peterlumpkins.com

Seminary president indicts Southern Baptists for funding shortfalls at International Mission Board

Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary president, Jeff Iorg, joins the chorus of high profile Southern Baptists (see here and here) who are publicly insisting the reason for the recent announcement of budgetary problems at the nation's largest and most prestigious missionary-sending agency in the United States, The International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB), is that rank-and-file1 Southern Baptists are "robbing God." In a short but pungent piece on the seminary president's blog entitled "Missionaries Are Coming Home," Dr. Iorg was anything but vague. "The basic problem causing... Read more →

IMB president's open letter and his "limitless" number of missionaries

Today, David Platt released an open letter to Southern Baptists. In it he described the process which led him to his "painful decision" announced this week about balancing the budget and the dismal spending patterns of the International Mission Board. "This is certainly not an announcement that I, in any way, wanted to make. At the most recent meeting of the SBC in Columbus, I shared with messengers how IMB spent tens of millions more dollars than we received last year. In our budgeting process over the last couple of... Read more →

Just what role did the trustees play in the International Mission Board's fiscal failure?

What role does the trustee board possess in overseeing an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention? Is the board primarily a support group for the agency's president and his administration? Do trustees of our convention agencies and/or entities function similarly to trustees of a local Southern Baptist church? A group possessing proxy empowerment to represent the church in real estate, banking, and other legal matters where the church's signature is required? Or, does the trustee body have more of an authoritarian role which includes writing, establishing, and maintaining agency policies;... Read more →

More dismissing fiduciary obligation of IMB administration and trustees

I recently expressed my lament over the recent announcement of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB). Not only is it hard to accept that at least since 2010, our missions-sending agency has outspent its predictable income by close to a quarter of a billion dollars, it also remains gut-wrenching to know IMB both sold off tens of millions of dollars of real estate and properties and depleted its cash reserves just to keep the doors open. Adding insult to injury, IMB officials announced it expects seasoned... Read more →

Six to 800 missionaries must come home apparently due to apathy of Southern Baptists

source Recently, International Mission Board (IMB) leaders announced a plan to scale back Southern Baptists' global mission effort by cutting personnel by approximately 15%. The plan was presented by President David Platt and his senior leadership team during an Aug. 27 "town hall" meeting, a meeting which included missionaries and staff and was available both on and off site (i.e. digitally). According to Baptist Press "Platt said the urgency of the plan is based in the reality that while Southern Baptist giving through the Cooperative Program and the Lottie Moon... Read more →

Does overseas missions strategy need reform? At least one SBC professor says it does

A piece by Will Hall in the Christian Examiner rehearses a journal article published in The Southwestern Journal of Theology by Midwestern professor of missions, Robin Dale Hadaway. Hall's article entitled "Prof calls for SBC overseas missions reform: Does drastic drop in IMB baptisms merit major remake?" lists among the changes Hadaway proposes: 1. Drop the two percent "reachedness" threshold and return to the original 20 percent or at least adopt a 10 percent baseline. "Exiting a people group that is more than two-percent evangelical," he said, "is the historical... Read more →

Did 19th century Virginia Regular Baptists hold to general atonement? by Peter Lumpkins

Southern Baptist Calvinists frequently assert that it wasn't until well into the twentieth century that strong Calvinism began to wane in influence among Southern Baptists. For example, Al Mohler is recently quoted as saying, >>> Even the opponents of Calvinism must admit, if historically informed, that Calvinism is the theological tradition into which the Baptist movement was born. The same is true of the Southern Baptist Convention. The most influential churches, leaders, confessions of faith and theologians of the founding era were Calvinists—it was not until well into the twentieth... Read more →