With funding from an estate gift, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will reduce its global missions force by 13 people who have accepted early retirement options.
Some of those retiring will continue to work with CBF Global Missions but no longer will be on the payroll. The overall downsizing will help make CBF’s Global Missions efforts “financially sustainable,” a news release said.
Upon its founding in 1991 — as “moderates” sought alternatives to the Southern Baptist Convention — creating a new channel for global missions was a key goal of CBF. The program got off to a strong start with an infusion of field personnel who left the SBC because they refused to sign the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.
As with most other denominations, though, CBF has struggled to maintain the level of funding needed for fully supporting a cadre of missions personnel around the world. In 2016, CBF’s Global Missions Council recommended structural changes that bolstered reliable funding for field personnel while reducing the number who served. The organization went several years without appointing new missionaries but in recent years has appointed a few each year.
With the new batch of retirements that will be effective the end of this month, CBF’s total field personnel count will be 31. In 2016, that number was 102.
CBF funds its global missions work through a combination of gifts to its general operating budget and gifts to its annual Offering for Global Missions. The Offering for Global Missions provides the bulk of direct support for field personnel.
Giving to that offering has been stable in recent years, leaders explained, but has fallen $750,000 shy of its budget goal. Average annual giving to the offering has been $2.7 million.
With an annual budget of $17.5 million, CBF is one of the smaller religious bodies in the U.S. Of that budget total, about $7 million is spent on global missions.
Nineteen of CBF’s field personnel were eligible for the voluntary retirement program, which was available for those age 60 and above. Thirteen accepted the offer and will complete their work with CBF at the end of the month.
Some will continue ministry in their current setting or elsewhere and others will retire fully.
Those entering retirement include:
- Anna Anderson, Rocky Mount, N.C.
- Chaouki and Maha Boulos, Beirut
- Steve Clark, Louisville, Ky.
- Lynn Hutchinson, Portugal
- Jenny Jenkins, Grand Goâve, Haiti
- Mary, Southeast Asia
- Karen Morrow, Fort Worth, Texas
- Cindy Ruble, Malaysia
- Greg and Sue Smith, Fredericksburg, Va.
- Mary VanRheenen, Europe
- Marc Wyatt, Raleigh, N.C.
CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley described this moment as a reset.
“As gifts to the offering grow sustainably in the years ahead, we will commission new field personnel,” he said. “In the meantime, we are giving space to celebrating these retiring colleagues who have served faithfully for so long, we will take steps to continue to support even more faithfully our field personnel who remain, and we will make space for the conclusion of a strategic process being led by field personnel to discern next steps toward thriving in Global Missions.
“We will emerge from this process with CBF Global Missions positioned for a compelling and faithful future,” Baxley said.
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