By Bob Allen
Sumner Grant, executive director of The Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board since 1998, has announced plans to retire after his successor is named.
Grant first joined the staff of the MMBB, a non-profit Christian organization that provides retirement benefits for churches and faith-based organization, in 1993. Before that he served as executive director and treasurer of American Baptist Churches of New York State and previously as the senior pastor at churches in New Hampshire and Maine for more than 15 years.
Formed in 1911, the MMBB primarily serves churches and ministers affiliated with American Baptist Churches USA, but its 17,000 members serve in a wide range of denominations. Ministry partners include the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, also known as ChurchNet, and the Alliance of Baptists.
It also serves the four largest African-American Baptist denominations. Martin Luther King Jr. was an MMBB member, and his wife and children received support after his assassination on April 4, 1968.
The MMBB, which kicked off its 100th anniversary celebration at the 2011 American Baptist Churches biennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico, is featured in a new book tracing the development of employee benefits in the United States.
MMBB: A Pioneer in Employee Benefits–The First 100 Years, written by historian and author Everett Goodwin and published by Mercer University Press, explores how start-up funding to provide for retired ministers and missionaries from wealthy industrialists like Standard Oil Company founder John D. Rockefeller helped shift American philanthropy from a focus on charity to support for institutions capable of permanent solutions to social problems.
Today, MMBB has $2.5 billion in assets and offers services including financial planning, retirement planning, medical and dental insurance and life insurance. MMBB also provides support to members with emergency needs.
Grant said he has been thinking and praying about stepping down for some time. “It has been an honor to serve as leader of MMBB — the highest of privileges,” he said in his retirement announcement Sept. 21. “It has allowed me the exceptional opportunity to give back to the board a portion of that which it has given so generously to me and my family.”