For clarification on IFB missions.
It has been my experience that our missionaries do not return every 6 months or so to drum up support. Typically, they will accumulate their support for a couple years after schooling and before going to the field. They then will stay on the field for a period of 4-5 years without ever coming home. After that period, they will return for "furlough" and tour their supporting churches to give a report of the work done, what needs to be done in the future and their plans for accomplishing that. Then after about 6-9 months they will again return to the fields for another extended stay.
This is the pattern I have seen with the specific missionaries that my home church sponsors.
Someone mentioned accountability. I think the above scheme of things lends itself to a good bit of accountability. Yes, the missionary does leave his work for a short period every few years, but not until he has trained an indigenous (sp) pastor to take over that local church the missionary has built. Ususally, the missionary will return on his furlough with plans for establishing another church body in a neighboring community. He will only help to supervise the growth of the indigenous church and its pastor while working in the next community to build a church there.
OTOH, I have not seen missionaries face to face in the SBC churches I have atteneded. I don't even remember seeing "news letters" from the missionaries that local SBC churches support.
It may have indeed happened at other SBC churches, it's just that I have not seen it in those I have attended. I have been in SBC in both Idaho, and Montana so I don't think my experience is isolated, though it is limited.
As for seperation, it is my experience that IFB is much more ridgid (not legalistic) in their definitions of seperation than SBC. And that is why IFB is a good fit for me. I like seeing my missionaries and meeting them personally and talking with them at our fellwoship dinners we have when they come through our area. I also like the clear definitions of seperation that our IFB churches hold to. I do not see IFB's definitions of seperation as the same as legalistic. Legalism, biblically, is defined as works leading to salvation or in order to keep salvation, and that is NOT what seperation is all about.
Just my take on things.
In HIS service;
Jim