May 2, 2024
Via Electronic Delivery
Dr. Paul Chitwood, President
International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention
3806 Monument Avenue
Richmond, VA 23230
Dr. Chitwood:
Next month in Indianapolis, Southern Baptists will gather for the 2024 SBC Annual Meeting where more than 10,000 messengers are expected to decide on significant changes to the SBC governing documents, consider recommendations from three major task forces appointed by SBC President Bart Barber, and adopt the SBC allocation budget that contributes more than 50 percent of Cooperative Program receipts to support the work of the International Mission Board. Two weeks from now, trustees of the International Mission Board will gather in Richmond, VA, to approve dozens of missionaries for appointment during the 2024 Sending Celebration to be hosted during the convention’s annual meeting. I write to request your prayerful consideration that the International Mission Board (1) encourage all missionary appointees slated for participation in the June Sending Celebration to seek election as messengers from their sponsoring Southern Baptist Churches and (2) make provision for current field personnel to attend the annual meeting in Indianapolis and conventions thereafter if their respective churches elect them as messengers. Allow me to explain my request.
Last year, as it does every year, the Executive Committee released through Baptist Press a demographic profile of the registered messengers for the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. Of the 12,737 registered messengers, 2.6 percent (or roughly 330 messengers) were also salaried employees of national SBC entities. As you well know, SBC entities spend a considerable amount of money to bring staff to the annual meeting, many of whom work in the Convention Exhibit Hall to greet messengers and interested attendees and provide information about the ministry priorities of their employing entities.
Meanwhile, the International Mission Board assumes an additional cost by bringing to the annual meeting those candidates who have been approved for appointment during the convention program. Last year in New Orleans, the IMB brought 79 missionaries to the convention for appointment. In Anaheim in 2022, you brought 52 missionaries. In Nashville in 2021, you brought 64 missionaries. And in Birmingham, which was your first convention to attend as IMB President, the board brought 26 missionaries to the annual meeting for the Sending Celebration.
Dr. Chitwood, I am concerned that considerable resources are being expended to bring missionaries to the national convention for a Sending Celebration, but that the IMB is failing to encourage these missionaries to actively and simultaneously participate in the annual meeting as elected messengers from their sponsoring churches. Believing as I do that our convention polity serves to PROTECT rather than DISTRACT our missionary force, I believe it is incumbent upon the Board to PROMOTE rather than DENY their full participation in the annual meeting as elected messengers also.
With matters scheduled before the convention to include drastic changes to our governing documents and reports about the historic nature of the SBC’s cooperative framework and Great Commission commitments, it is all the more important that the very people for whom the Southern Baptist Convention was formed (and on account of whom it continues to exist) are given credentials at the annual meeting that their votes may be counted and their voices heard. By actively encouraging their participation as messengers, the IMB, which receives the lion’s share of Cooperative Program dollars, will help to ensure that the convention’s focus and cooperative framework remains true to our historic missionary priorities. I ask you to consider making this a matter of emphasis for missionary candidates who will attend the Indianapolis convention.
Second, I have carefully reviewed the most recent audited financial statements of the International Mission Board, which are easy to locate on the IMB website, and I note that at the close of FY2022 the Board currently has more than $94 million in unrestricted investment assets and an additional $9.1 million in cash reserves. In recent years, IMB leadership has tapped these funds to assist other SBC ministry objectives, including Send Relief and the work of the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force.
I raise this point to ask you whether the Board has considered making provision for interested and credentialed Field Personnel to return stateside and participate in the annual meeting as messengers? Given the significance of votes scheduled for this year’s annual meeting, it seems all the more important that the Board (similar to the way our seminaries underwrite and/or reimburse travel expenses for professors and administrative staff to attend the annual meeting) determine whether or not Southern Baptists have contributed so generously to the work of the Board only to deny the very people they are funding the opportunity to participate fully in the convention’s business.
Will you consider asking the Board to allocate resources for our field missionaries to both attend the annual meeting on stateside leave, and that such leave not count against their accrued leave which would remain intact for their non-convention, personal use? Might you consider recommending a board policy that allows for field personnel, duly-elected as messengers to the annual meeting by their sponsoring churches, to be given latitude and funding to return stateside and participate as messengers to the convention that has funded their work? I am concerned that the inadvertent disenfranchisement of our field missionaries from full participation in the consideration of convention business runs counter to the expectations of the churches who generously support the IMB through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
For even if all 3,500 field missionaries requested leave to attend the annual meeting, fully funding their temporary stateside return would cost around $17.5 million, assuming around $5000.00 was allocated per missionary. It would doubtless cost much less, and almost certain that a fraction of our mission force would choose to leave the field for even a day to see firsthand how the denominational sausage gets made.
Nevertheless, it seems the funds are available and such an appropriation would be consistent with how Southern Baptists have historically paid for other entity personnel to attend the annual meeting at little-to-no personal cost. The only thing lacking is a board policy to provide for their approved leave and the requisite underwriting that would make their participation as messengers possible.
Thank you for your kind consideration of my requests. I look forward to your response, and I shall watch reports of the Board meeting later this month to learn whether this matter has been brought for their consideration.
With appreciation…
CC: IMB Chairman Keith Evans