VALLEY FORGE, Pa. (ABP) — The American Baptists Churches USA may lose up to a fifth of its missionary force unless its mission agency can raise enough money to overcome its current financial crisis.
The head of International Ministries, the ABC's mission-sending agency, said in a July 13 memo to missionaries the agency may eliminate up to 36 of its 150 missionary positions — 28 by recall and eight by attrition — unless it can raise $1.5 million quickly to erase a projected 2004 shortfall.
In another memo to missionaries July 8, Charles Jones, acting executive director of International Ministries, asked for volunteers for the layoffs. “As you evaluate your sense of the Lord's call and guiding in your life, it is important for us to know if any of you feel led to volunteer to be part of an early recall,” Jones wrote.
Recalling missionaries from the field is a last resort, Jones told Associated Baptist Press July 19. “It is one of the last options available to us. We're trying to do many things to bring our budget into balance. … It's a difficult time for us all.”
International Ministries has an annual budget of about $14 million. Earlier this year, the agency cut a $3 million deficit in half by trimming mission programs, operations and stateside staff.
“Despite this significant progress, preliminary budget projections indicate a $1.5 million deficit in 2005 growing to $1.9 million in 2007,” Jones wrote July 13. “These deficits occur despite fairly aggressive projected increases in [the World Mission Offering] and major gift revenue. Clearly additional changes must be made to achieve long-term financial sustainability.”
The agency already plans to spend $400,000 from reserves this year to partially offset the 2004 shortfall. The budget proposal for 2005 will be finalized by mid-September, Jones said. But selecting missionaries for recall will take longer.
“The decision about whether there will be a recall and how many missionaries would be affected is likely to be made at the end of this year or January-February of 2005,” he wrote July 8.
In June, the board of International Ministries fired Executive Director Hector Cortez, citing a loss of “confidence in his leadership.” Acting director Jones told ABP the firing was unrelated to the financial crisis, which preceded Cortez.
In addition to inviting mission workers to resign, Jones — in a series of four memos to missionaries recently — asked them to make a personal contribution to the World Mission Offering and to promote a special fund-raising emphasis in September and October by speaking in stateside churches. Missionaries will return to the United States for up to two months to promote the offering.
With such an all-out “promotional blitz” for increased giving, International Missions hopes to boost its annual offering 36 percent this year, to $5.7 million, to erase the $1.5 million deficit for 2004.
Although missionaries are being asked to be more involved in raising money, Jones' memos said fund-raising success will not be a factor in selecting missionaries for recall.
Instead, nine criteria first used in a 1969 recall will be applied, which include a missionary's effectiveness and health, an invitation from the mission partners in the host country, and the affordability and specificity of the assignment.
Those who volunteer or are selected for layoff will receive a severance package of six months' base salary and one month of benefits.
The ABC-USA — with 5,800 congregations and 1.5 million members — is one of many denominations and conventions struggling to fund missions and other programs. The Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, which acknowledged a $10 million shortfall in its $269 million budget last year, has used money from reserves each year since 2000. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, on the other hand has avoided significant mission cuts because of several multimillion-dollar designated gifts in recent years.
In 1999, the ABC's International Ministries spent $7.5 million from reserves to expand its missionary and support staff. “Regrettably, during the intervening years we were unsuccessful in securing the additional funding streams necessary to replace the special endowment draw and support … ministry expansion long-term,” Jones wrote in a July memo.
Jones blamed the current crisis on a drop in endowment earnings and “a shift in how our churches are supporting missions.” He said local churches are less inclined to support a central missions budget but more open to a “direct relationship with missionaries.” One of the agency's long-term strategies to reverse the funding trend involves “deeper and broader relationships” between specific missionaries and churches, Jones said in his memos.
Recalling missionaries from the field is a rare step for the ABC, “even in our long history,” Jones told ABP. “We've had two or three other times we have had to do this. And if we have to do this, we will recall as few missionaries as possible.”
Jones called American Baptists to “an over and above effort” on behalf of the annual mission offering “so that mandatory missionary recalls will not have to take place.”
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