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.

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...