RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — Another controversy is brewing at the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, which reportedly is set to dismiss two of its missionaries in West Africa for cooperating with non-Baptist colleagues to plant a church that isn't “Baptist” enough.
According to several news sources, blogs and the couple's pastor, IMB officials have given Wyman and Michelle Dobbs an April 15 ultimatum to resign or be fired. The Dobbses have been missionaries to an unnamed, unreached people group in the small nation of Guinea for eight years.
Tom Hatley, IMB trustee chairman, confirmed the Dobbses' case is under study by the trustees, but the board is waiting for the IMB staff to recommend action. Trustees have to approve all missionary terminations.
Jason Helmbacher, the Dobbses' stateside pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Sallisaw, Okla., said the threatened termination is another example of IMB leaders narrowing doctrinal standards beyond what Southern Baptists have authorized in their confessional statements.
The missionary couple, Helmbacher said, is being targeted for founding a church — Baptist in doctrine and polity but not name — with another missionary couple in Guinea employed by the Christian and Missionary Alliance. CMA is an evangelical denomination with doctrinal standards and church governance very similar to those of Southern Baptists.
“This is an issue that's already up for the convention, and there has been this undertow of what appears to be Landmarkism in the IMB,” he said, referring to a set of exclusivistic doctrines, dating from the turn of the 20th century, now largely dismissed by most Southern Baptists. “It seems to be, with the Dobbses, they are the example right now of what happens when we take that hard line.”
Landmarkism teaches that Baptist churches are descended directly from the early Christian church, and therefore are the only proper purveyors of Christian ordinances like baptism and communion.
The conservative trustees who run the International Mission Board have insisted on increasingly strict policies about acceptable theology and practice among missionaries — such as requiring that only Baptist churches be established overseas. Critics say the stricter IMB policies go too far, and some say they reflect Landmark theology rather than SBC doctrinal consensus.
The news of the potential firing comes on the heels of another controversy over new IMB policies designed to prevent missionaries from using private charismatic practices and to narrow the parameters of acceptable modes of baptism for missionary appointees.
The Dobbses' situation has been the topic of several popular Southern Baptist blogs for more than a week and was the subject of an article on the EthicsDaily.com website April 12.
The new church established in Guinea is one of the few Christian outposts in the country, a nation that is overwhelmingly Muslim, and the first congregation affiliated with IMB missionaries.
IMB spokesman Van Payne declined to discuss the topic with an Associated Baptist Press reporter April 13, citing personnel and privacy concerns.
However, trustee chairman Hatley confirmed a board subcommittee “did receive some information about this at our last meeting” in March, but “no actual action” has been taken.
Hatley, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Rogers, Ark., said IMB missionaries are permitted to plant churches in collaboration with non-Baptist missionaries who endorse the “Baptist Faith and Message,” and that such churches don't have to have the word “Baptist” in their name. Those churches must “have Baptist doctrine at their core,” however, he said.
Helmbacher noted both the Dobbses have signed the controversial 2000 revision of the SBC's “Baptist Faith and Message” confessional statement, a requirement of all IMB missionaries. The CMA missionaries have also stated they agree with that doctrinal standard.
Helmbacher noted a 2005 policy approved by IMB trustees that was designed to prevent partnerships on the mission field that could result in IMB personnel planting churches that espouse doctrines most Southern Baptists would find objectionable. The Dobbses' partnership does not violate that policy, he said.
The policy “does not do away with partnerships — it says we do partner, and who the Dobbses are partnering with meet those criteria,” the pastor said. While the church is not explicitly “Baptist” in name, it is “baptistic” in its doctrine, he said.
Micah Fries, a Southern Baptist seminary student in Kansas City, Mo., decried the Dobbses' predicament in an April 4 post on his blog, friesville.blogspot.com. Under the headline, “A doctrine that could lead to hell,” he suggested the IMB trustees would let people go to hell without accepting the gospel rather than associate with non-Baptists.
“For some time now, we've considered the struggle within the IMB board of trustees,” Michael Fries wrote. “We've wondered about the potential ramifications of their recent decisions regarding doctrinal differences. Well, we're now seeing the horrible consequences of their actions, and we're finding that supposed 'doctrinal purity' could potentially lead people to hell.”
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