• FIRST-PERSON: Think with meOctober 9, 2023

  Editor’s note: October is Cooperative Program Emphasis Month in the Southern Baptist Convention.

  

  What do you wake up thinking about? What about when it’s 3 a.m. and you can’t go back to sleep, what keeps you awake?

  I almost always think first about work. For me it’s the work of the International Mission Board. Thoughts about that work are accompanied by the reality of the 173,451 people who die separated from God every day. Headed to a hopeless eternity. Each is bound by the world’s greatest problem: lostness.

  I think about the solution to lostness: the gospel of Jesus Christ. This life-giving news is one of the first Bible lessons you and I ever learned: that God so loved the world, He gave His Son, that whosoever believes shall not perish but have everlasting life. It’s news that never gets old, and news that the nations are waiting to hear.

  I think about your more than 3,500 international missionaries who have answered God’s call to the nations. For 178 years, the IMB has been Southern Baptists’ mechanism for getting the gospel to those who’ve never heard it. The presence of these missionaries cultivates gospel access, gospel belief and church planting and multiplication.

  I think about how Southern Baptists have ensured that the constant flow of missionaries to the nations never goes unsupported due to your persistent commitments. Missionaries are undergirded first and foremost through your faithful prayer; and, for nearly 100 years, through your Cooperative Program gifts, and even before that, through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering®.

  Day and night, those thoughts renew my resolve to ensure that the IMB is vision driven, church centric, organizationally strong and mission focused on reaching the lost. With all Southern Baptists, I remain committed that IMB follows the Holy Spirit to the least-reached people groups on the planet.

  At the same time, I must confess, there are nights that I feel a bit like Nehemiah surveying the broken walls of Jerusalem as he walked in the night, especially when I think about the current trends we’re facing in the SBC. One of those troubling trends is Cooperative Program giving. More than 50 percent of the Cooperative Program gifts forwarded by your state convention come to the IMB. Those CP gifts make up about 30 percent of IMB’s already lean budget. Factoring in inflation, current CP giving aligns with CP giving from the 1980s.

  Today, 8.1 billion people live on Earth. In the 1980s, the population was about half that figure. In the simplest of terms, Southern Baptists are giving equivalent funds today as we did in the ’80s to reach nearly double – literally billions more – the number of people with the gospel.

  At the same time, we hear of churches withholding their CP giving because of a concern they have with a specific recipient entity, ministry or individual. We hear of churches escrowing or even reducing their normal CP contributions out of frustration or disagreement.

  But I think about those who are on the other side of this equation:

  I think about Jaime and Myrna Pagán, who serve as IMB missionaries in México City. The Pagáns have invested their lives among the millions who live there, steeped in cultural Catholicism and animism, so they can share about a personal, saving relationship with Christ. They pray for U.S. churches to send more short-term and long-term laborers to join them at work.

  I think about Shanti, a Himalayan woman who followed the Hindu religion. Her small people group of 6,000 was found through a partnership between IMB missionaries Mike and Beth McKenzie and national believers named Lalita and Sandeep. From them, Shanti heard the gospel and accepted Christ. About six months after she was baptized, Shanti’s body succumbed to cancer. As far as we know, she was the first of her people group to die in Christ.

  I think about Ézéchiel, a lanky teenager in Togo who, though Deaf, could sense that a group of Americans he saw in his community, and the local pastors they were working with, were Christians. He wrote for them the words “my family” in French, the official language of Togo, then motioned for them to follow. When the visitors caught up and stopped outside a house, Ézéchiel pointed at his cross pendant and nudged IMB Journeyman Brooke Tipton toward the door. He wanted them to share the gospel with his family members, who each accepted Christ that day.

  All these lives — and countless more over the past 99 years — have been directly impacted for eternity through faithful Cooperative Program giving.

  A final thought. Brothers and sisters, let us not grow weary in this work of pushing back darkness. Let us not abandon this blessed partnership to undergird that work with our faithful Cooperative Program giving. Let us not forget that one bright, new day we will be among a great multitude that no one can number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. And some of them will be there because God used Southern Baptists and our commitment to work together to get the gospel to those who had never heard.

• Support of IMB gives home team advantage, Chitwood saysJune 13, 2023

  Paul Chitwood, president of the International Mission Board, started IMB’s report to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting with a request. He asked the more than 11,000 messengers if they would record a greeting to missionaries overseas to be shared in a monthly online meeting of IMB field personnel and staff. The crowd enthusiastically participated with applause and cheers.

  Connection of Southern Baptists to 3,500 missionaries and their 2,700 kids was central to the report. Chitwood expressed his desire for more churches to have a personal relationship with a missionary on the field and to consider the IMB as their own.

  

  Through Church Connections efforts, Chitwood reported, missionaries and churches are building deeper partnerships and giving the work overseas “a name and a face.” Church Connections is a commitment of IMB missionaries to initiate a relationship with all Southern Baptist churches. Churches who do not yet know the missionary assigned to their church were encouraged to stop by the IMB exhibit booth during the event or email info@imb.org. 

  Chitwood shared the impact Southern Baptists had through IMB workers in 2022, made possible through record Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® giving and $100 million in Cooperative Program receipts.  

  Missions work by IMB missionaries included:  

  • Gospel work in 122 countries; 
  • 21,000 new churches planted; 
  • Gospel shared with 728,000 people; 
  • 178,000 came to faith in Jesus Christ; 
  • 102,000 people were baptized. 

  These statistics are shared in IMB’s 2022 Annual Statistical Report, which is available to the public. 

  Chitwood thanked God for the 79 newly appointed missionaries participating in the Sending Celebration directly following IMB’s report. He also acknowledged 1,200 missionary candidates currently in the application process before emphasizing his desire to see even more workers on the mission field needed because of the daily growth of those dying without Christ.  

  “Your IMB missionaries are addressing the world’s greatest problem with the only solution, God’s solution – the gospel. But they need your prayers, your support, your continued generosity, and more workers in the harvest,” he said. 

  “This can only happen if we work together to raise up more missionaries and champion the Lottie Moon offering and the Cooperative Program,” Chitwood continued. 

  “Southern Baptists,” Chitwood said, addressing the crowd, “there are countless other overseas organizations and groups your church can support and partner with. We thank God for them and their impact. But there is only one that belongs to you.”  

  Chitwood stressed that the IMB is the only organization that ascribes to the Baptist Faith and Message, answers to trustees approved by Southern Baptist churches, audits financial statements under SBC oversight, reports to the SBC Executive Committee and messengers at the annual meeting, and sends missionaries rooted in Baptist theology and ecclesiology.  

  “So, here’s my ask of you: Keep cheering for the home team, which is the IMB!” Chitwood encouraged, as he stressed the personal connection of Southern Baptists to IMB missionaries. “Let us not forget our collective promise to hold the ropes” for missionaries bringing the hope of the gospel to the lost.

  

  “For 178 years, you have obeyed the Great Commission by sending missionaries overseas through your International Mission Board. But we need more,” Chitwood said. 

  He confirmed the growing need for missionaries with the statistics that in 1979, with a world population of 4.3 billion, IMB had more than 3,000 missionaries. Today, with a world population of 8 billion, IMB has only 3,500 missionaries. From 2008-2018, 2,000 IMB missionaries returned to the U.S. and were never replaced because of the lack of financial support. 

  Chitwood recounted a story of a pastor who spoke to him, shortly after he became IMB president in November 2018. “Mr. President, everything the IMB needs – more missionaries and more money – is in our churches, but you’re going to have to ask for it,” the pastor told Chitwood. 

  Speaking to the annual meeting messengers, Chitwood said, “Southern Baptists, I’m asking for it.”  

  He continued, “I believe in what we do together. My prayer is that God would open the floodgates and send us 400 new missionaries this year and money to support them. We all believe in the Revelation 7:9 vision of the great multitude. And despite the challenges we face as a convention … we must remain unified in addressing the world’s greatest problem. We can do this.” 

  Chitwood closed his address with an excerpt from an annual meeting report from 1866. That year, the IMB had $1.78 in the accounts and a committee was appointed to consider the future of Southern Baptist missions work overseas.  

  Chitwood read from the committee’s report: “Go forward. Tis His to open a passage through the deep waters; tis ours to move onward. We can discern but one command, we realize but one trust; we are burdened with but one duty, we feel but one desire in this work – Go forward. Through God we will obey.” 

  Chitwood concluded his report and took questions from the floor.

  The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® is a registered trademark of Woman’s Missionary Union. 

• FIRST-PERSON: Partnership requires perseveranceMay 2, 2023

  

  Like most Baptist churches of the day, First Baptist Church of Murray, Kentucky, regularly hosted missionaries and denominational workers raising financial support. Growing frustrated with so many requesting to speak on Sundays, Pastor Harvey Boyce Taylor tried something new. He placed a box at the back of the sanctuary and told the congregation they could put extra offerings in the box and that would be their missions fund, divided up for specific, stipulated causes. The members were soon giving more to mission work through Pastor Taylor’s Box Plan than they had been giving for the individual appeals during Sunday gatherings.

  Seeing the success, Taylor began a campaign to get other churches across the state to adopt the model. The model became so popular that, on Nov. 16, 1915, messengers to the annual meeting of the Kentucky Baptist Convention approved it, calling it the “unified budget plan,” as their way to fund their cooperative mission work. Interestingly, that meeting took place at First Baptist Church of Jellico, Tennessee, just across Kentucky’s state line. Of special interest to me is that First Jellico is my home church where I was baptized, ordained and married.

  Ten years later, in 1925, Kentucky’s unified budget plan was renamed the Cooperative Program and adopted by the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention. Giving through the CP has exceeded $20 billion to date. A commitment to work together can make a history-altering kingdom impact!

  Over time, the Cooperative Program has become essential for the work of the International Mission Board. Virtually every penny of the support for our IMB stateside team members is provided by the CP. But we don’t even use half of IMB’s CP dollars in the U.S., as 60% of those dollars go to support your overseas missionaries and their work. Thank you, Southern Baptists, for the nearly $100 million CP dollars that will come to the IMB this year!

  Though the CP is an incredible tool for kingdom impact, it’s been weakening. Through the first half of the fiscal year, IMB’s CP dollars were down $4 million in comparison to last year. Denominational conflicts, diminishing trust and generational disconnect are weakening the CP. But I’m convinced one of the greatest threats to the CP over recent years has been the fact that many of those who have eaten from the CP table have failed to champion it — and some even find it appropriate to be a part of local church that gives little to nothing to the CP, even though the CP is paying for every penny of that person’s livelihood. That lack of gratitude has caused great harm to the most incredible ministry funding model the Kingdom has ever known.

  Out of their devotion to God and their desire to be a part of God’s work, the New Testament Macedonian churches, though poor, gave an incredibly generous offering to provide for the needs of others. I often think of those churches when I’m praying for the Southern Baptist churches that support the International Mission Board through their generosity.

  In 2 Corinthians 8, the apostle Paul is sharing about the Macedonian churches and boasting on them for their generosity. He writes, “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints — and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us” (2 Corinthians 8:1-5).

  Thank God for the generosity of the Macedonian churches! For the same reason, I’m thankful for Southern Baptist churches today. Thank you, Southern Baptists, for the grace of God that has been given among you, for your abundance of joy that has overflowed in a wealth of generosity. And thank you for giving yourselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God.

  I don’t know what the long-term future holds for the CP, but I do see its ongoing impact — and I’m grateful. I certainly don’t want to take it for granted. To the contrary, I want to do everything I can to see the CP strengthened. Here’s what I am certain of: If or when it’s gone, we won’t get it back. So, let’s not allow our denominational frustrations to cause us to walk away from working together. Instead, let’s look for solutions to the problems that plague us. As history teaches us, those solutions can often result in unexpected, exponential kingdom advance.

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