IMB unanimously passes Global Connect 2 pilot project

RICHMOND, Va.—A new pilot project approved unanimously by International Mission Board trustees Nov. 15 will allow up to 25 churches to fully fund and send their own short-term missionaries.

Through the project, called Great Commission Global Connect (GC2), sending churches will pay for deployment costs and ongoing salary for these GC2 missionaries and have a key role as accountability partners to those personnel. IMB will partner with these GC2 churches by helping select missionaries and providing strategy consultation as well as administrative support and training.

After unveiling the proposal, IMB President Tom Elliff made it clear that GC2 field ministry will be “in concert with the total strategy” of the IMB. The IMB will cover the cost of sending church-funded GC2 missionaries through its standard eight-week training regimen, with a limit of 100 adults to be approved for the pilot.

“It’s not as if they come up with a strategy, tell us what they want to do and go over and do that,” Elliff said. “That’s not the way this works,” he added, calling the strategy “field-driven.”

When GC2s arrive on the field, they will “absolutely, 100 percent be operating under the supervision, under the authority of our field team,” Elliff told the TEXAN in a later interview. Total compliance with IMB policy is specifically required of GC2 appointees in the covenant agreement between the sending churches and the IMB.

The TEXAN obtained a draft copy of the pending covenant, which currently states that all practices and policies now applying to IMB missionary personnel will apply equally to all GC2s. That includes conducting ministry within the parameters of the Baptist Faith and Message confession and following the principles of the IMB’s indigenous church planting strategy.

GC2 appointees would not be “some privileged people who can hop, skip and jump into the system without chinning the same bar that the rest of our personnel do,” he said, later comparing the standards for which they will be accountable to those currently used with International Service Corps. Only members of Southern Baptist churches that are in agreement with the BF&M and give evidence of a growing Christian faith and commitment to evangelism need apply, he added.

Furthermore, missionaries deployed under the pilot project “don’t get any more money or less money” than current IMB personnel serving in comparable settings.

Participating churches will send designated gifts—three months in advance—to provide the amount of budget necessary to pay GC2s, Elliff explained. “They’ll be on the same kind of stipend as every one of our personnel in the same kind of agreement.” Failure to make timely payments will result in termination of the covenant and withdrawal of GC2 missionaries.

Accountability for on-field GC2 ministry practices and personal behaviors will not rest solely with the IMB, but also with the sending churches, representing a significant change from current practice of traditionally appointed missionaries.

When GC2 missionaries “realize that they are responsible to local churches, and their churches are going to be in their face with regard to their lives and what they are doing on the field—I can’t see that, friends, as anything but healthy and in recognition of who we are—a parachurch organization,” Elliff told trustees.

“We are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Southern Baptist Convention,” he explained, reminding that missionaries are sent out by local churches under the call of God. “We are a facilitating organization.”

IMB trustee chairman Jimmy Pritchard, pastor of First Baptist Church of Forney, told the board. “There was a great culmination of the work of the board on this last recommendation,” referring to the GC2 pilot project following passage without further discussion. “It was studied, prayed through, went back to staff, then back to trustees,” he said, referring to a period of more than two years ironing out the expectations of sponsoring churches and the IMB.

Texas trustee A.C. Halsell of Village Parkway Baptist Church in San Antonio told the TEXAN that Elliff effectively responded to each concern that any trustees had over the process of developing the proposal.

“All of us are expecting a successful venture. If there happen to be some shortcomings in the project, they should come to light in the two-year window,” he added.

Trustee Marshall Johnson of MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church in Irving said the pilot also would reveal how invested SBC churches are in the Cooperative Program, “and how willing we are to add other avenues to our mission support.”

One aspect of the arrangement that he is interested in evaluating during the two-year period involves the “two bosses” of GC2 personnel, referring to the sending church that pays the missionary’s salary and the field personnel who direct the missionary’s work.

When Elliff was asked by the TEXAN if he sees the GC2 pilot program as more reflective of a New Testament model of missionary-sending, he responded, “Yes, I do. Missionaries came through the local church,” said Elliff, referring to men like Barnabas and Saul who were sent out by the church at Antioch.

Pritchard added, “These missionaries, all of them, are coming from churches and we’re a facilitating ministry of the churches. We’re wanting to get back to that,” he insisted.

Reaching people groups or population segments in order to plant indigenous churches is the goal of GC2, said Texas trustee Mike Gonzales, SBTC director of Hispanic and Ethnic Ministries, and a member of First Baptist Church in Colleyville. “This will enhance our SBTC goals in reaching the unreached, unengaged people groups (UUPGs) of the world.”

While still learning how this partnership will affect the SBTC in the future, Gonzales said, “We are to go to the ends of the earth and that will be our mission as long as we keep our focus on Christ.”

Elliff told trustees there were a lot of factors to making the decisions.

“The main question asked was, ‘Is this departing from the cooperative work we normally do as Southern Baptists? Is it an independent Baptist model?’ The answer is no—it’s just a new dimension to cooperation.”

Trustees also questioned whether a church that decided to fund its own missionaries would ultimately decrease giving through the Cooperative Program, Elliff said.

“We got that worked out in terms of the covenant,” Elliff noted, referring to a requirement that participating churches maintain their level of giving through the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions for the duration of the GC2’s service, and must not reallocate those gifts “in order to fund their GC2s.”

“There is no way we would entertain doing this with a church that does not give to the Cooperative Program,” Elliff told trustees in plenary session.

Still in his first year as IMB president, Elliff told trustees the rationale for the GC2 pilot project is “a heartfelt response on the part of IMB to the Great Commission Resurgence.

“I thank the Lord for our seminaries. They have produced an entire new generation of passionate, young, theologically astute, and ardently mission-minded pastors,” Elliff said as background for the GC2 rationale.

“It is a new generation,” he added, reflecting on a meeting with some of these pastors. Elliff said he told them, ‘“You all are the answer to a dream that was born in the hearts of many of us years ago.’ I just couldn’t keep back the tears because these guys want to do it right.”

Elliff said the thing that such pastors “care about so much” is for IMB staff and missionaries, and all Southern Baptists to “understand that missionaries are called by God in the framework of the local church.”

Not only do these younger pastors want to send missionaries, they “desperately desire to maintain a contact between themselves and our missionaries who are on the field.”

“Sometimes things are more of an art than they are a science,” Elliff said, noting that the newly adopted recommendation will have to be refined as other current IMB initiatives were when they were initially adopted.

John Ross, a trustee from First Baptist Church of Longview, said the genius of the plan is in its simplicity. “It connects the local church intimately with the field.” As a church visualizes the Revelation 7:9 vision and a family in that congregation grasps “the Romans 15 vision of taking the gospel to an unengaged, unreached people group where no one has sown before, they receive training from the IMB and fill critically needed roles in partnership with us, mentored by veteran missionaries and integrated into the overall Southern Baptist mission effort.”

With the progress of evangelism and discipleship, Ross said the sending church has feet on the ground and would likely send more people to prayerwalk, witness and disciple “their people group.”

Glynn Stone, pastor of Mobberly Baptist Church in Longview, said he expects God will give churches a specific burden for a people group funneled through “the greatest world mission organization that has ever existed.” The combination of “IMB processes and church passions” through GC2 “will put more people in more places for more souls to be won to Christ,” he said.

“As a pastor who is committed to annually increased Lottie giving and increased partnerships around the world in church planting, GC2 can become a tremendous success for IMB and individual churches.”

Despite the enthusiastic endorsement, Elliff said GC2 has yet to be introduced “into the mainstream of our strategy.”

“We are saying that this is a two-year pilot program” that trustees can vote on in 2013 based on IMB assessments and current SBC missions and ministry assignment per the Cooperative Program. IMB trustees will perform an interim evaluation of GC2 in 2012, he added.

“We’re going to watch it like a hawk for two years and listen to our affinity group and strategy leaders who ultimately have the last word on it,” Elliff said in closing. “We’ll discover what it does to our involvement in CP and Lottie Moon from these churches.”

Elliff added, “Jesus said that where our treasure is, that’s where our heart is. I feel like these folks that these churches are sending out—they need to be the treasures that God intends for them to be so that the heart of every local church follows. I believe this is one way that can happen,” Elliff said.

OTHER BUSINESS
The board also heard a report that nearly 1.5 million people were presented with a gospel invitation in 2010. Of those, more than 442,000 became new believers, and more than 333,000 new believers were baptized. Missionaries and local believers also started more than 28,800 new churches.

Scott Holste, IMB’s associate vice president of global strategy, said God used IMB engagement to accomplish some significant firsts, including newly engaging more than 200 people groups with the gospel, 90 of which are unreached (less than 2 percent evangelical Christian). Missionaries also reported the first believer among 26 people groups, the first baptism among 32 people groups and the first church among 13 people groups.

In other business, trustees approved IMB’s 2012 budget of $324.3 million, $175 million of which is expected to come through this year’s Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

Charles Fowler, finance committee chairman and pastor of Germantown Baptist Church in Germantown, Tenn., said the 2012 budget was the “most difficult to balance of any in recent years.” To illustrate his point, he explained that the first draft of the budget prepared earlier this year contained a $37 million gap between projected income and projected expenses.

“Our staff has worked splendidly to bring us to a place where we can enjoy a balanced budget,” Fowler said. “Though we wish the resources were more, we are so grateful for the resources that God does provide to IMB through our Southern Baptist family.”

In a money-saving move, the board approved a bylaw revision reducing the annual number of trustee meetings from six to “at least” four times per year, which will save a quarter million dollars per year, CFO David Steverson told the TEXAN.

Trustees will travel overseas every other year to the part of the world where the affinity committee on which they serve is located, Steverson added. “Those trips are in addition to the four meetings in the USA and trustees participate in the costs of those trips.”

Elliff was inaugurated the first evening of the meeting during a special service at Richmond’s Grove Avenue Baptist Church on Nov. 14. The 77 newly appointed missionaries were present to hear their new leader describe his vision for the IMB.

After the Nov. 15 plenary session, Elliff reiterated his excitement over the potential that Global Connect 2 could provide for more long-term missionaries.

“The greatest feeder for Southern Baptist IMB personnel is having some kind of missionary experience on the field,” he said. “If you look at these people we just appointed, many of them were ‘Journeyman,’ ISC, ‘Masters’ or ‘Hands On.’”

In 2009, budget cuts forced IMB to begin sending significantly fewer two- and three-year missionaries, but Elliff said GC2 would help fill that gap and rejuvenate the feeder stream.

“We’re anticipating many of these people who go out in this short-term endeavor through these local churches will come back and say, ‘You know something? We want to be missionaries. We want to go back through the IMB and be fully supported Southern Baptist Convention missionaries.’ So we’re looking for a whole lot of influx there.”

Norm Miller is director of communications for Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Ga., and provided this report on behalf of the TEXAN. Additional reporting by Don Graham of IMB.