Overseas and underfunded

“I’m a big fan of the IMB,” Southern Baptist Pastor Tad Thompson told his congregation in northwestern Arkansas, “but the IMB’s broke!” Thompson is right: Since 2010, the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention has spent $210 million more than it has received, using cash reserves and property sales to cover annual shortfalls. In August the IMB proposed a solution to its financial woes: cut personnel and reconsider the 170-year-old missions agency’s role.

Michael and JuliAn Domke, missionaries in Ukraine, heard the news on Aug. 27. Michael told the Biblical Recorder, a news journal for North Carolina Baptists, “This has forced me to live more by faith. It’s been a faith issue for me. That’s not a bad thing.”

In an open letter to the Southern Baptist Convention in September, IMB President David Platt said, “We must put ourselves in a position in which we can operate within our budget, which necessarily means reducing the number of our personnel.” He then added, “Words really can’t describe how much a sentence like that pains me to write.”

But Michael Domke affirmed Platt’s decision: “If I was in his shoes, I would probably do the same thing.” Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary missions professor Robin Hadaway, writing for the Missouri Southern Baptist’s Pathway newspaper, noted Platt could have squeezed missionary benefits—from education to medical and dental care—in order to right the IMB’s financial ship. “He wisely has chosen to voluntarily reduce personnel by offering a generous retirement incentive so those who remain can be fully supported.”

The IMB has outlined two phases of action: In the first, eligible personnel can take a voluntary retirement incentive, “a particular financial benefit.” The IMB will also conduct a strategic review of daily operations and long-range plans. In the second phase, the agency will encourage missionaries and staff to discern whether “God is leading him or her to a new place of involvement in mission outside the IMB.”

Some observers on social media questioned the new, Calvinist IMB president’s plan: Would the restructuring furlough some older Baptists to pave the way for the young, restless, and Reformed? The agency denied that charge, emphasizing the “clear and evident financial reasons” for the personnel reductions and affirming the unity of IMB missionaries “under the authority of the Bible and the banner of the Baptist Faith and Message.”

Latter-day questions

How should the Mormon church view children raised by same-sex parents? Leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints answered that question on Nov. 5 by amending Handbook 1, a policy guide for local leaders. Handbook 1 now says children raised in same-sex households cannot be baptized: If they want to participate fully in the church, they must wait until they are adults and specifically disavow same-sex marriage.

Michael Otterson, the managing director for Mormon public affairs, said the church’s position stemmed from its sensitivity to children, who would otherwise be caught in “a potential tug-of-war” between the church and their gay parents. Otterson said the church’s new position paralleled its stance on polygamous households.

On Nov. 13, the church had to offer another clarification: What about already-baptized children who serve in the church but now find themselves (possibly through divorce and remarriage) placed in a new same-sex household? Such a decision by parents, the letter made clear, should not require the forfeiture or curtailing of current church privileges. —J.B.