When Baptist News Global reported the North American Mission Board was cancelling life‑insurance coverage it long promised to forced retirees, NAMB described the move as painful but responsible “stewardship,” a hard step it said would let the mission board “live within its means.”
So we went looking at the means.
Across NAMB’s audited financial statements, financial management reports to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, Guidestone emails to retirees, donor lists and court filings, a consistent picture shows up:
- NAMB remains one of the wealthiest entities in the SBC.
- Even with the increase, NAMB’s retiree obligations have dropped significantly and the increase cited to Southern Baptists would represent less than half a percent increase in NAMB’s current expenses.
- The real pressure comes from deep operating deficits, a rapidly growing headquarters and contractor cost structure, dependence on selling investments and property, and shrinking transparency around compensation, reserves and risk.
Viewed against that backdrop, cancelling burial‑level life insurance for forced retirees does not rescue NAMB from financial collapse. It is a choice to save at most a little more than $1 million a year, according to President Kevin Ezell, while preserving far more expensive priorities: Swelling salaries and benefits, rapidly expanding contract services and six‑figure donations to a private university.
“Cancelling burial‑level life insurance for forced retirees does not rescue NAMB from financial collapse.”
Retirees are not what is breaking the bank
Start with the obligation NAMB is walking away from.
According to NAMB’s audited reports, the combined liability for retiree medical and life benefits peaked around 2012 at about $101.8 million. By 2024 it had dropped to about $36.3 million.
That is a decline of about $65.5 million, or 64%, over 12 years. The cost of the promise is shrinking as retirees age and die; it is not exploding.
Over roughly the same period, NAMB’s unrestricted wealth has moved in the opposite direction:
- In 2021, NAMB reported $353.6 million in net assets without donor restriction.
- By 2024, that figure had fallen to about $288.1 million, a drop of $65.5 million, or almost 19% in three years.
On the 2024 balance sheet, NAMB still looks wealthy:
- Total assets: about $420.1 million
- Total liabilities: about $46.5 million
- Total net assets: about $373.6 million, with $288.1 million of that unrestricted.
But the slice NAMB itself labels as available within one year for general use has thinned:
- In 2019, NAMB reported about $60 million of financial assets available within one year for general expenditure.
- By 2024, that figure had slid to roughly $44.8 million, a decline of about 25%.
To recap:
- The liability tied to retirees has fallen by tens of millions of dollars.
- Unrestricted wealth has also fallen by tens of millions.
- There is genuine financial pressure, but the pressure is not coming from retirees.
To see what is driving it, you have to follow the cash.
From bumps to a cliff: Operating deficits deepen
NAMB’s operating cash flow always has moved up and down. During the first decade of Kevin Ezell’s tenure, the swings roughly balanced out.
From 2010 through 2019, NAMB’s “net cash provided by (used in) operating activities” looked like this:
- 2010: about $4.8 million provided
- 2011: about $11.9 million used
- 2012: about $17.4 million provided
- 2013: about $5.2 million used
- 2014: about $7.9 million used
- 2015: about $0.4 million provided
- 2016: about $2.8 million used
- 2017: about $4.2 million provided
- 2018: about $0.4 million provided
- 2019: about $4.0 million provided.
Add those 10 years together and NAMB’s operations produced a small net positive of roughly $3.3 million. Some years were strong, some weak, but the engine essentially paid for itself.
The last five years tell a different story:
- 2020: about $8.7 million used
- 2021: essentially break even at about $0.06 million used
- 2022: about $16.4 million used
- 2023: about $31.4 million used
- 2024: about $29.1 million used.
From 2020 through 2024, NAMB’s operations used about $85.7 million in cash. Roughly $76.9 million of that disappeared in the last three years alone.
In 2024, the $29.1 million operating deficit was about 15% of total expenses. For every dollar NAMB spent, about 85 cents came from regular income. The difference had to be covered another way.
It was covered by selling assets:
- In 2023, NAMB sold about $79.6 million in investments.
- In 2024, it sold another $49 million in investments and $7.6 million in property and equipment.
Where NAMB once hovered near break‑even operations, it is now in a pattern of deep, recurring operating deficits financed by consuming savings and selling assets.
That is a serious problem. It is a cost‑structure problem, not a retiree problem.
The budgets churches see and the money NAMB actually spends
NAMB’s own financial management reports to the SBC Executive Committee show another pattern. The “total expenses” budget presented to churches each year is far below what the audited statements later reveal NAMB actually spent. The next report then repeats the same low budget level, even though NAMB already knows real spending is tens of millions higher.
Each annual report carries both a budget for the next two years and the actual expenses from the most recent audit.
2022 report
- Budget for 2022 and 2023: $122.82 million
- 2021 actual: $139.31 million
- NAMB already was spending about 13% more than the budget level it continued to project.
2023 report
- Budget for 2023 and 2024: $134.7 million
- 2022 actual: $175.70 million
- Real spending was about $41 million higher, roughly 30% above the stated budget.
2024 report
- Budget for 2024 and 2025: $137.32 million
- 2023 actual: $176.54 million
- Actual spending ran about $39 million higher, again around 29% above budget.
2025 report
- Budget for 2025 and 2026: $147.06 million
- 2024 actual: $191.15 million
- The gap widens to about $44 million, roughly 30% above the budget line.
On paper, the budgets messengers see look flat and restrained. In reality, NAMB’s own audited numbers show $30 million to $40 million a year in spending above the “total expenses” figure that keeps getting carried forward as the operating budget.
So when NAMB now talks about “cuts” and “savings,” churches are hearing from leaders whose reports already show a consistent pattern of spending far beyond the budget levels they themselves presented.
Headquarters grows while retirees are told to tighten
The decision to cut retiree life insurance might land differently if NAMB were cutting its own overhead at the same pace. The audited numbers show the opposite.
From 2020 to 2024:
- Total expenses climbed from about $124.3 million to $191.2 million — an increase of $66.9 million, or 53.8%
- “Administration” rose from $17.29 million to $24.67 million, up $7.38 million (42.7%)
- Personnel costs increased from $34.46 million to $41.43 million, up $6.97 million (20.2%)
- Contract services doubled, from $10.23 million to $20.65 million, an increase of $10.42 million (101.9%).
While the operating engine was sliding deeper into the red, headquarters and contractor spending accelerated.
NAMB’s financial management reports show personnel costs have consistently consumed about 40% of the budget:
- 42% in 2021 with 136 Alpharetta staff
- 39% in 2022 with 136 staff
- 40% in 2023 with 132 staff
- 41% in 2024 with 142 staff, and the same 41% projected for 2025.
Because the overall expense base has grown so sharply, that “steady” 41% now equals roughly $78 million a year in salaries and benefits alone.
Add $20.65 million for contract services and $24.67 million for administration, and well more than half of NAMB’s annual spending now goes to salaries, benefits, contractors and overhead.
Those are the areas being preserved while retirees are told their small burial benefit is “unsustainable.”
Paying to ‘influence influencers’
The fastest‑growing line in NAMB’s budget is contract services, which jumped from $10.23 million in 2020 to $20.65 million in 2024.
Part of that covers software and support. Part reflects a deliberate strategy.
In a recorded conversation with Ed Stetzer, NAMB’s president described pastors as an “untapped resource” because they already have national platforms. NAMB’s approach, he said, is to tell certain pastors: “Stay in your church but let us use you and your platform to help us find leaders who can influence influencers.” The idea is to leverage their reach without moving them from their pulpits.
In a deposition in the McRaney v. NAMB lawsuit, Ezell was asked whether then‑Summit Church staffer Todd Unzicker worked for NAMB. He responded that NAMB did not employ Unzicker but did have a contract with Pastor J.D. Greear and the Summit staff “to speak for us at certain times and to do some things.”
That contract overlapped with at least part of Greear’s term as SBC president, when he served as an ex officio NAMB trustee. SBC bylaws say trustees are not to receive compensation or benefits from the entities they oversee. Whether or not this arrangement technically violated that rule, it plainly blurred the line that is supposed to protect churches.
Around those contracts, NAMB leaders and NAMB’s Send Network figures sit at the center of a wider web:
- Bryan Loritts, a Send Network vice president, also leads The Kainos Movement, which NAMB partners with and promotes, teaches at Grimké Seminary and serves as a teaching pastor at Summit Church.
- Tony Merida, another vice president, is founding pastor of Imago Dei Church, a Grimké faculty member and a prominent voice for The Gospel Coalition.
- Jonathan Akin directs the NAMB Leadership Institute while Carson‑Newman University’s Form 990 lists him as a full‑time vice president for church relations and campus ministries with six‑figure compensation.
None of that is hidden. What Southern Baptists cannot see is:
- How much of NAMB’s $20‑plus million in contract spending flows into that overlapping network
- How many of those arrangements are treated as related‑party transactions or brought before trustees as conflicts of interest
- How many public defenders of NAMB’s decisions are also being paid, directly or indirectly, to do so.
Those are questions for trustees, not just critics online.
Liberty, Send Network and the retirees
Another set of numbers shows NAMB’s priorities.
Liberty University’s printed Liberty Journal includes annual “President’s Circle” donor pages. In 2021, 2022 and early 2023, those pages list:
- “NAMB dba SEND Network” in the $100,000 to $499,999 band for organizational donors
- “North American Mission Board” again in a lower band, usually $10,000 to $24,999.
That means Send Network alone has been sending Liberty at least $100,000 per year and possibly close to $500,000, while NAMB itself gives an additional smaller amount.
During that period, Liberty’s School of Divinity and its Center for Church Advancement heavily promoted partnerships with NAMB’s GenSend program and church‑planting work.
On Liberty’s online donor lists, however, the high‑level “NAMB dba Send Network” entry does not appear. Only the printed magazine shows the larger gift, which is why pastors who raised questions online relied on screenshots of those pages.
Whatever one thinks of Liberty, the contrast is straightforward:
- NAMB is trying to save at most a little more than $1 million a year by cutting burial‑level life insurance for retired missionaries and their spouses.
- At the same time, its church‑planting brand has been comfortable writing six‑figure checks to a private university, while contractor and headquarters spending have grown by tens of millions of dollars.
Less transparency as pay and contracts surge
Those rising personnel and contractor costs sit beside a steady erosion in transparency.
Since 1993, the SBC’s Business and Financial Plan has said members of cooperating churches “shall have access” to information from entity records, including salary structures. That does not mean individual paychecks, but the ranges for positions.
Beginning around 2019, pastors and laypeople started asking NAMB to see its salary structure. Those requests produced no salary ranges.
At the 2021 SBC annual meeting in Nashville, pastor Joey Hufstedler asked from a microphone whether messengers could see NAMB’s salary structure. Ezell passed the question to trustee chair Eric Thomas, who replied that trustees had “appropriate procedures for limited access” and would handle such matters privately, case by case. The salary structure itself never appeared.
That fall, the Tennessee Baptist Convention adopted a resolution quoting the SBC Business and Financial Plan and noting NAMB “has chosen not to comply” when asked repeatedly to release its salary structure.
The SBC Executive Committee did not enforce the rule that said churches “shall have access.” Instead, it approved a revised Business and Financial Plan that removes the explicit guarantee that church members can see salary structures at all. If messengers ratify that change, a right that existed on paper for three decades will disappear.
The debate sharpened when court filings from former NAMB Senior Vice President Johnny Hunt claimed his compensation package from NAMB was about $610,000 per year. NAMB responded that no one at the board had ever been paid anything like that amount in salary, a carefully chosen word that did not address total compensation. When pastors pressed the issue on social media, Ezell posted a tweet quoting a “wise friend” who advised him not to bother answering lies.
For a mission board that has nearly doubled contractor spending and grown personnel costs by more than 20% in four years, the refusal to show basic salary ranges is not a side matter. It goes to trust.
Reserves that move, and a health care bucket that disappears
NAMB also points to its reserves as evidence of prudence. Where those reserves sit and how they are labeled has changed.
In the 2021 financial management report, NAMB’s reserves were broken out as:
- Operating contingency: $61.41 million
- Health care contingency: $7.60 million
- Church planting building and loans: $87.37 million
- Board‑approved projects: $10.42 million
- Total reserves: $166.79 million.
By the 2023 report, those categories had been collapsed into just two lines:
- Operating contingency: $67.35 million
- Board‑approved projects: $35.90 million
- Total reserves: $103.24 million.
The specific line labeled “Health Care Contingency” — about $7.6 million once set aside for retiree‑related needs — had disappeared. The obligation remained. The labeled reserve did not.
The 2025 report (covering 2024) shows reserves falling again to about $87.393 million, split as:
- $79.152 million in operating contingency
- $8.241 million in board‑approved projects.
For the first time, NAMB checks “Yes” when asked whether reserves were used to finance ministries during the year.
Boards can redesignate reserves. It is another matter to quietly erase a clearly labeled health‑care reserve from the tables just before eliminating a health‑related benefit for forced retirees, and to do so with no narrative explanation. That is difficult to square with NAMB’s public claims of transparency and care.
At a minimum, trustees need clear answers about:
- Where the health care money went
- Who decided to move it
- Why that decision never was explained to the churches that funded it.
Riskier investments and a loan fund that suddenly has no problems
NAMB’s investment choices and church loan book raise additional questions.
On the investment side, NAMB has steadily increased its use of Level 3 investments — assets whose value is based on internal models and manager estimates rather than quoted market prices.
- In 2020, about $33 million of NAMB’s investments, roughly 17% of the fair‑valued portfolio, were Level 3.
- By 2023, Level 3 holdings were close to $95 million, about half the fair‑valued portfolio.
NAMB’s own notes acknowledge that Level 3 valuations involve “significant judgment” and actual values may differ significantly from the estimates. These assets also are harder to sell quickly at predictable prices.
A shift like that might be acceptable in a season of strong operating surpluses and growing reserves. It is more concerning when NAMB already is selling investments to cover operating deficits and its liquid, spendable assets have dropped by about a quarter in five years.
The church loan portfolio appears cleaner than it ever has — perhaps too clean.
- In 2012, NAMB carried 404 loans totaling about $145 million, with an average balance of roughly $359,000. Its statements showed several million dollars in delinquent and impaired loans. Some churches were behind, and the books said so.
- By 2024, the portfolio had shrunk to 133 loans totaling $75.9 million, with an average balance near $571,000 — a 67% drop in the number of loans, a 48% drop in total principal and about a 59% increase in the size of the average loan.
Despite that concentration, recent notes tell readers that as of the end of 2023 and 2024:
- No loans were 90 days or more past due.
- No loans were considered impaired.
- In 2024, not even a single loan was listed as 30 to 89 days past due.
- Under the current expected credit loss model, NAMB records essentially no allowance for loan losses.
The same notes concede NAMB has entered into “troubled debt restructurings” to help churches remain current, but they do not say how many loans were reworked, what concessions were granted or how close some borrowers are to default.
Anyone who has lived through a church budget crisis knows this is not how finances usually look. NAMB’s older statements, with reported delinquencies and losses, looked more like reality. The newer picture — pristine figures with no impaired loans and virtually no reserve — does not.
Trustees do not have to be bankers to insist on:
- A detailed loan-aging schedule
- A list of restructurings and their terms
- A realistic allowance for losses.
Until they do, Southern Baptists are being asked to accept on trust that every church borrower is healthy despite a long history that says otherwise.
What NAMB really saves by cutting life insurance
Against all those numbers, the cost of keeping NAMB’s life‑insurance promise to forced retirees is strikingly small.
The written agreements signed in 2010 promised a $20,000 term life policy for each retiree and a $5,000 policy for the spouse. Retirees recently received an email explaining what happens when NAMB stops paying for that coverage.
Guidestone tells them they may convert the same coverage into a personal policy. The quoted premium for keeping the $20,000 retiree policy and $5,000 spouse policy is $45 per month for the retiree and $11.25 per month for the spouse.
That’s a total of $56.25 per month, or $675 per year, to keep $25,000 in coverage.
We do not know NAMB’s exact group rate. Because Guidestone is quoting the continuation of the same policy, the most reasonable inference is that the increase that led NAMB to abandon its promise would have cost on the order of $675 per retiree household per year.
In a recent meeting, the president’s explanation — costs jumping from $400,000 to $1.2 million a year, a one‑time payout option above $15 million, and claims that “most didn’t even know they had it” — aimed to paint the benefit as both expensive and underappreciated. A retired missionary with HR experience who responded online flatly rejected that narrative, saying he had “never seen that large of an increase” and wanted to see the actual numbers behind it.
NAMB’s official “transition” help is a small stipend of $100 to $500 per year for two years into the retiree’s HRA. Yet, at the high end, $500 barely covers three quarters of the annual cost for one couple, and only for the first two years. At the low end, $100 is less than $9 a month, while the retiree is paying more than $47 out of pocket from the start.
Once those two years are over, every retiree household that wants the coverage either absorbs the full $675 a year or drops the policy entirely, losing a benefit they were told in writing they would receive.
The precise number of households affected is not public, but the scale is easy to estimate:
- At 1,000 households, cutting the benefit ultimately saves NAMB about $675,000 per year.
- At 1,500 households, the savings is roughly $1.01 million.
- At 2,000 households, it is about $1.35 million.
Set those figures beside the rest:
- $41.43 million in personnel costs in 2024
- $20.65 million in contract services
- $24.67 million in administration
- A $29.1 million operating deficit in 2024
- Multi‑year overspending of the reported operating budget by $30–$40 million a year
- Six‑figure gifts from “NAMB dba Send Network” to Liberty University.
The burial benefit NAMB is cancelling is a tiny fraction of the budget items it continues to protect.
Sola Scriptura or Sola Pecunia?
For Southern Baptists, this is not just an accounting exercise. A board with hundreds of millions in assets, deepening operating deficits, rapidly rising headquarters costs and growing opacity has decided one of the few places it must economize is a $675‑per‑household burial benefit promised in a signed 2010 agreement.
In a convention that claims the Bible as its final authority, this is not only a financial question but a moral and spiritual one. Scripture praises the person “who keeps an oath even when it hurts and does not change” (Psalm 15:4). Jesus’ own standard was simple: “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’” (Matthew 5:37). Applied to institutions, those words point in one direction. If you make a promise, especially in writing, keep it, even when it becomes expensive.
Measured against NAMB’s own numbers and choices, cancelling this small, promised benefit is not evidence of careful stewardship. It is a statement about whose burdens matter, whose promises can be re‑written and how the mission board values the missionaries who built the work it now leads.
Related article:
NAMB reneges on life insurance promised to forced retirees | Analysis by Jon Bullock