we stepped back and looked at IMB finances since 2010, we realized that IMB has spent a combined $210 million more than people have given to us. By God’s grace, we have been able to cover these costs through reserves and global property sales. But we don’t have an endless supply of global property to sell, and our cash reserves are no longer at a desirable level for good stewardship going forward.

When staff leadership realized the severity of our financial situation, we knew that we needed to take significant action. We spent hours on our knees praying and at tables discussing potential options for balancing our budget, ranging from sending fewer missionaries to cutting various costs. We poured over financial models and looked at the long-term impact of each of our options. However, with 80% of our budget being devoted to personnel salary, benefits, and support expenses, we inevitably realized that any effort to balance our budget would require major adjustments in the number of our personnel. When we gathered with our trustees at our most recent meeting, the same conclusion was clear. Though board policy did not require an official trustee vote, and though these brothers and sisters agonized over the thought of many missionaries stepping off of the field, there was resolute and resounding recognition across the room that our financial situation required such action.

Some pastors have asked me over this last week, “Why doesn’t the IMB just ask the churches to give more money?” This sounds like a simple solution, but the IMB has been asking churches to give more money for many years. In many ways, we have told the church about our need and called the church to give to meet that need. Here’s just a small sampling of headlines and articles we have published:

· 2008 – “IMB reports cautionary finance news that could have a significant impact on the Board’s work around the world next year.” Later that year, our trustee chair said to churches, “I am sounding the alarm. The IMB budget is under strain to support growth in our missionary force.”
· 2009 – “Economic challenges…IMB anticipating another tough financial year…IMB in budget shortfall crisis [that] could affect 600 positions.”
· 2010 – “IMB lamenting financial declines, trying to balance budget…IMB sending 30 percent fewer long-term personnel than would be sent if there were no financial constraints.”
· 2011 – “IMB having difficulty balancing budget…IMB lowering the missionary force.”
· 2012 – “IMB preparing for another sobering financial report…IMB working through a painfully difficult process of trying to balance the budget.”
· 2013 – “IMB urging for greater support from churches…IMB laments Christian callousness…IMB trustees vote for substantive proposal changes across the SBC.”
· 2014 – Just two months before I stepped into my role, one article read: “IMB must soon come to grips with the demands placed on us by years of declining Cooperative Program receipts and Lottie Moon giving. We will be hard-pressed to continue supporting a mission force of our current number, much less see a greatly needed increase in the number of fully supported career missionaries on the field.”

I share all of this simply to say that we haven’t kept our financial position a secret. By God’s grace, the church has responded in many ways, including various special offerings like “Christmas in August” in 2009 and increased giving to the IMB through both the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering over the last four years. Yet while IMB has been asking churches to give and setting aggressive goals accordingly, the reality remains unchanged: IMB has spent $210 million more than we have been given. Simply put, we cannot keep operating like this.

Do I hope that churches give more to the IMB through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year? Absolutely, and we are working zealously with churches, state conventions, and national entities toward this end. But I want to be crystal clear: I don’t blame the church for putting IMB in our current position. I love the church, we as IMB want to serve the church, and we believe the best way for us to do that right now is by operating within the means provided to us by the church.

Similarly, no blame should be assigned to previous IMB leadership. Previous leaders knew these financial realities, and they put in place a plan to slowly reduce our mission force (through normal attrition and reduced appointments) while using reserves and global property sales to keep as many missionaries on the field as possible. I praise God for the resources He provided to make that plan possible, and I praise God for leaders who chose not to sit on those resources, but to spend them for the spread of the gospel among the unreached. Ultimately, I praise God for the people who came to Christ over these last years because missionaries stayed on the field, and because we used our resources to keep them there.

Yet when staff and trustee leaders alike looked at the realities before us, we realized that plan is no longer viable, for we cannot continue to overspend as we have. For the sake of short-term financial responsibility and long-term organizational stability, we must put ourselves in a position in which we can operate within our budget, which necessarily means reducing the number of our personnel.

Words really can’t describe how much a sentence like that pains me to write, and pained me to communicate last week. For “600” and “800” are not just figures on a page; they are people around the world. For many of you, they are your family, friends, and fellow church members. They are brothers and sisters whom I love, and brothers and sisters whom I want to serve and support. I not only want as many of them as possible to stay on the field; I want multitudes more to join them on the field. But in order to even have a conversation about how to mobilize more people in the future, IMB must get to a healthy financial place in the present.

I hope that all of this information helps give you a small glimpse into why IMB is taking these steps at this time. You can go to the links I referenced above to learn more about the two-phase process we are walking through over the next six months to reduce the number of our personnel. Our aim is to make this process as voluntary as possible, starting with a Voluntary Retirement Incentive, and then moving to an opportunity for other personnel to say voluntarily, “I believe the Lord may be leading me to a new assignment.” As the Lord leads 600-800 brothers and sisters into new places and positions over these days, we want to honor every single one of them with generous support, realizing that the longer we wait to take this action, the less generous we can be.

The comment I have appreciated most from pastors and church members during these days has been, “How can we help?” One way is obviously to give. To be sure, IMB is committed to operating within our means in the days ahead, yet we are praying that those means might increase so that we can stop pulling missionaries off of the field and start sending multitudes onto the field. Indeed, the field is ripe for harvest, and the time is now to take the gospel to those who have never heard it. Further, in light of all that I have shared, I would also encourage your church to consider how you might care for one of these missionaries who will soon be moving back to the United States. I am trusting that our Southern Baptist family will welcome these brothers and sisters with open arms as they integrate into our churches here, making disciples of the nations God has brought to our own backyard.

Finally, and most importantly, I would ask you to pray for the IMB during these days. Please pray that God will provide grace, wisdom, strength, and unity across the IMB family as we navigate the various challenges that we are walking through together over the next six months. Ultimately, please pray that God will use these days to set the stage for this 170-year-old missions organization to thrive for decades to come or until Jesus returns. In this historic coalition of churches called the Southern Baptist Convention, may we strive together toward that end.

For His Glory,

David Platt”

Here are the article and FAQ document that Platt points to.