priorities

I have written much in criticism of big church spending.  Jerry Rankin has an awesome post on his blog.  Here is a quote:

What our convoluted priorities are practically saying is, “It is better to let the lost multitudes never hear the gospel and go to hell, than change the way our denomination functions.” It is too bad that we have a system in which only two percent of our resources are given to reach a lost world that Jesus died to save. It is unfortunate our denomination can channel only 17 percent of Cooperative Program allocations to international missions because we have to sustain everything else we are doing. We can’t expect to cease a valid ministry, compromise programs that serve ourselves and our own churches in order to provide resources to get the gospel to those who have never heard! That, in essence, is what is being communicated.

language and context

This is for those who think contextualization is bad....

priorities

On the heels of my last post concerning the Kingdom which FBC Dallas is building, here are some thoughts about money in the SBC:

According to Gordon Fort at last nights meeting SBC churches collected $11.1 billion 08, according to the ACP, and only 2.77 percent was used to support the vision of reaching a lost world. "Southern Baptists are structuring ourselves in a way that guarantees we will fail in our mission, it just shouldn’t be,” Yes only 2.77% of all S. Baptist gifts go to World Missions by way of the IMB.

 I got that from a few friends.  The problem is not money and resources, it is priorities.  What are we willing to give up in order that more people might hear the gospel?

I have my first post concerning Detroit in the works.

IMB, NAMB and the impending smackdown

Why do we enjoy a good church fight so much?  I have been watching my stats in analytics lately.  Any time I use the labels NAMB and merger, my hits double what they normally are when I post something more generic.  I will always be one pushing for change and adaptation.  The world is a dynamic place.  We cannot remain a static denomination.  But some people are just going bug-eyed over this. 

This reminds me of a recent post by Grady Bauer.  He says that there was a mass reaction against the fact that a few IMB personnel used a private prayer language. He relates this to the present financial crisis at the IMB.  Where are those churches who were voracious about "purity"?  Where is their cry that the lost are going without the gospel because we are living the American dream rather than the great commission?

Perhaps if we spent more time on the great commission we will have less time to fight.  The only reason I ever posted about NAMB in the first place is because I realized, in so far as it concerns my area, that it is unclear, at best, what their influence as a mission board is on impacting lostness.  The politics wherein churches and individual power brokers are concerned with who gets what with regime changes at NAMB is purely carnal.  We should have one concern, and only one concern, to impact lostness. 

I doubt this will be a small issue in upcoming SBC events.  This is unfortunate.
ps, and yes, I tagged this post with NAMB and merger in a shameless ploy to get more hits...

merger

I started this post a while back, and with the recent news of retirements there is much more to speculate about...

When I first heard news concerning the proposed merger of NAMB and IMB, I was completely against it.  They are two very different institutions.  I did not realize just how different they were till I called NAMB today.  I am trying to start some international church planting in my city {lets just say it is a top 5 metro area}.  Someone challenged what I was doing with "it sounds like you are competing with NAMB."  I called them today and asked if there were any NAMB personnel in my area doing international church planting.  The response was: "uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh" {about 8 seconds worth}
"weeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllll" {another 5 seconds}
{slowly} "thats not exactly how we operate"

It went down hill from there.  IMO, if you have personnel in a sizable city, you need to know it.  I have been trying to get everyone I know to call in and ask about their area.  Turned out, we only had two NAMB personnel and only one of them was actually paid by NAMB and neither were doing church planting.  What a lot of people do not know, is that half the of the purported 5000+ missionaries they have are volunteer.  These volunteers are primarily retired folks working to strengthen churches.  I am grateful for their service, but by definition, that is not missions.

I am now in favor of merging the two where IMB strategy takes precedence.  Essentially, NAMB needs to go through New Directions {Short story: this shifted IMB folks out of "church work" to front line work}.  They wait on the initiative of churches, associations, and state conventions before they plant any churches.  I understand the reasoning, but the down side is that we have unreached people groups within the major urban centers.

So here is the speculation: since both NAMB and, in a year, IMB both president-less, is this the precursor to a merger?

Concerning restructuring the SBC, which is all the GCR is really about{Call it restructuring the SBC, and everyone would throw a fit.  Put "great commission" in there you cant vote against the great commission}, SBCers must know that merging NAMB and IMB will not fix the money problems or inherent spiritual problems.  Here is my plan;
1. Get rid of state conventions.
2. Merge IMB and NAMB where unreached people groups is the priority.
3. Move the local associations into the position of "strategy coordinators".  They would work closely with the new conglomerate mission board.
4. Get rid of ERLC.  Nobody listens; nobody cares.  We should look for spiritual and cultural transformation and get out of politics.

We need to be less about dumb resolutions [Version debates, Reformed debates, Homeschool debates, etc] and more about the mission.