Chapter
7
New Structures
In Matthew 9, Jesus warned His followers not to
repair a new garment with an old patch, for the
patch will pull away from the garment, making the
tear worse (Matt. 9:16). Neither, He said, do men
pour new wine into old wineskins. New realities
demand new structures to contain them. The same
is true for the International Mission Board. The
new dynamics of missions today are forcing changes
to structures that haven't been so radically altered
in more than a century and a half.
These
changing wineskins are evident both globally and
locally. Let's take a look at the global changes
first. As the strategic question--What's it gonna
take?--has been applied to the challenge of reaching
the whole world, it has called into question the
organizational wineskin that we've used for the
past 150 years. Specifically, we have come to ask
ourselves whether our previous administrative wineskin,
which was structured around managing our personnel,
was suited to our new priorities, i.e. reaching
the lost of all nations, tribes and peoples.
Early
pioneers could not have imagined that a century
and a half later Southern Baptist missionaries would
be spread over most of the globe.
To
understand this change better, it probably would
be helpful to look at how our previous organizational
structure came to be. When the Foreign Mission Board
was established in 1845, its aim was to obey the
Great Commission. However, few at the time could
have envisioned the scope of personnel and structure
that was needed to reach the entire world. Instead,
our founders had to give their first attention to
supporting those new missionaries serving in far-away
lands such as China, Nigeria and Brazil.
These
early pioneers could not have imagined that a century
and a half later Southern Baptist missionaries would
be spread over most of the globe and constitute
the largest evangelical mission force in history.
This growth didn't occur overnight. It was slow
and uneven, but as it occurred our organizational
structure stretched to accommodate it. Thus, over
the years, our administration has continually reflected
our growing personnel deployment.
In
January 1997, the leadership of the Foreign Mission
Board adopted a bold new vision. Rather than simply
shaping our administrative structure to fit our
existing personnel deployment, we would look instead
to the whole world, a world filled with lost and
dying people. To meet this vision, we redesigned
our structure to embrace them all. For the first
time in history, structure would be determined not
by where our personnel were but by the needs of
an entire world. Rather than gradually spreading
out to encompass each new country as Southern Baptist
personnel entered them, we would structure to fulfill
our vision statement of leading Southern Baptists
to be on mission with God to bring all of the peoples
of the world to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
This
new structure is unprecedented in its scope and
signifies a landmark in the history of Southern
Baptist missions. For the first time, every country,
people, tribe, language group, city and individual
falls into one of the International Mission Board's
administrative regions. While the number of regions
may change in the future, the scope of reaching
the whole world will, hopefully, never be relinquished.
After 150 years, Southern Baptists have at last
adopted a wineskin commensurate to our task, a wineskin
that embraces the whole world.
In
addition to covering the whole world, the IMB has
empowered the new structure by freeing strategic
leadership from administrative bureaucracy. In the
new structure, regional leaders team with strategy
associates to keep the focus on the edges of lostness.
Administrative associates join the regional team
to maximize support services and to ensure that
regional leaders aren't consumed by the kind of
administrative detail that has overburdened missionary
leaders in the past.
The
quest for new wineskins has reached beyond the global
level and into the local arena. Even before the
International Mission Board launched its global
changes, many missionaries were discovering teams
as a new and more effective wineskin for accomplishing
their own tasks. Several things led to this discovery.
The growing focus on people groups changed the work
dynamics for many missionaries. As these missionaries
adopted a whatever-it-takes approach to reaching
people groups, they found that small, tightly knit
teams were ideally suited to this pursuit. In addition,
increasing work in countries hostile to Christianity
meant that large mission-meeting gatherings were
virtually impossible.
Over
the past decade, more and more missionaries have
made the same discovery and adopted team-based approaches
to reaching their assigned people groups. In contrast
with annual mission meetings, these teams are able
to meet throughout the year and can respond quickly
to the needs of their target populations. Annual
meetings with extensive time given to discussion,
voting, collective decisions and committee deliberations
can't keep up with this high-speed world of rapidly
changing needs and opportunities. By working in
small teams, missionaries are able to adapt their
strategies to the needs of their people group in
ways that weren't possible waiting for action in
a large annual mission meeting.
The
benefits of this new structure have been enormous.
In Richmond, new personnel requests are pouring
in from the field every day rather than once or
twice a year around mission meeting time. Likewise
prayer requests and project proposals are flowing
between the field and the Richmond office 365 days
a year! While electronic mail has increased everyone's
workload in some respects, it also has empowered
individual missionaries and their teams to communicate
directly with gospel suppliers--whether they are
churches, individuals or agencies--instantaneously
around the world.
Another
related development that significantly has modified
the missionary's wineskin has been the development
of creative access platforms for supporting ministry
among people groups. What's a platform? you might
ask. Well, a platform is what you stand on. In a
foreign country it is the reason granted by the
government for you to be in their country. A platform
may be a tourist visa, a business visa or a missionary
visa.
Over
the past several decades, much of our missionary
activity has been conducted with some sort of missionary
visa or identity. As we began venturing into countries
that would not tolerate an overt missionary identity,
however, we had to explore other avenues for service.
In some cases, we simply rotated in and out of the
country on a tourist visa. Over time, we came to
see that every country opens its doors to some types
of foreign residents, the question was what type
of foreigner is acceptable to them.
This
shift from our perspective to the perspective of
the lost people we're trying to reach has opened
up a whole new range of possibilities. Some countries
sought English teachers. We could do that! Others
wanted American businessmen. We could do that, too!
Paul's adage, I've become all things to all people,
so that by all means I might save some (1 Cor. 9:22),
became a powerful word of instruction for us. Team-based
structures allowed for this type of dynamic, flexible
and platform-creative approach that simply wasn't
available under the more overt, transparently missionary
structure.
An
important new consideration that has sprung up alongside
the new structures of teams and non-religious platforms
is the issue of security. Security doesn't mean
we are doing something illegal. But it does recognize
that a host country may be inviting us for one purpose
that is agreeable to them, while, as Christian missionaries,
we also have another purpose, one for which visas
are not granted. Governments, which welcome our
contributions as teachers, businessmen and students,
are naturally put in an awkward position if they
have to accept or reject us based on our Christian
missionary goals. Generally, as long as it does
not become a public issue, the realm of religious
conviction is regarded as private, and even aggressively
anti-Christian governments tolerate it. Good, secure
communications and platforms keep these decisions
out of the public arena.
Few
issues have prompted as much initial concern and
yet ultimate support among our Baptist constituents
and IMB community as that of security. While virtually
all Southern Baptists rejoice that unreached peoples
living in anti-Christian countries are at last hearing
the gospel, many express concern that our missionaries
are no longer as open and accessible as they once
were. How can I pray for our missionaries in closed
countries if they are under a security black-out?
some Baptists ask. The answers to these and related
questions are not easily reached, but they are a
part of the growing reality of a missionary force
that is taking the gospel beyond the boundaries
of lostness into restricted countries around the
globe.
Though
the multi-platform approach has its origins in restricted
countries, we've been pleased to see that it is
useful in traditionally open countries as well.
Increasingly missionaries working in countries that
long have allowed a missionary presence are finding
that they may have exhausted the limits of their
current missionary platform. In some cases, they
have identified sectors of society that are unlikely
to be reached by persons with a missionary label
attached to them. In several countries where Baptist
missionaries have worked for many years, missionaries
have discovered that the Baptist name has become
so identified with a certain socio-economic sector
of society that it is virtually unacceptable to
some other unreached sectors of the country. Rather
than give up on this unreached sector, missionaries
are diversifying their presence in the country by
using different platforms and adopting roles in
society that are more approachable and amenable
to the unreached people groups they are trying to
touch with the gospel.
The
result has been a brand new horizon of possibilities
for the missionaries in these countries. The unreached
sectors they are now trying to reach are able to
see them and hear the gospel in ways that they could
not before. New platforms, new structures and new
possibilities--all of these are aimed at providing
new wineskins for reaching all peoples, by any means
possible, with the good news of Jesus Christ.
<Previous
page | next
page>
