Leaving IFB to become SBC

The SBC churches we've been members of have also partnered with and gotten to know missionaries. We have sent teams to work with some missionaries and year after year and we have seen videos of work and "listened in" on phone conversations with these same missionaries during services.

 

Apparently the SBC churches of this day and age have learned from the IFB in this regard. In the 50s and 60s, no such thing happened. :thumbs:

 

Perhaps I should have said "individual churches supporting individual missionaries." But I do thank God for how SBC churches such as yours have come along in this area. When I was in language school in Tokyo, 1981-82, the SBC missionaries went to the same school so I got to know some of them well. I remember one conversation where I described how IFB churches do missions, and the SBC missionaries I was talking to were jealous, in a godly way, of our relationship with the individual churches and the prayer support we got.

 

DC, SBC missionaries have been visiting SBC churches while on furlough long before the 50's and 60's. You are only speaking from your personal experience with a few SBC churches and it does not reflect the overall truth.

 

Interestingly enough, I read John of Japan's message right after yours - you know, the one where the SBC missionaries were jealous at the relationship that he had as an IFB missionary with the churches back home....?

So I think it's more than my "few" SBC church experiences.

Pastors?
I know we treat our Pastor better than most churches around here.
Example: The piano tuner is coming to town, so I called Pastor's wife to see if she wants to get her home piano tuned. She informed me that it needs tuning, but she cannot afford it this month.

Her piano will be tuned, thanks to 2 caring church members.

 

DC you are still speaking out of turn. John's experience is limited too. You, like many IBF'ers are painting a wrong picture just as many SBC'ers do toward IBF churches. God uses both systems very well. Both have their strong points and both have their weak points. God, effectively, uses both systems to spread the good news. Neither is better than the other.

One thing though about SBC missionaries. When they are home on furlough and visit with churches they do not go with the purpose of raising money. Yes, they want SBC churches to know what the money, given through the Cooperative Program is doing but the main purpose is to show what God is doing. When SBC missionaries visit churches they don't ask for a special offerings. They don't have too. The main thing they ask for, and I heard it many time, in many different SBC churches, is prayer. (Seems 40+ years of being involved in SBC churches is quite different than DC's) They seem to value prayer above all else.

 

I've been both IFB and SBC. Both have their good and their bad.

If I had my preference, I'd be neither. Labels get in the way of too many good people. In Heaven it's not going to matter.:smilewinkgrin:

As for missions, I pastor an SBC deaf church and we support three independent Baptist missionaries to the deaf as well as the IMB. I doubt that there are many IFB churches that do likewise. One of the best (IMHO) IMB missionaries that I know was trained in an IFB college, and there are likely others as well.

Edit: I wanted to add that I did deputation as an IFB missionary and it was the best 18 months of our family's life. We enjoyed our nine years as missionaries with an IFB sending agency and we still enjoy a great relationship with our former IFB sending church and several individuals from churches that formerly supported us.

But when we got to the mission field, we started getting the questionnaires quibbling about which Bible version we used, if we supported women wearing pants, which side if the current split we were on, etc. and etc. and as a result the support dropped (The Lord never let us suffer for it though!). That is the negative side to IFB missions- it is too much like a "beauty contest" and the missionaries have to keep getting "makeovers" in order to keep the support coming in. I know many missionaries that are "this" or "that" when it comes to filling out questionnaires or writing prayer letters but something else entirely in real life. They also tend to speak "evangelistically" a lot- if there aren't any notches in the "Gospel gun" there's usually little support. The pressures to do those things are removed in the SBC program.

All that being said- I thank the Lord for every good Bible-believing, Gospel-preaching, devil-hating, sinner-loving, and disciple-making church and missionary and pray that we will make His savor known in every place.

 

It's too late to edit my post above but I did want to stress that the MAJORITY of IFB missionaries that I know are aboveboard in their lives, ministries, and in how they deal with those dad-gum questionnaires.

At least AFAIK- LOL!

 

And that is the definition of a Southern Baptist.

The state conventions are autonomous from the SBC. They are completely different organizations.

Simply put, there are a few SBC churches with female pastors.

There are many more with homosexual pastors, although that is probably only known to the pastor and a very small number of people. But that's hardly an SBC issue alone.

 

I don't go on furlough with the purpose of raising money. I don't know anyone who does. And I don't ask for special offerings. Never have.

 

So, you never visit one of your supporting churches with the idea of maintaining your funding? By the way, I'm not knocking that. You have to have support.

 

Southern Baptist Agency to Cut Missionary Force by 600

 

No, I never have the motive of support when we visit our supporting churches. We visit them to report what their support has done in Japan, just as Paul did when he went back to Antioch, his sending church, after his first missionary term in Acts 14:27--"And when they were come, and had gathered the church together, they rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles."

My motives even on deputation were always to be a blessing and to promote the cause of world missions, and leave the matter of support completely up to the Lord and the church. So I have never one time asked for monetary support or money for a special project. I've found that the Lord is perfectly able to lead the right churches to support us without my help. That's why this approach is sometimes called "faith missions." :saint:

 

That's wonderful. However, I'm like those who would say that this was my sum experience in IFB (well, the ones that believed in missions and evangelism, and around here those are few and far between). IFB missionary goes on the field for two months then spends the next year going around trying to get support.

Thankfully you don't have to do this, and I pray you never do.

Jerome,
Sad but true. ONE missionary that has to come home because of churches failing to give is a tragedy. There are a number of reasons this is happening and it's happening all over Christianity. Even some IFB churches I know who believe in missions (and these are few) are cutting missions giving altogether. The first thing that goes when we have to tighten our belts is the last thing that should go.

 

And we still call ours "Faith Promise missions giving" And by the grace of Almighty God, our little church of 150 supports 50 different missionaries with varied amounts of $50-$100 each month.

God is good :applause:

 

That's actually an issue with the churches you were involved in, not so much a problem with the SBC way of doing missions.

The weird thing about that is that my current church is not in very good standing with the SBC for lots of reasons (we have female deacons and haven't been huge supporters of Paige Patterson), but we host missionaries on furlough in our missionary residence on a continual basis. We get to know them very well for six months to a year and then continue to communicate with and support them from then on.

Over the past 10 years or so, I've probably gotten to know about 8 missionary families, not to mention the missionaries that came out of our congregation and are serving overseas.

 

Current SBC President Bryant Wright:

"If the average Southern Baptist knew that only about 19 cents of every [Cooperative Program] dollar winds up on the international mission field, I believe they too would feel a need for a radical reprioritization of missions giving."

TN Baptist and Reflector

 

Maybe, maybe not.

Most SBC folks understand that serving the cause of cooperative missions involves not only international, but domestic missions. Furthermore, institutions like seminaries take a portion of the funds in order to train the domestic and international missionaries, as well as the future leaders of churches so that the SBC can have an educated clergy.

Moreover, in many state conventions, about 50% of the monies given by the churches stays within the state to strengthen the local cooperative efforts and ministries in our backyards.

So it is misleading to make it sound like a scandal because everyone who has ever bothered to check into things knows that there is a strategy for cooperative giving. It is NOT simply earmarked for international missions and then only 1/5 of the money actually makes it like your quote implies.

The SBC has intentionally adopted a Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth strategy of ministry.

You may like it or dislike it, but you need to be fair, honest, complete and accurate about it.

And this is coming from a guy who doesn't consider himself a Southern Baptist anymore.

 

Do you mean a two month short term or survey trip? IMO that's often a bad idea, although most of the younger crowd do that nowadays. (I'm old school.) The eager young candidate sometimes makes a bad impression on the veterans, which hurts when he actually reaches the field. Or sometimes they see where God has called them and say, "No way."

Actually, I went on deputation for 3 1/2 years, 1977-1981, but didn't think of it as being for support primarily, but as training for me, recruiting prayer warriors and promoting world missions. When God was ready for us to go to the field, we stepped out on faith and all the rest of our support came in, just like that. That's why it's called the "faith missions" method. Any young candidate who looks at deputation as recruiting monetary givers is "doing it wrong, a fail" like they say on the Internet nowadays.

Deputation was the hardest thing I've ever done, but our mission director, Dr. Monroe Parker, told me to look at it like seminary, a learning process. Think of the privilege of traveling to 100 different churches and seeing how each of them does the Lord's work. It was a wonderful time of training and education for me.