Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site
Featured
Featured

CBF adopts new model for funding field personnel

NewsJeff Brumley  |  June 27, 2016

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is embarking on a new course for national and international missions, one designed to broaden relationships between churches and field personnel and to boost the Fellowship’s global presence.

CBF members voted during its General Assembly in Greensboro, N.C., Friday morning to launch the Fellowship in a new direction, which seeks to sharpen missions focus and provide equity in the funding of field personnel and their ministries. The new model will go into effect in October 2017.

Under the new plan, which has been 18 months in the making, CBF will use its Offering for Global Missions to finance the salaries, living expenses and benefits of all its field personnel. The missionaries will be responsible for raising the money needed for their programs and ministries, mainly from family, friends and churches.

Previously, CBF used a two-tiered system that fully funded some field personnel while others had to raise all their own funds, including living and other personal expenses.

CBF officials presented the plan at a Thursday business session that included panel discussions and video presentations featuring current and former field personnel and Fellowship church and missions leaders. More information was presented in breakouts later in the day.

Several field personnel present at those gatherings expressed strong support for the new approach.

Scarlette Jasper

Scarlette Jasper

The previous missions approach created a lot of stress and uncertainty for missionaries who had to raise all their own support, said Scarlette Jasper, a self-funded missionary who serves in the Appalachian foothills of southern Kentucky.

Like many of the impoverished people she serves, Jasper said she often wondered month to month how she would make her house payment. She was never sure her ministry would survive very long.

The new model ensures she can maintain her presence and “will alleviate a lot of the stress,” she said.

“I will have to do my own programming and transportation, but that’s OK because I have security now and I know I will be there,” Jasper said.

Tammy Stocks

Tammy Stocks

Tammy Stocks, CBF field personnel serving in Bucharest, Romania, said it’s a struggle for field personnel to ask churches and individuals for donations to cover personal expenses, like Internet service.

“It’s easier to ask for money for hungry kids,” she said.

In presenting the plan, CBF officials emphasized that many congregations will have to get involved in missions giving and participation, or ramp up their existing commitments.

The Fellowship needs churches to “step up” their giving to the Offering for Global Missions, said Linda Jones, CBF missions coordinator.

They also are needed to work directly with missionaries in the field. The result will be a greater involvement by local churches in the global church, she said.

“Those relationships will be enhanced as field personnel raise their own money for programs,” she said. “Congregations will have a clearer vision of how to relate to field personnel.”

CBF Global Missions Coordinator Steven Porter said the new model was vetted over more than a year of conversations with field personnel, church leaders and other stakeholders.

In addition to the new way of financing missions, the approach will sharpen the Fellowship’s focus in the work it does around the world.

The Fellowship will engage three main areas: global poverty, global migration and the global church.

CBF will coordinate the efforts of field personnel, local churches, students, volunteers and other partners to address those core areas of work.

A hoped-for outgrowth of the new system will be “a reciprocal relationship from the field to the churches,” Porter said.

Joe Phelps

Joe Phelps

The new model is admittedly risky, said Joe Phelps, pastor of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, one of the panel participants.

But so are the other causes CBF champions, including combating payday lending and supporting religious liberty. Phelps added that Jesus was a risk taker who should be emulated.

And those risks are worthwhile because they will transform the churches that go all in, said Chris Ellis, the minister of mission and outreach at Second Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.

Congregations will be transformed by their financial and ministry involvement with field personnel, whose challenges and achievements will be intertwined, he said.

CBF missions “will shrink the world” as “churches get involved in what really matters” globally and then are able to apply what they have learned in their own communities, Ellis said.

During a breakout session on Thursday, Porter said no existing field personnel will be “terminated” as a result of the new model. However, some may see changes in their titles and relationship to CBF if they already work for other nonprofit organizations or ministries.

Neither he nor other CBF officials in the breakout would publicly estimate how much the new plan will cost, or how much field personnel will receive for salaries and benefits. They did say that field personnel salaries are roughly comparable to those earned by mid-level church staff members.

They noted that the packages will vary per person because some live and work in parts of the country and the world where the cost of living is very high.

Currently there are 102 field personnel. About 55 percent of them are funded by the Offering for Global Missions, and the others are self-supporting.

When the new model begins next year, all field personnel will be required to raise $12,000 for a reserve fund for use in emergencies or when, say, a transmission or computer must be replaced, Porter said.

Tags:Cooperative Baptist FellowshipJoe PhelpsCBFmissionarySteven PorterCBF Field PersonnelOffering for Global MissionsGreensboro NCScarlette JasperLinda JonesTammy StocksChris Ellis
More by
Jeff Brumley
Read Next:

SBC report shows how five words turn abuse victim from ‘survivor’ to ‘whore’

OpinionMarv Knox

More Articles

  • All
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • After the Guidepost report: Dwelling with evil while living into hope

    OpinionKathy Manis Findley

  • SBC establishes hotline to receive reports of sexual abuse in churches

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • SBC presidential candidate says Executive Committee’s waiver of attorney-client privilege was ‘not wise’

    NewsDavid Bumgardner

  • Rights, responsibilities and the two-fold commandment of love: A reflection on gun violence in America

    OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

  • Mass murder and the soundtrack of our lives

    OpinionJustin Cox

  • Letter to the Editor: Where are the repentant SBC leaders?

    OpinionLetters to the Editor

  • What I learned listening to others who have left the faith

    AnalysisRick Pidcock

  • United Methodist model could help Southern Baptists recover from sexual abuse scandal

    AnalysisCynthia Astle

  • Who is Augie Boto, the central figure in the SBC sexual abuse cover up?

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • This is more than just sin

    OpinionMeredith Stone

  • Remember the women: The Southern Baptist cover up of sexual abuse

    OpinionPam Durso

  • Becoming UNSTOPPABLE Christians

    Paid Promoted Content

  • SBC plans to release list of known sexual abusers in churches, refutes its own former general counsel

    NewsDavid Bumgardner, Jeff Brumley, Mark Wingfield and Maina Mwaura

  • Don’t overlook the depth of the disease in the SBC

    OpinionPaula Garrett

  • On three-month anniversary of Russian invasion, Ukrainian Baptists and neighbors keep helping everyone they can

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • Tear down the SBC Executive Committee and replace it

    OpinionLayne Wallace

  • While SBC weeps over sexual abuse allegations, the TheoBros take on Beth Allison Barr one more time

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • It’s time to stop giving Christianity a pass on white supremacy and violence

    OpinionRobert P. Jones

  • SBC’s former law firm sharply disagrees with Sexual Abuse Task Force report

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Ministry jobs and more

    NewsBarbara Francis

  • SBC report shows how five words turn abuse victim from ‘survivor’ to ‘whore’

    OpinionMarv Knox

  • Hearing from victims’ families changed the death penalty debate in Connecticut

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • Former foster youth need to know they are not abandoned

    OpinionAlbert L. Reyes

  • What’s next for recommendations and reforms in SBC sexual abuse study?

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Guidepost report documents pattern of ignoring, denying and deflecting on sexual abuse claims in SBC

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • SBC establishes hotline to receive reports of sexual abuse in churches

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • SBC presidential candidate says Executive Committee’s waiver of attorney-client privilege was ‘not wise’

    NewsDavid Bumgardner

  • Who is Augie Boto, the central figure in the SBC sexual abuse cover up?

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • SBC plans to release list of known sexual abusers in churches, refutes its own former general counsel

    NewsDavid Bumgardner, Jeff Brumley, Mark Wingfield and Maina Mwaura

  • On three-month anniversary of Russian invasion, Ukrainian Baptists and neighbors keep helping everyone they can

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • While SBC weeps over sexual abuse allegations, the TheoBros take on Beth Allison Barr one more time

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • SBC’s former law firm sharply disagrees with Sexual Abuse Task Force report

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Ministry jobs and more

    NewsBarbara Francis

  • Hearing from victims’ families changed the death penalty debate in Connecticut

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • What’s next for recommendations and reforms in SBC sexual abuse study?

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Guidepost report documents pattern of ignoring, denying and deflecting on sexual abuse claims in SBC

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Author considers how to mourn what’s lost when the faithful leave church

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • As joblessness rocks South Africa, fake pastor diplomas are in demand

    NewsRay Mwareya and Nyasha Bhobo

  • Why breaking up is so hard to do for United Methodists: Connectionalism

    NewsCynthia Astle

  • Oklahoma legislators say life begins at ‘fertilization’

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Baptists in Ukraine continue their humanitarian work amid devastation

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • Louisville police training quoted Bible verse to say officers are God’s agents of wrath

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Transitions for the week of 5-20-22

    NewsBarbara Francis

  • ‘It’s still the economy, stupid’

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Pennsylvania Baptist church licenses transgender man for ministry

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • Buffalo massacre is more evidence of white Christian nationalism, sociologists say

    NewsJeff Brumley

  • Displaced by the war in Ukraine, some African students battle to continue their education in Germany

    NewsAnthony Akaeze

  • Does the Johnson Amendment have any teeth left?

    NewsMark Wingfield

  • Ministry jobs and more

    NewsBarbara Francis

  • Brian Dawkins says he’s blessed

    NewsMaina Mwaura

  • After the Guidepost report: Dwelling with evil while living into hope

    OpinionKathy Manis Findley

  • Rights, responsibilities and the two-fold commandment of love: A reflection on gun violence in America

    OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist

  • Mass murder and the soundtrack of our lives

    OpinionJustin Cox

  • Letter to the Editor: Where are the repentant SBC leaders?

    OpinionLetters to the Editor

  • This is more than just sin

    OpinionMeredith Stone

  • Remember the women: The Southern Baptist cover up of sexual abuse

    OpinionPam Durso

  • Don’t overlook the depth of the disease in the SBC

    OpinionPaula Garrett

  • Tear down the SBC Executive Committee and replace it

    OpinionLayne Wallace

  • It’s time to stop giving Christianity a pass on white supremacy and violence

    OpinionRobert P. Jones

  • SBC report shows how five words turn abuse victim from ‘survivor’ to ‘whore’

    OpinionMarv Knox

  • Former foster youth need to know they are not abandoned

    OpinionAlbert L. Reyes

  • What I learned about Polish hospitality toward Ukrainians: There but for the grace of God

    OpinionPatrick Wilson

  • Stop using Jesus to disguise your predatory patriarchy

    OpinionJessica Abell and Stephany Rose Spaulding

  • Sadly, I agree that a complementarian seminary shouldn’t offer women degrees in pastoral theology

    OpinionAnna Sieges

  • Intolerable cruelty is killing us

    OpinionKris Aaron

  • Another racist mass shooting and our failure to tend Jesus’ sheep

    OpinionEmily Holladay

  • Learning about change from Henry Ford

    OpinionBob Newell

  • Hymn stories: ‘Christ is alive! Let Christians sing’

    OpinionBeverly A. Howard

  • Gifts of hospitality in the midst of grief

    OpinionSara Robb-Scott

  • Bubba-Doo’s gets a new sign

    OpinionCharles Qualls

  • Conservative or liberal? Jesus widens our political landscape

    OpinionRussell Waldrop

  • Letter to the Editor: A response to Laura Ellis on abortion and Christian Realism

    OpinionLetters to the Editor

  • The Beloved Community and the heresy of white replacement: How ‘Beyoncé Mass’ gave me hope after the Buffalo massacre

    OpinionRobert P. Jones

  • The Holy Spirit: An advocate, comforter and encourager for times like these

    OpinionBarry Howard

  • The air of gathered worship: A 12-Sunday challenge

    OpinionPaul R. Gilliam III

  • After 2,000 UK Church Buildings Close, New Church Plants Get Creative

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Many Jewish World War II Soldiers Had Christian Burials. That’s Changing.

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Questions Archbishop’s Decision Regarding Communion Ban

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Burka Enforcement and Burka Bans: Where Extremist Policies Meet

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Climate Change Indicators Reach Record Levels

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • The Catholic Church’s views on exorcism have changed – a religious studies scholar explains why

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Indiana pastor admits ‘adultery’; woman says she was a teen

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Church of Scotland Approves Same-Sex Marriage

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBob Allen and Jeff Brumley

  • Banned from Communion in San Francisco, Pelosi receives Eucharist in Washington

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Senior Israeli lawmaker warns of “religious war” over Jerusalem moves

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Minnesota GOP apologizes for Soros puppetmaster video

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • If the media are reluctant to properly label the GOP’s racist, Christian nationalist ideologies, we’ll have trouble hanging on to democracy

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Pope voices hope church in China can operate in freedom

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Telehealth abortion demand is soaring. But access may come down to where you live

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • With AIPAC funding primary campaigns, young Jewish progressives move further left

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Welsh First Minister ‘regrets’ that Franklin Graham is coming to Wales

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Willow Creek announces major layoffs amid post-COVID struggle

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Ohio House passes bill requiring colleges give students 3 days of absences for religious observation

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • ‘Conversion therapy’ ban falls short in Minnesota Senate

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Don’t buy Alito’s assurances: here’s what happens next after Roe falls

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Leading Psychologist Bridges Trauma Healing and the Black Church

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • For some people, religious leaders might be most effective at communicating the importance of COVID-19 vaccination

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Former pastor in 2 states pleads guilty to child sex charges

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • A rabbi who ‘speaks to Christians’ condemned them on Twitter. It cost him his job.

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

  • Deadly explosion damages historic church, Baptist offices in Cuba

    Curated

    Exclude from home pageBNG staff

Conversations that Matter.

© 2022 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS