A Word to My Congregation
By Mike Chancellor

May 1, 2003, I began my 11th year as pastor of Crescent Heights. It has been a busy time and lots of change for all of us.

This year Anna and I moved into our 28th year of ministry and on the whole it has been a wonderful life. We have loved our years in the Crescent Heights family. Like all things, such years are marked with joys and sorrows.

At a meeting I attended Tuesday, a friend was sharing his own personal testimony and he closed it by saying something like, “I have been reminded in these last two years of two things: first, if it is not one thing, it is always something. In our world, there is never a time when something is not happening to ourselves or those we love. The other thing of which I have been reminded, God is faithful in the middle of it all.” Such is our testimony, and such is our journey.

These joyful days are mixed with a heavy heartedness. My Southern Baptist roots have gone deep into my life. Until about 15 years ago, Southern Baptist life is all I have known or cared to know. Yet, the years have taken a toll. It has been an experience of “grieving attrition” as more and more of what was my heritage has been torn away and replaced by ideologies and pathologies alien to my heritage and my understanding of the Scriptures.

One of the last vestiges of my heritage has been my support of and participation in missions through the International Mission Board.

Last year, under the leadership of Jerry Rankin, the International Mission Board began to turn on the very missionaries they were charged with sending and supporting.

The final chapter in this gutless treachery was set in motion May 7, 2003. On that date, the International Mission Board fired 13 missionaries for their refusal to sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

These couples had combined experiences of over 150 years on the mission field. Not a single one of them has ever been questioned about teaching or believing unbaptistic views. All have served with distinction across many years and in many challenging fields.

If I understand the numbers right, these 13 add to the 30 veteran missionaries who resigned or took early retirement because of the BF&M issue. All of these join 34 missionaries who resigned last year in protest to the signing.

Last year, Dr. Rankin sought out a conversation with Anna and myself in response to a letter I had written him about his flip-flopping on the well-recorded promise he made to the missionaries about not being required to sign.

He assured Anna and I that no missionary was going to lose their job over failure to sign the BF&M. So, the leader of the International Mission Board lied to us and lied again to the missionaries.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. In a meeting with missionaries in Western South America, a trustee of the International Mission Board, Charles Clary reportedly told our missionaries, “If your calling to missions is important and real, then what would it hurt to sign this document putting one’s personal integrity to the side for the sake of the Gospel.” Clary went on to say that some might not be able to sign (the BF&M 2000) and thus would say that their calling might be concluded or that they were wrong about their original missionary call. Wow! It is a frightening thought that IMB should require missionaries to check their integrity at the door. Yet, that is what some are having to do if they continue with the IMB.

Sadness is what I feel, not for the missionaries returning home with their heads held high. I feel deep sadness for a way of doing missions that is sinking into a pool of duplicity, deceit, and moral decay.

So sure of what was coming that I made Dr. Rankin a promise. If missionaries were not fired over the BF&M 2000, I would personally call him in two years and apologize to him. I guess he has saved me a call. I hate it when I am right!

This is a letter that Mike Chancellor, pastor of Crescent Heights Baptist Church, Abilene published in his church newsletter.

June 2003