I’ve already written about how to get an IMB missionary to come to your church; basically it boils down to requesting someone to come. Today, I’d like to examine what might possibly have led churches to stop requesting missionaries and why missionaries, for their part, don’t seem to aggressively pursue venues in which to speak.
A disclaimer: please, no blame-game discussions. We can seek causes without vilifying those attached to them. The goal behind a search for causes should always be to ameliorate the effects. As well, I’m painting with broad strokes here and as such there will be exceptions, permutations, mitigating circumstances galore.
Another disclaimer: this post should probably be split into two to address everything in detail; however, attention spans. To avoid writing a 2,000 word manifesto, I’m going to race through these causes with the briefest of explanations. I imagine our body of commenters will be able to flesh out the skeletal treatment I’m offering.
Right off the bat, money makes an appearance. Churches send funds to the IMB through various means and often, it seems, assume the organization will pay for missionary travel. That’s not the case: when I’m in the US I travel as far as churches and organizers can afford to send me because the IMB does not cover those costs. Churches everywhere struggle financially, and one can understand the reluctance to spend on airfare, hotel, food, and gas, even if missions is the ultimate goal.
At times, the reluctance feels less like financial limitations and more like apathy. I blame a certain creeping tribalism in our culture which focuses on ourselves and those who are like us. Spending funds on someone we don’t know to talk about people we’ll never meet in places we’ve never heard about…meh. We could discuss the impact of perspectives on immigration in the US, but that’s a new trend and I’m uncertain how to proceed.
Even in churches possessing funds and a proper focus, members are less aware of the work of the IMB. Girls in Action (GAs for you old timers) previously channeled ladies into the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU), a group famous for its unflagging support for international missions. Fewer GA groups and the lower profile of the WMU lead to less awareness among churches and fewer projects focusing on support for international missionaries; care packages, letters to missionary kids, etc.
As the new generation of SBCers matured in the absence of a strong missions emphasis, generational distrust of institutions rose as well. Godly young men and women therefore possess less information and trust in traditional SBC structures. This lack of loyalty, if you will, to the SBC and the IMB frees churches to support other mission endeavors, often at the expense of the support for the IMB. Often, this shift to a new direction hinges on relationships, not institutions. Smaller mission groups competing for a finite pool of financial and personal support sometimes outperform the IMB which still relies on the inertia of institutional support.
The IMB perhaps unwittingly contributed to this shift. The rise of the non-professional missionary – candidates from a variety of non-pastoral, non-seminary backgrounds – swelled the missionary force and brought valuable insight and skills to the organization. Side-effects, as others mentioned, include those who are ill-equipped for the American pulpit,* resulting in poor preaching during the church’s main event, the Sunday morning sermon. Pastors protect their pulpits – rightfully so – and unsurprisingly respond by inviting fewer missionaries.**
*Of course, not all missionaries in churches preach; some present the details of their work quite clearly. As well, teaching styles are culturally influenced, meaning a missionary who preaches poorly by SBC standards is often guilty of nothing more than preaching in ways most effective for his usual audience on the field.
**Full disclosure: I am chief among the offenders, especially early in my career. When I preached, and I use that word loosely, the angels averted their eyes while those in Abraham’s Bosom stirred uneasily, as if someone had run a cheap, rented Craftsman tiller across their graves.
Missionaries themselves sometimes fail to pursue churches as they should. Field fatigue saps their passion and energy; upon returning to the US, they check off the first 5 events on a list and content themselves with the bare minimum. When they travel, they often attend events coordinated by associations of too many pastors who fill their dance card by contacting the IMB directly. In other words, the large events discourage the personal relationships necessary for involvement. The remedy for the large event is for individual churches to host missionaries, the very thing whose death we’re investigating.
The relationship between pastors, churches, and the IMB does not function as it once did. SBC members examine organizational decisions (financial, personnel, policy) in greater detail. Gone are the days of blind trust in the institution; this is the day of open dissension, polite disagreement, vehement castigation, cautious advice, warranted or not. Wars (Rankin, private prayer language), rumors of wars (Platt, Calvinism’s invasion), and disasters (financial woes, VRI, HRO) free churches from feeling obligated to support a single organization, and so their money, support, and pulpit time go to others.
Without the institutional knowledge, without the loyalty to the convention, without groups to promote missions year-round, the onus of maintaining a relationship with the IMB shifts from the church as a whole to the office of the pastor. Pastors’ plates usually carry more than they can chew; besides, the programmatic structure many churches utilize lacks flexibility for a guest speaker; simultaneously, reserving a single weekend a year in advance for your preferred missionary speaker remains out of reach.
“Why would any church,” says the cliche, “invite the missionary to encourage participation? Aren’t missions the responsibility of the IMB, and not the church?” This pernicious mindset has created an “out of mind” approach to missions for some; the impact is easy to predict.
We could go on, I suppose, but let’s not.
Obviously, the complex, overlapping factors flow in multiple directions and find their source in vague movements and subtle shifts in culture. We’re not likely to resolve most of these, but I believe a shift in approach can help restore the presence of missionaries in the halls and pulpits of the churches who sent them.
But that’s the next post.
Excellent analysis!
My church is a great example of what you have described. We have a budget of over 20 million dollars but give about 1% to The Cooperative Program.
We rarely hear the words Cooperative Program, IMB, NAMB, Lottie Moon or Annie Armstrong (all words that I grew up hearing regularly) – and one of our staff members was a recent chairman of the IMB board!
I am a relatively new member here and don’t understand the history of how we got to where we are. I pray for change.
There’s not much reason to be a Southern Baptist church if it’s not going to support the Cooperative Program.
Pray for change.
In general, independent missionaries often do a lot more supporting church outreach/speaking than IMB/NAMB ones out of necessity to raise funds. One of the original CP objectives was to reduce the time missionaries had to do fundraising.
My church is small, with about a 60-70000 annual budget. We give10% to the CP, try to increase our Lottie and Annie giving each year, and about 3% to our local. We also have a mission house available for missionaries and their families to use while on furlough. Some missionaries preach and others just inform us of the field. Still, it would seem that we get only about 1 missionary family a year. But then, though we provide lodging, we are not helping them too much beyond that with travels expenses. We do take up an extra offering when they are here for them.
We aso have sent missionaries out from us through IMB. And we occasionally go as a small group to Africa or South America to help local churches in various endeavors, school building or maintaining, medical work, etc.
Mike, thank you! What a strange paradox. Your church gives a large portion of offering to the CP on top of the y’all provide a missionary house. Yet, probably because of your size, get little attention.
I struggle with this problem and have no easy answer. We must find a way to visit and thank you and share with you all that God is doing in and through us on the field. And we must find a way to do the same to churches that seem less accessible. Not for the sake of the IMB organization, but for the sake of the mission; the mission for which we came together in the first place, to do together that which we could not, and stil cannot, do apart.
Your support matters. It matters to us and to the Lord. Blessing on you.
JF,
Well thanks, but I think you mean blessing on us.
The mission house ws originally, I think, the parsonage. Then another house was donated, and it was slightly bigger, and itbecame the parsonage. Then the present pastor bought his own house and the 2nd house became the parsonage for the youth/associate minister.
If you want to visit, Get a hold of Pastor Blake at Parsons Baptist Church in Columbus Ohio. He is our senior pastor.
Just wondering, there are literally thousands of retired IMB missionaries. Why not invite them, if there is a shortage of speakers? There is a wealth of experience and passion available.
Disclaimer. I am one of those who took the VRI and would love to share the vision of missions and to say thank you to Souther Baptists.
I have done that
The “why not invite them?” is answered in part by what I’ve written here. For a variety of reasons, people just don’t invite missionaries like they used to. Maybe – and I’ve deliberately left this out here – we’ve run out of ideas as to how to use people. I’ll try to address that later.
Besides those who have retired, there are those who have resigned for one reason or another (most often medical or family) who would love to go to a local church and share about the country where they served. Most of those who have left the foreign mission field still have a passion for missions. In fact, most continue to have direct contact with those with whom they worked. Repeating what was said in the blog, you only need to ask.
The IMB keeps a list of those who served with current contact information. You may be surprised at how close they live to you. Reach out to them. They will be excited to have an opportunity to once again share about missions and what God is doing where they once served.
My wife and I were appointed to the Foreign Mission Board ( now International Mission Board) when Baker James Cauthen was President. We served 12 incredible years. During furlough (now Home leave) we were living in Florida. We volunteered to preach as much as the home staff could schedule. As a result, we shared Mission stories for several months in Kansas, Alabama, and Florida. They were all small churches with no budget to bring a missionary couple to speak. However, the love offerings covered our expenses even when we fronted the travel cost out of our own pockets. We never turned anyone down. As a result, we spoke in churches that had never “seen a real live missionary”. Churches need only ask, your missionaries will be honored to speak to even the smallest church.
There’s also the issue that churches often seem to not want single women missionaries to share about the work but only want a male missionary. My home church does an excellent job navigating this with having the pastor interview me in front of the congregation when I’m in the US, but that’s the rare case, in my experience.
Ethan, thanks for writing this series. I should have thought to write it! All the reasons you listed are “spot on.” Every March the missions professors from our seminary meet with members of the IMB staff. This year one of them told us that they are trying to teach the missionaries how to preach and make a good presentation in a church. I remarked that in the old days that type of training was unnecessary because our preaching professors at seminary had trained us to preach. When the IMB moved away from requiring the MDiv degree for most missionaries (not including medical and accounting personnel), the result was inevitable.
Any time someone if your stature wishes he’d had the same idea I did, two concepts spring to mind:
1. Wow. That’s high praise…
2. But remember, even a blind chicken finds a few kernels.
During our time on Stateside Assignment last year we went wherever we could drive as our funds and schedule allowed. Ethan is correct that we aren’t given transportation allowance while we are on Stateside Assignment, so that is a real challenge for some of us at times. Sadly, we turned down two offers to go speak at churches far out of state because we couldn’t afford the trip. That was hard for us because we know some churches are hungry to hear from missionaries. Another issue that we had was our use of a mission vehicle for part of our time on STAS. The mission vehicle that we had on loan had prohibitions for driving out of state. In order for us to go out of state during that time would have meant either renting a vehicle or paying for airfare. One of our teammates went on Stateside last year and was without a car to use for about 2 months of that time. Vehicles for missionaries to use while on Stateside Assignment is always a challenge, and we are so very grateful for those churches and associations that provide assistance in that area.
Another thing that we came across this last time was churches waited until mid to late November to ask us to speak during the Lottie Moon week. We had six different Lottie Moon speaking engagements already booked for that December week by early October. We felt horrible turning people down. Yet, at the same time there wasn’t much flexibility in their schedules either for us to come speak on a different week because of all the many end of the year programs that churches have going on now. And, the end of our Stateside was right at New Years, so we were scrambling as well at the end of the year. I would definitely recommend requesting IMB missionaries to speak at your Lottie Moon emphasis services well in advance.
Overall, we had 20 opportunities to speak, however only 2 of those times were from the pulpit on a Sunday morning or evening. The majority were Lottie Moon events, kid’s clubs and School classes. Using the links that Ethan has provided is really a great way to get a missionary in your church. It really is our pleasure to speak in our SBC churches. It keeps us connected because at times we can feel alone, and it refreshes our souls. Thank you all for having this conversation, and for wanting your IMB missionaries in your churches.
Our last three extended times in the States were filled with lots of hoping for opportunities followed by a flurry of last minute invitations either for December or for the last 3 weeks we were in country. I’m hoping this time will be different.
And yeah, mission cars are great but sometimes the limits keep us close to home.
Ethan, I take it that you are not from Arkansas. There we say, “Even a blind hog will find an acorn sometimes.” I enjoy your posts. I hope you keep on writing.
Blind chicken finds corn, blind hogs find acorns, broken clocks are right twice a day.
But no, not from Arkansas, though my favorite place as a child was my grandparents’ house just outside of DeQueen, Arkansas, home of the DeQueen Bee newspaper.