;){kind=logo}
A Few Thoughts About NAMB
Posted by Bowden McElroy in Church & Missions
Everywhere I turn (in the world of SBC blogs) I run across thoughts about the North American Mission Board. Whether in the context of the Great Commission Resurgence, Geoff Hammond resigning, or Cooperative Program giving, the subject of home missions comes up.
Ideas for addressing problems with NAMB seem to fall into one of three categories:
- Leave the structure of NAMB alone, but do a better job of managing the ministry.
- Combine NAMB with the International Mission Board, creating an uber-missions organization.
- Scatter the NAMB employees throughout the country decentralizing the organization but otherwise leaving the structure unchanged.
I have another idea: scrap the whole thing and start over.
Here’s what I envision. A trust with only a handful of employees (6 to 12) with two jobs: 1) award grants to churches who want to plant a new congregation. 2) Facilitate putting together those congregations and individuals who have experience in church planting with those who are new to the field.
Money would flow from churches to NAMB. A church would write a grant proposal for beginning a new work. The staff at NAMB would evaluate proposals culling out the ones that were poorly planned or targeted an area already saturated with SBC congregations, presenting the rest to the Board of Trustees. After approval from the BoT a check is cut and sent to the church requesting the grant.
No big buildings, no lavish programs, no bureaucratic oversight from people far removed from either the sending church or the new work.
The new NAMB would have a President, a CFO, and two teams: one to research demographic trends and another to network experienced church planters with neophytes.
My scheme is predicated on one underlying belief: Churches are best birthed by other churches, not by denominational enterprises. In order for this to work the church asking for NAMB money would have to commit to a fixed percentage of the new work’s annual budget. (Small congregations could band together to plant a new church.) Associations and State Conventions could actively encourage churches to write a grant proposal but would not be eligible to receive monies directly. The sending church would be responsible for oversight of the new work and the mentoring of the church planter. NAMB would no longer be in the business of commissioning missionaries; the grant would be accepted or denied based on the sending church, not on the qualifications of the church planter.
I think my mad scheme is a much better plan than any of the three categories I mentioned above. The idea of new leadership and better management won’t work. It’s sounds too much like “we’ll just try harder”. If a plan hasn’t worked in the past then simply doing the same old thing harder, faster, and more efficiently will only get us to the same place more quickly. I’m constantly telling my counseling clients there is a difference between a wish and a plan; the same structure with new leadership is wishful thinking.
Combining NAMB and the IMB won’t work because they have different purposes. The IMB’s purpose is to start churches where there are no churches. Sending in a career missionary makes sense if we have to struggle with a new language, a different culture, and huge distances from home. I can leave Tulsa and be pretty much anywhere in North America within a matter of hours. Yes, we have different languages and sub-cultures but we also have believers already in our churches who are a part of those sub-cultures and already speak the languages.
Taking the structure we already have but decentralizing it may be the best of the above ideas, but it’s still the same structure. It is still taking the ownership of new works away from churches and giving it to a denominational entity. That is a paradigm created in the 19th century, perfected in the first half of the 20th century and expected to work today. I just don’t see that being successful.
I have a busy day scheduled and will probably be unable to respond to any comments that may be left so let respond ahead of time to some likely objections.
1. 6 to 12 people? Really? Okay… let’s say I have underestimated the work and let’s go ahead and double that number. Or maybe I’ve severely underestimated the work so let’s triple my original guess of 12 staffers and leave the upper end of employees at the new NAMB at 36. That’s one suite of offices on one floor of a building. It’s a far cry from a large bureaucracy.
2. What about doctrinal oversight? Who will ensure the new churches are really SBC? The pastor and congregation of the sending church.
3. But what if one of “those churches” (however you define “those churches”) ends up receiving NAMB funds for a new church plant? I’m sure we will all think that at one time or another the BoT messed up and funded a work that shouldn’t have been funded. We will still have a BoT that is accountable to the Convention, so I’m confident it will all work out in the end.
4. But we’ll still have a Board of Trustees and we all know that is a less than perfect system. Well… I’m daydreaming; I’m not delusional. Besides, even when I find myself thinking the trustee system is completely broken (and that’s really not very often) I can’t think of anything better to replace it with.
5. What about the other things NAMB does i.e. chaplains, collegiate minitry, social ministry, etc? One word: Focus. Do one thing (planting churches in North America) and do it well.
6. Your plan MIGHT have SOME merit, but come on… no one’s going to blow up a cherished entity and start all over. You’re probably right but I was taught not to complain unless you have a possible solution. Here’s my solution; I’ve just bought myself the right to complain. (Besides, I know at least one Trustee will read this!)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
No reconfiguration or even proposal for reconfiguration for NAMB is of any use without simultaneously defining the value, purpose and responsibility in toto of state conventions and local associations. I’ve been following the blogs closely as well and I don’t think many if any of these suggestions are coming from people who are a part of state conventions that get more back from NAMB than what they give.
My particular problem with this suggestion is in MN-WI our convention WILL fold if the NAMB is dissolved or limited so narrowly to handing out grants. It will fold because EVERY SINGLE ONE of our DOMs will be out of a job. Our budget is big enough to pay for our Executive Director and a couple office staff and small percentages of every other person that works for the convention. We get back four times what we give and we depend on all of it to spread the gospel in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
I’m willing to bet most people that are coming up with their suggestions aren’t suspecting their state will lose all or even many if any of their DOMs and other office personnel just because NAMB gets restructured, dissolved or whatever they fancy. Don’t read me as completely dismissing this particular suggestion or any other particular suggestion. If you can tell me how we accomplish this and why DOMs are not necessary or are inefficient or how local churches, associations, conventions can do things differently better without that kind of staff then I’m all ears. The question is have you thought that far through the ramifications of what you’re suggesting? MN-WI isn’t alone in it’s worries about folding. I think many of the mission field states are concerned, but the SBC tends not to pay attention when there are no voices from the mission states allowed to be represented on the various boards and committees.
Excellent ideas! I can’t add anything else to it!
First, let me say that your suggestion merits consideration. NAMB could use something different, that’s for sure. But, since I am weighing the good and the problematic about your proposal, a few things stick out.
1) Less bureaucracy. As a government employee, I understand the desire for less of that multi-level inefficiency. I think all of our entities need to periodically review the number of levels they have and the ease of communication between those levels. I support the idea of less bureaucracy.
2) Church-focused. I agree that there should be more cooperation between the NAMB and individual churches that are trying to plant new congregations amongst the lost (not just nabbing a few people from First Baptist across town). Cooperation is lacking in the practical aspect between churches, associations, and conventions. For a national-level entity to pair up more often with individual congregations could help build up that spirit of community.
3) NAMB’s other things. The argument that we should do one thing and do it well is irresponsible and not obedient to the whole of the Great Commission. I understand the business practice of focusing on your strengths, but any business that focuses all of its resources on production with no spending on R&D will eventually become non-competitive. Failure to support the chaplain ministry, the collegiate ministry, and disaster relief is not only irresponsible, it is a sure-fire way to further remove a Christian influence on areas of society that so desperately need it. I am not comfortable with spiritual neglect in favor of our one “best practice.”
This is all I have time for now. I’ll check in periodically to see how the discussion progresses.
I raise my ballot in the affirmative.
FBC Pelham started Riverchase Baptist Church. It was incredibly easy; the State Convention and Birmingham Association had already bought a piece of land, but had given up after two failed attempts. When they moved at at meeting to dispose of the land, my pastor begged them not to and said we’d like to give it a shot.
We went door to door and asked who’d like to see a church there, got a dozen couples, started a Riverchase Sunday School class, and within year had enough folks to start a mission, rent some space (from Baptist Health Systems) and become a mission.
Within a year, it was a church, and is thriving now, 20 years later.
Easiest, and within my knowledge, likely the most productive project I’ve ever been involved in. And it would mesh nicely with what you said.
Lets pretend that the NAMB didn’t have management problems. Let’s pretend that they didn’t “back out” on an implicit promise to help the states in purchasing media time for GPS. Let’s pretend that the prior evangelism initiatives, joint ventures with the states, actually came off as planned instead of what the real-world result was:
(a) Celebrate Jesus — funded only at about 60%
(b) What Now? — $11 million budgeted but defunded mid-stream and media
company hired to do the work quit
(c) Who Cares? — never came to fruition
Regardless of any other problem, the NAMB clearly has management issues. Projects are concieved but not tracked month by month to see if all key components are coming together — including those which require joint agreements/support from stakeholders such as the state conventions.
Before scrapping the NAMB and reducing it to only a few guys in a storefront somewhere, I think the NAMB should be given a chance to work. Only next time put people in there that actually MANAGE the operation. The NAMB has had enough VISION but not nearly enough EXECUTION.
Obviously, changing the President of the NAMB hasn’t really improved the situation much. I don’t think it is likely that a new president is likely to improve things either unless he is a guy with a proven track record of running a multimillion non-profit enterprise.
In my opinion, it is quite unlikely that a former pastor or former missionary is going to be the right man to take over the NAMB.
Regarding the BoT of the NAMB. I don’t think it is firing on all cylinders. Some members of the Board felt that they were marginalized by BoT leadership in the specially called meeting that was held to to fire Hammond — at least BoT member quit.
Blake,
Your state convention/associations won’t fold; they will still exist only without paid staff.
We have 160 churches in our association. A few years ago we moved from a large staff with a building and support staff to two men and a secretary. We sold our building and made our entities independent. Our DOM and his associate focus on networking churches together: the churches do ministry, not the association. Dire predictions were made; none came to pass. We focus on church planting and giving churches ownership of ministry projects. Our staff doesn’t “do ministry”, they connect like-minded people and let the churches minster to the community.
The association was re-purposed from doing ministry to resourcing ministry. It is a completely different approach to defining the mission of what a denominational entity does. The greater distances involved with the MI/WI state convention would certainly create different challenges than our association faces, but I don’t think it would be impossible to pull off.
Roger,
NAMB has existed, in one form or another, since the SBC was founded in the middle of the 1800′s. It is time to stop tweaking the paradigm of a missions-sending organization and come up with a completely new way of thinking.
Andrew,
The other stuff would still exist, but not through NAMB. “If NAMB won’t do it, it won’t get done” is an argument I’m not prepared to accept.
Bowden,
Excellent proposal. Clearly this makes so much common sense that there is no way this is going to fly. Bureacracies take on a life of their own and their first task it to preserve their own existence. One of the tactics is to define the problem as being greater than it is to make their work more important that it actually is, even when the result don’t address the problem. For instance, reporting declining church attendance among the 12 – 25 year old crowd as a crisis of monumental proportions will assure a certain level of hysteria about a problem that supposedly only NAMB can solve. Let’s ignore the fact that this problem is arising while on NAMB’s watch. So if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, why should we expect a solution to the situation? This gets into Dead Horse Theory. (http://www.slideshare.net/bmw53/dead-horse-theory-presentation)
Suffice to say, inertia is going to be the biggest force you have to overcome. Best wishes with that.
Alternatively, you said: “A church would write a grant proposal for beginning a new work. The staff at NAMB would evaluate proposals culling out the ones that were poorly planned or targeted an area already saturated with SBC congregations, presenting the rest to the Board of Trustees.”
Might I suggest that we not restrict that to SBC congregations. There are high concentrations of other Bible-believing churches in various parts of the country where an SBC church plant will be viewed as “competition.” Perhaps we need a biblical view of the spread of the gospel that recognizes we are not the only ones out there with the message of salvation and that some areas, while lacking in SB churches are saturated with the gospel from other sources. Of course, this is a level of open-mindedness that it’s probably too great to hope for. It could lead to congeniality between SBCs and other evangelical denominations and we certainly wouldn’t want that to happen.
Bowden,
I better see where you’re coming from now. You didn’t suggest anything that those other ministries could work through. I’m not saying they won’t get done without the NAMB, I’m just saying your proposal is incomplete without addressing the framework for dealing with Disaster Relief, the Chaplaincy, and collegiate ministries.
Also, another issue I have with your framework is that there really is no need for NAMB under the model you have proposed. Why should churches give their money to the NAMB and then ask for a grant to get it back? A state convention could do that just as well.
Here’s a few more concerns:
Doctrinal Oversight – Part of what makes the IMB so strong is the screening process. Churches may be more or less stringent on the requirements and qualifications of the leaders of new works they create. Keeping these people accountable may be more difficult because of the belief in the autonomy of the local church.
Ecclesiology – Debates rage over the proper polity of a SB church. What if the requesting church wants to start a new church that is run by a presbytery? What if the new church is actually a satellite church and isn’t fully autonomous? This would place the new NAMB in the challenging posture of deciding what kinds of churches to allow to be formed.
Accountability – Who’s to account for the way the money is spent? What about reciepts? What are legitimate expenses and what are not? Would the NAMB have to replace its ministry staff with more accountants? Can churches request money not for a new work, but for a building expansion to make room for new members?
Lastly, I don’t think that the purposes of the IMB and NAMB are all that different nor should they be.
I understand that you are trying to propose a solution, and I admit that it is unique and would be interesting to see worked out. I just think that your proposal needs more details. I may be a little demanding because my boss wants a project charter, cost estimate, and a gant chart for task completion before I can ask if I can move to the empty cubicle by the window.
Have you given your resume to Dave Samples? I hear the job is open!
Andrew,
The word that jumps to my mind is “trust”. We either trust our local churches or we don’t. Doctrinal oversight, ecclesiology, and financial accountability would all be done by the local church awarded the grant.
The BoT would have to set guidelines re: independent congregations vs satellite campuses, what constitutes a healthy, realistic budget, etc. This post was designed to get people thinking, not detail the specifics of a plan.
Andrew,
One other thought before I run off to teach.
The gist of my argument is that it is time to shift NAMB from being a missionary-sending organization that plans, coordinates, and executes strategy to a resource-networking organization that provides financial and human resources. (Human resources in terms of connecting people, not in terms of flying across the country and providing oversight and mentoring itself.)
As far as why NAMB and not just leave it to the state conventions, a national organization is a way of spreading the wealth among the various state conventions. And, I think we are at a place in North America where networks are no longer limited to geographic areas: it’s just too easy for me to phone, email, or skype people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Bowden,
You’ve got me thinking! On the one hand, leaving doctrinal accountability to the church would show great trust. But on the other hand, leaving doctrinal accountability to the church but keeping financial accountability to the NAMB is actually a reversal of the priorities. How can we openly trust people with spiritual matters when we cannot trust them with worldly matters?
And with the ability to operate and run multiple networks, it seems that if the work that the NAMB currently does can be done through networking between churches, couldn’t the work of the IMB be done through networking churches? Or is it that the reason the NAMB and the IMB exist is because they are the result of networking churches. Fun fun!
Brother Bowden,
Good solutions. The principle is solid… local churches starting local churches and having a funding source be efficient as possible only makes for good stewardship.
Thank you for putting this together.
Blessings,
Chris
Sounds to me something like what CBF has been and is doing. Years ago while still in the pastorate, I thought that “Assoicational” Missionaries were out of date. Would not “regional” associations have done better…in most instances? Eh?
There are two bad ideas I want to argue against. One is merging the IMB and NAMB. We need a mission agency, in my opinion, focused on missions in North America. It will be, I believe, in the best interest of our work internationally to focus on our work in NA.
The second bad idea is to take the focus of evangelism away from NAMB. It is a mission agency, not only a church planting agency. I believe we are best served with a mission agency that focuses on evangelism. Church planting is a means by which we do evangelism- but not the only means. NAMB is at her best, I believe, when we see her as a mission agency (read that evangelism, evangelism, evangelism) that starts churches (a vital part of that strategy, but not the only part), shares Christ and sends missionaries.
I don’t have time at the moment for all my rationale but think evangelism through existing churches needs to remain alongside the starting of new churches as a purpose of the agency. Doug Munton
Doug,
Don’t forget that missions, if defined by the Great Commission, is more than evangelism if evangelism conveys the idea of “sharing our faith.” Missions, defined biblically, should cover the whole of the Great Commission, which requires making disciples and teaching them too. There’s more to it than just that, but those are certainly areas we tend to forget when the sole focus is on evangelism.
Andrew, You are right, of course. (Making disciples is the goal.) I just don’t want to take evangelism out of mix of missions.
Bowden:
I realize that the NAMB (and its HMB predecessor) are over 150 years old. That doesn’t necessarily make the centralized missions paradigm obsolete does it?
General motors went bankrupt. Did they go bankrupt because the idea of car factories making cars for people is obsolete. No! Instead they had very poor management that was not responding to real-world situations that change over time.
In like manner, I’d argue that just because the NAMB has been poorly managed in the last decade does not necessarily demonstrate that the concept of a centralized North American missions agency is the wrong way to go. It has not yet been been shown that the NAMB has to be dissolved.
I admit that I can’t show that even if the NAMB was properly managed that it would not have to be broken up. But I believe that we should run a 18 month experiment to prove or disprove this thesis.
I agree with you that there is a difference between “a wish and a plan”. The problem, at least as it relates to the evangelism initiatives, is that the NAMB has not been able to transition from “wish list” to sucessful project implementation. The NAMB has not put plans in place and then tracked them over time to fruition. They have run “open loop”. They wake up on the 11th hour only to discover that the stuff they came up with is not workable and/or does not have “buy in” from the stakeholders.
My management experience, borrowed from Silicon Valley, would be this: Put the NAMB on the “measured mile”. Put in a NAMB president with experience running a non-profit agency. Give him 18 months to turn around the organization. One defination of this turnaround would be that whatever “initiative” / “strategy” that the NAMB implements THIS TIME would actually be realistic and have buy-in with the state evangelism directors.
If the NAMB doesn’t make significant progress then I’d take it apart as you suggest. Bowden, I think we at least agree one one thing: If the NAMB keeps on going the way it has been then it should not exist in its present form. I think your idea of having a “dozen or so” people at a storefront NAMB would be the the next step if the experiment I’m recommending fails.
If you make this suggestion in January 2011, and the NAMB is still in shambles, then I’ll be the first to admit I’m wrong and the first to support your plan.
I agree with you that there are no parallels between what the IMB and the NAMB is doing that suggest they should be merged.
One final thing. I think the clock is ticking on the NAMB. In my estimation the time the organization can coast in neutral, with only interim leadership is measured in months. The situation at the NAMB will be a self-fulling prophecy over time unless new leadership turns things around. As the economy picks up and housing prices improve in the Atlanta area then current NAMB employess are more likely to seek other jobs. There are quite a few employees at the NAMB now that want to leave but can’t because of the depressed housing situation in Altanta. Put another way, if the economy was robust, and if Altanta housing prices were at an all time high then the headcount at the NAMB would already be taking a nose dive — moving in the direction of the shape of the NAMB that you recommend.
Roger,
One problem that your suggestion about a “measured mile” with a CEO experienced in managing non-profits does not address is what I see as dysfunction at NAMB. With all due respect to Dave Samples (who is a new trustee and hardly counts in what I’m about to say), there is dysfunction at NAMB. At a minimum, there is dysfunction at the trustee level, as shown by the Reccord fiasco, the unanamous vote of confidence in Hammond, and his dismissal three months later; and I dare say, the dysfunction is in the process or system rather than with individual trustees. I suspect there is also dysfunction within NAMB management, though how far “down” it goes is open to speculation. If there is dysfunction in the trustee process, it is unlikely that the dysfunctional system has the ability to put in place healthy management. If there is dysfunction in the management itself at NAMB, then it is unlikely that any CEO can “fix” it using the management styles which work in healthy organizations. Now, dysfunction can be fixed–but it requires intentionality, time and energy. Bowden’s sugestion takes a different approach altogether: create a whole new organization, one in which the present dysfunction will not be present.
John
I believe NAMB and the IMB have the same purpose and that we are missing the needs of North America with this false assumption that we should do missions differently within our borders as we do outside of them.
My passion has always been multicultural ministry and I see the current model, intentional or not, working against it. The statement:”Yes, we have different languages and sub-cultures but we also have believers already in our churches who are a part of those sub-cultures and already speak the languages.”, greatly overstates our current capacity and understates the need. If a white suburban megachurch hopeful will reach them, maybe. Otherwise, how many new migrant latino churches is NAMB going to fund this year? How many will be financially autonomous in 5 or even 10 years? Few. The model doesn’t work for many of the ethnic subcultures so impact will be minimal for those groups unless they adapt to the ‘burb model. The healthy church that wants to expand ministry to them through not a church planter but an additional pastor, making them a part of their body cannot currently receive NAMB help. There’s a lot of churches that say they would like to but if they have the money for staff – youth and worship take priority. That means our ability to make or recruit those leaders capable of reaching is hindered to say the least. And the cycle continues. The ‘financial’ model must change. North America is NOT different from the International field due to the presence of churches. We must let this assumption go for the sake of the lost all around us.
I commented further here -
http://rev7v9.wordpress.com/2009/02/15/pragmatism-giving-theology-the-backseat/
Bowden, I like your idea. But, tonight my wife and I had a family over for dinner who are serving as NAMB missionaries on a university campus here in Colorado. They had served a large church in Texas, then moved here on faith to fill a huge need at the school. Even though I support your idea in principle, I wonder what would happen to this family if NAMB suddenly dropped out from under them. The association and state convention here are not large enough to start fund campus ministers. What would be done with current missionaries like these who would no longer be a part of the plan? Would they be launched back to the pre-SBC model of raising their own funds from church to church?
My wife and I support a young couple from our church who are campus missionaries in Colorado. They raise their own support; the money is funneled through NAMB. So… I’m not sure how much NAMB is involved in actually giving money to collegiate ministries.
At any rate, I still think NAMB would be better off focusing on helping churches plant churches. A church could send a couple to plant a church near (or on) a college campus. Collegiate ministry might change, but it wouldn’t go away.