Help Keep Our Missionaries on the Field
By John Hall and Greg Warner

DALLAS (ABP) — Texas Baptists may soon have a way for churches and individuals to provide financial support to former SBC missionaries who were terminated or resigned over the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message.

BGCT already offers a “missionary transition fund” to help former missionaries as they seek new positions. The new funding mechanism would help missionaries stay on the field after losing support from the SBC’s International Mission Board.

“We are making it possible for churches and individuals to support missionaries whose ministry was taken away from them by the IMB” said E.B. Brooks, BGCT coordinator of missions & evangelism. “We are doing this at the request of our churches who want to support their continued ministry.”

At least 77 of the IMB’s 5,500 missionaries have left the mission field because of the new, more conservative doctrinal statement, including 13 who were fired for refusing to sign the statement. The exodus is presumably the IMB’s largest departure ever over one issue.

An IMB spokesman declined to comment on the BGCT plan.

At least 10 missionaries have shown interest in receiving funds through the new Texas Baptist funding channel. The Texas convention already channels some support to four missionaries who returned to their field.

Brooks said the program will be a cooperative effort between Texas Baptists and Baptists in the host countries who want the former missionaries to return to their fields of service.

The funding channel, approved unanimously by the BGCT’s State Missions Commission Aug. 19, will be operational by Oct. 1 if approved by the convention’s Executive Board Sept 30. It will eventually become part of a new as-yet-unnamed missions network of the BGCT.

Contributions to help support the former missionaries are welcome and should be designated to the “Former Missionary Fund” c/o Don Sewell, Director of Texas Partnership Resource Center, 333 North Washington Dallas, TX. 75246.

Contributions may also be sent to Mainstream Baptists at P.O. Box 6371 Norman, OK 73070. Those contributing $75.00 or more thru the Mainstream organization will receive a free copy of the book Stand With Christ. Designate gifts to the “Former Missionary Fund.”

Mainstream Baptists are also encouraged to enlist their church’s mission organizations to take up offerings for former missionaries. Try working through the ordinary channels by which your church supports missions. Try to get your church, association, or state convention to support the former missionaries. Ask them, “How, in good conscience, can you expect support for a denomination that persecutes the same God-called missionaries it formerly sustained?”

November 2003