The IMB will be meeting for their next scheduled trustee board meeting during the week of May 6th. This is important to me for a couple of reasons. First, the meeting is being held about 30 minutes from my home which means I will be able to attend at least a portion of the meetings as well as take my church to the Wednesday evening commissioning service. The commissioning service is being held at Pleasant Valley Baptist Church whose pastor, Vernon Armitage, is serving in a mentoring role for me right now. One of our church’s most faithful families is in process with the IMB, and is in fact in Richmond this week taking part in interviews, medical reviews, etc. and as such our church has become keenly aware of the work of the IMB an!
d so we’re really looking forward to attending the commissioning service. Beyond that, however, I am looking forward with anticipation to hearing the report of the trustee’s in response to the motion made at last year’s Annual Meeting that was referred back to the trustees. They have not dealt with this as of yet and as they must give a report at the annual meeting in June and as this is the last trustee meeting prior to the annual meeting, I am operating under the assumption that they will determine some course of action at this meeting. [For background see articles here, here, here & here]

I have heard a series of ideas about what will come out of this meeting in regards to the IMB’s current policies about Private Prayer Language and Baptism. From one source who is fairly close to the situation I was told that they have determined that the theological underpinning of said policies is weak and as such will be abolishing the policies at the meeting. I heard this and was excited. More recently, however, I was told that the more probable course of action would be to develop a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, at least in regards to the PPL policy and in both cases the policies will stay on the books, but will essentially be neutered by new wording. I don’t know if either of these is true, or if neither of them is true, but it has caused me to think a little.

Let’s assume that the BoT chooses to leave the policies as they are. There will be no changes, for the sake of this discussion. What will that do to our churches who have opposed them as unbiblical? Our church set an interesting precedent last year when we took our Cooperative Program giving and split it in half and sent half through the normal channels and took the other half and sent it directly to the Executive Committee to be dispersed through the CP in that manner. We did so in response to what we believe is an exorbitant amount of CP dollars withheld by state conventions as a whole, but particularly by our state convention. The beauty of that action was that it was our effort, as an autonomous Southern Baptist congregation, to rectify an inequity in the amount of SBC dollars going on the mission field as opposed to being overlapped with other SBC dollars (i.e. NAMB, local association, our church & state convention) to do the work her!
e in our “backyard”. In other words, we exercised our independence to follow what we believed to be the best course of action.

In the case of the IMB and their more stringent policies, what will you do if the policies remain? I’ve thought about this much lately. I have been holding out hope that the policies would change and that has driven me. However, in all honesty, I have a feeling that our church will continue to support, albeit with reservation, the efforts of the IMB regardless of the trustee’s decision. We would do this for a number of reasons. First, we would do so because we sincerely believe (and this has been confirmed to me by multiple persons from within the IMB) that there is a huge difference between an IMB personnel member, and a trustee. In other words, much of the IMB staff simply do not share a kinship with the trustees when it comes to these two issues. Secondly, the task of world evangelization is simply too large. We will not stop supporting the most significant missionary force in the history of humanity over these issues. As much as these issues are grievous to me, and as un!
fortunately unbiblical as we believe that they are, we believe that the value of those who are dying apart from Christ to be more significant than this disagreement.

As with our church’s decision in regards to the division of CP funds, the trump card that will drive our decision making will ultimately be the spread of the Kingdom of God through the proclamation of the gospel. That single, ultimate purpose is superior to all other issues in my opinion. That said, that certainly does not mean that we will simply support quietly. We will continue to raise tremendous questions about the validity of these, and any other, policies that we view to be grossly unbiblical. We will not allow decisions like this to be made without accountability. We will, however, choose partnership for the pursuit of the gospel over and above any other issue of importance.

That’s my take on our response to this issue. I’m curious to hear yours. Just how far is too far? How will your church respond if the policies remain intact?