ATLANTA (ABP) — The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship broke tradition June 23 during its annual general assembly in Atlanta by commissioning only short-term and self-funded mission workers, rather than any fully funded career missionaries.
The group commissioned 19 new affiliated workers during the service, which has become a tradition on the last night of the Fellowship's annual meeting. Of those, six were funded for one-to-three-year posts under the aegis of the group's Global Service Corps.
The remaining 13 were self-sustaining missionaries appointed as part of CBF's AsYouGo program, which provides CBF affiliation and some support to workers whose careers take them to mission fields or whose full-time missions work is funded completely by a church, donors or themselves.
CBF, whose missions giving has lagged in recent years, will not appoint any career missionaries this year. Appointments during the last two years benefited from a multimillion gift from a single donor.
With the latest appointments, CBF has 107 active career missionaries, 20 Global Service Corps workers and 38 other missionaries affiliated with CBF through AsYouGo and other programs in the United States and abroad.
In a charge to the new missionaries, Jack Snell, interim CBF global missions coordinator, gave a candid assessment of the situation into which the missionaries entered.
“There is so much to be done, and we are doing so little,” he said. “Our offerings are flat; we have not reached our goal in the Offering for Global Missions in several years. In many cases, our passion is dull and our compassion is diluted by fatigue.”
He added: “And yet there continues to be unbelievable statistics that tell us that one out of every four persons in the world still has not had the chance to hear the gospel of Christ… . The inequity between the haves and have-nots widens even as we are here tonight. The world is groaning.”
“Will we simply bless these [missionaries] tonight and go home and feel good that we had a part in this service?” he asked. “What we're talking about tonight involves all of us — not just for tonight, but for the future. Because each of us is being called to show compassion. Each of us is being called to enter into the pain of the world.”
General assembly participants heard a video presentation on the work each missionary will do, followed by an endorsement and commitment voiced by a representative of their home church or a congregation with which they will work.
Global Service Corps personnel commissioned were:
— Laura Barton of Wilmington, N.C., who will serve as a development coordinator for CBF's China team;
— Eric Bebber of Thomasville, N.C., who will work with a church in Washington coordinating local ministry and volunteer mission workers;
— Susan and Wes Craig of Waco, Texas, who will work with the Romany people in Bucharest, Romania;
— Elizabeth Fortenberry of Waco, who will work with international women and families in Los Angeles' academic community; and
— Taisha Rose of Stone Mountain, Ga., who will return to her hometown of New York City to work with an after-school program in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.
AsYouGo affiliates commissioned included:
— Brian McAtee of Greenville, S.C., who will serve as a research consultant and missions catalyst at First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, Okla.;
— Brandon and Tirzah Turner, who will serve as advocates for undocumented immigrants and other “invisible poor” in the Baltimore-Washington corridor;
— Calandra and Jessy Togba-Doya, who will live in a Liberian town and work with women who were abused and boys who were used as child soldiers during Liberia's 14-year civil war;
— Greg and Sue Smith of Fredericksburg, Va., who will partner with Fredericksburg Baptist Church and the Baptist General Association of Virginia in coordinating churches' outreach to the state's exploding Latino population;
— Connie and Rod Johnson of Houston, who will facilitate teams helping with medical and other physical needs in far southern Mexico;
— Mary Katherine Williams of Lexington, Ky., who will transition from a GSC position to continue working as an AsYouGo affiliate with a housing-project ministry in central Brooklyn;
— Keri Gage of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., who will continue working with Touching Miami With Love, a CBF-related ministry in inner-city Miami, after serving there in a GSC position; and
— Annette and Steve of Louisville, Ky., who cannot be further identified because of security reasons. They were commissioned as videographers to tell the story of immigrants and refugees with whom CBF missionaries are working.
New CBF Global Missions Coordinator Rob Nash, who was elected two days earlier, prayed for the appointees at the end of the service.
“We pray for their hearts, that you might fill them with an overwhelming love that emerges out of their own brokenness and humility,” he said. “We pray for their minds, that you might open them up to even deeper truths about you and about the world to which you've called them.”
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