Comments on Baptists Today Blogs: CBF Houston in review

Tony, Giving to the BSC was 15 percent below budg...

2009-07-08T14:32:11.656-04:00

Tony,
Giving to the BSC was 15 percent below budget at the end of May, but not "down" 15 percent from the previous year, as your blog implied. June income saw a decrease in that gap. http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/post/2009/07/07/Halfway-through-year-CP-trails-by-19-percent.aspx

In a conversation with Keith Parks, CBF's first missions director, for this editorial http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/post/2009/05/29/GCR-harkens-to-Bold-Mission-Thrust.aspx he mentioned something that was not germaine to the editorial, so I didn't use it. But it is germaine to your point about missions and missions giving. Evidently Parks and CBF parted ways in part because CBF's increasing social service emphasis on ministry evangelism was not in synch with Parks' vision. It could well be one reason missions giving in CBF is reflecting the same, sad trend of other mission sending organizations. I ate breakfast today with a church planter in another state who was in North Carolina "hunting" for church budgets he could get into for support for his church start. Direct, personal contact, "he's my guy," societal missions funding appears to be on the way back. Don't know what CBF's excuse is, but Southern Baptists did it to themselves by electing only four presidents in 30 years who gave as much as 10 percent to the Cooperative Program.

I totally agree about the concern over mission sup...

2009-07-06T20:25:05.487-04:00

I totally agree about the concern over mission support. We are making a regression, it seems, to the frustrating days where missionaries spent as much of more time securing funds as in being on the mission field.

That shortcoming was addressed and solved through the creation of the Foreign and Home Mission Boards. Now, it seems, there is too little trust in any agency.

Add to this the selfish wish to support only that which a church can control, and you have a formula to missions reduction.

While sending a mission group from a church to build something or do a short term program pales in comparison with what a long term professional missionary can accomplish. The combination of long term professional and short term special group can accomplish much, but not nearly as much as the old system of trust and live among the people in need of a witness.

Gene Scarborough

Tony, Thanks for your remarks and reflections. I d...

2009-07-06T14:52:59.813-04:00

Tony,
Thanks for your remarks and reflections. I do think that the economy, distance to Houston, and the dates of the assembly were obsticles to attending the meeting this year. But I also think that CBF needs to look seriously at its demographics and hold meetings in locations of strength. I understand the need to hold the annual meeting in different places, but why has the meeting been held in Texas six times during the last 18 years (thats 1/3 of the assemblies: Ft. Worth in 92,95 and 02; Houston in 98 and 09, and Grapevine in 05) while North Carolina has hosted the meeting only twice over the same 18 years (GSO in 94, Charlotte in 03)? In 03 there were more than 5000 present! I am, as a North Carolinian a bit biased here, but for the life of me I cannot understand the rationale. If the motive is outreach, it has simply not worked and led to questions about decline and non-participation.

One other thought on the decline of centralized missions programs - In CBF, much attention has been given to developing "missional congregations". It may be the case that churches are taking this call seriously and finding new ways to engage their communities and take seriously the neighborhoods where we live. There are implications for older mission paradigms when churches discover that their own neighborhoods are ripe with missional opportunities.

I've been perplexed of late as to why so many chur...

2009-07-06T14:27:23.982-04:00

I've been perplexed of late as to why so many churches have moved away from supporting missions from the large SBC pot o' money while moving toward directly supporting missionaries from their local church. Given the time and energy required by self-sustaining missionaries to raise support, which takes time from the mission field, it just seems extraordinarily ineffecient. Certainly, there are some advantages to supporting missionaries you know by name, but I can't begin to imagine this aspect outweighs the inherent inefficiences of self-support.

Many SBC presidential candidates of late have taken flak for their missions giving, in particular their relative dearth of Cooperative Program giving (despite impressive giving toward non-CP missions). I wonder if the same thing is happening with the CBF. Seems to me a downturn in the economy is just the time to be pooling our resources rather than the inefficient redundancies inherent in an everybody-do-your-own-thing approach to missions.