International Mission Board of Trustees | Richmond, Virginia
Good morning and thank you for your ongoing commitment to your role as an IMB trustee. Together, we have committed ourselves to addressing lostness as the world’s greatest problem. To that end, we are striving for a growing missionary presence around the world. Thus, we rejoice over your approval this week of a wonderfully large group of new missionaries heading to Indianapolis next month for the Sending Celebration at the SBC Annual Meeting.
We continue to work for growth in the missionary application pipeline and are grateful to see the number of applicants consistently above 1,300 over the past several months. Hoping to welcome more retirees to field service through the IMB, we are relaunching the Master’s Missionary pathway as a fully funded opportunity for those age 55 and up. As Todd Lafferty shared yesterday, with an average of 10,000 Boomers retiring every day in the U.S., we see great opportunity for many of those retirees to join an IMB overseas team as a Master’s Missionary.
This pathway and others like it, by God’s grace and the generosity of Southern Baptists, means that fully funded missionaries continue to be our mainstay at the IMB. To provide for the support of a growing number of missionary candidates, we rejoice that our past two Lottie Offerings have been the largest in our history, and this year’s offering is on pace to potentially set another record.
As we celebrate what God is doing among the nations through the IMB and our Baptist partners on the ground, we welcomed the much-anticipated release of the Annual Statistic Report at this board meeting. The ASR affords IMB an incredible opportunity to communicate to every cooperating Southern Baptist church the global reach of their ministry.
IMB President Paul Chitwood emphasized the company’s commitment to transparency before Southern Baptists and IMB’s unwavering commitment to missionary presence among the lost. IMB Photo
Working through the IMB, your Southern Baptist church and my Southern Baptist church did gospel work in 155 countries this past year. More than 451,000 people heard a full gospel presentation through our IMB missionaries and their national partners on the ground, with 141,000 professing faith in Jesus. Another 800,000 souls heard the gospel online in video content that was viewed to at least 95% complete. As our churches celebrate a growing number of baptisms here in the U.S. reflected on the Annual Church Profile that was recently released, every church can add to its ACP baptisms total another 117,000 who were baptized overseas through the work of their IMB missionaries as reported in the ASR.
Whether it’s a rural church of 15 in Kentucky that reported zero baptisms or a megachurch of 10,000 in Texas that reported 800 baptisms, what a blessing for each congregation to be able to rejoice in another 117,000 souls buried with Christ and raised to new life! With an ACP in one hand and the ASR in the other, every church can celebrate in how God is using them.
Might that celebration be tempered only by the reality of growing lostness. Among a global population of 8.1 billion people, growing at a rate of 200,000 every single day, the number of people who die lost each day is also growing. This year, that average number reaches to 174,202 souls who will enter a Christless eternity each day and abide in hell forever. If we are not sufficiently motivated in the work of missions because of the joy of more going to heaven, might we be motivated by the sorrow of more going to hell.
Thankfully, Southern Baptists are becoming more motivated in their work through the IMB. And we see that clearly in their giving. Like reporting on gospel shares and baptisms through the ASR, reporting how the IMB stewards the generous gifts of Southern Baptist and the impact their gifts are making, is also an honor and a privilege. At the IMB, we undertake financial stewardship and reporting with a goal toward full transparency and the highest standards of accountability.
What does that look like? First, in accordance with the SBC Business and Financial Plan, which stipulates that members of cooperating Southern Baptist churches should have “access to information from the records of Southern Baptist Convention entities regarding income, expenditures, debts, reserves, operating balances, and salary structures,” IMB’s unredacted, independent external audits, stating income, expenditures, debts, reserves, and operating balances, are available for public viewing by anyone at anytime in the SBC Book of Reports and on IMB.org.
Second, IMB operates in compliance with the standards of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, ensuring that IMB adheres to the industry standards for Christian organizations, including standards regarding to executive compensation.
Third, each year the Chair of IMB’s Board of Trustees submits a statement referenced in the SBC’s Book of Reports that confirms the compensation of IMB’s President is not excessive and in keeping with biblical stewardship and also that IMB’s expenses are reasonable and incurred to accomplish IMB’s mission statement and ministry assignment, with no impropriety.
Fourth, in addition to the wealth of information already provided to the public, the IMB regularly shares that, independent of influence by the president or any other any IMB executive, salary structures for the president are set by IMB trustees, through a series of evaluations and recommendations, before being presented to the full board for approval. The IMB’s president and executive leadership team then set salary ranges for all other staff positions in consultation with IMB’s Human Resources team, which engages independent professionals to ensure that IMB’s salaries are within a reasonable range for similar positions with similar organizations in similar markets.
In these and many, many other ways, the IMB conducts its financial business above reproach and in full view of trustees appointed to represent Southern Baptists and ensure the integrity of the operations of the IMB.
As for last year’s SBC floor motion referencing IRS 990 reporting, which is not required for local Southern Baptist churches nor church entities like Baptist state conventions or SBC entities like the IMB, Southern Baptists should be made aware of why that is more than problematic. Most importantly, the IRS 990 requires public reporting of overseas entities, which would include entities we use for getting funds into secure locations. The form also requires disclosure of all of the geographical areas around the world where the organization is conducting activities and to identify the kinds of activities being conducted. That kind of public reporting could literally put the lives of our missionary families and their national partners at risk. Moreover, publicly disclosing donor information, as the 990 requires, would potentially compromise the confidentiality of church members and other donors. Thankfully, the 990 is not required, nor is it a reasonable expectation of the IMB. Financial transparency and accountability, however, are reasonably expected by Southern Baptists, and the IMB meets and exceeds those expectations.
When trustee oversight is rightly exercised, as it is at the IMB, Southern Baptists can rest assured that the very highest standards of accountability are also being exercised, standards that far surpass anything I’ve ever seen in any local Southern Baptist church or any other state or national entity.
Well, there’s so much more to say. But I’ll close by sharing something I haven’t been able to get off of my mind since March 14. That’s when one of my daughters and I were visiting with one of our IMB teams in the Americas working among an unreached people group that has been displaced to the city because of drug gang violence in their jungle homeland. Coming into the cities with no education, no money, and no jobs, these families are poor, desperate, often exploited, and hopeless. On top of all of that, an informal but easy to observe class system works against them.
There was one particular moment from that trip that has not left my mind. We had stopped on the street to visit with some ladies from the people group sitting on the concrete sidewalk with their children all about them. The ladies were trying to sell small pieces of jewelry that they were making from wire and plastic beads. At the feet of one of the ladies was a little girl. I would guess her to be two, no more than three years old. As you can see, she was asleep face down on the concrete. No mat, no pillow, no shoes or socks. Just a little darkhaired girl in a dirty dress with her face pressed against the dirty, cold, hard sidewalk … asleep.
Jesus once said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” Then he asked, “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?”
On the city streets sleep the little ones, without shoes for their feet. They are despised by the world but loved by the Father. And on the city streets walk the beautiful feet of those in search of the little one so lost that a dirty, cold, hard sidewalk is her only bed. How beautiful are the feet that bring Good News.
Thank you for remaining focused and not letting go of the rope of support of those thousands upon thousands of beautiful feet, our missionary presence around the world. Mr. Chairman, that completes my report.