From the Great Commission to the Great Multitude, Southern Baptists have united for 180 years in a Great Pursuit of those who have yet to hear the gospel by sending missionaries overseas through the International Mission Board. We work together with you, Colorado Baptists, to make disciples of every nation, among all tribes and peoples and languages.
Colorado Baptists’ faithfulness and generosity are a blessing to the nations as you continue to send and support missionaries through the IMB. I’m privileged to see firsthand how God is at work through your 3,600 IMB missionaries and our close partners. Behind every aspect of our work together are real people: missionaries and missionary families at work, and the new believers among the nations who once walked in darkness but now walk in the Light. At the IMB, we are vocal both in our advocacy for the Cooperative Program and in our gratitude for the work made possible by CP gifts because we see the impact of the Cooperative Program.
If the Lord wills, in May my wife, Michelle, and I will join in the 100th anniversary celebration of the Cooperative Program in Memphis. That celebration is personal for me for a host of reasons: First and foremost, I have the privilege of serving with the organization that receives more Cooperative Program dollars than any other organization in Southern Baptist life.
In addition, my family and I have been supported by the Cooperative Program for the past 14 years — every meal, gallon of gas, outfit of clothes, the roof over our heads, tuitions for my kids’ college education — all our world provision has been made by the generosity of Southern Baptists’ giving through the Cooperative Program. I also have three degrees heavily scholarshipped by the CP. The four churches I served as pastor gave, as a combined average, 18% of their undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program.
I’m also grateful to share that, in 1925, the SBC’s newly adopted Cooperative Program was modeled after the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s Unified Budget Plan, a cooperative missions giving plan that was adopted by the Kentucky Baptist Convention in their annual meeting on November 16, 1915. As a fascinating part of Kentucky Baptist history, the annual meeting of the KBC took place that year at the First Baptist Church of Jellico, Tennessee, a church that sits just a few hundred feet from the Kentucky state line and was the host church for Kentucky Baptists’ annual meeting that year. In God’s providence, it was in that church that I was baptized in 1977, licensed for gospel ministry in 1990, married and ordained for gospel ministry in 1993.
Because of those connections and the personal debt I feel I owe, I am praying that the 100th anniversary will be more than a time to celebrate how God has used the Cooperative Program. I’m praying it will be a time to cast a vision for how God would have us, as Southern Baptists, to cooperate to reach a lost world over the next 100 years. We must be honest with ourselves and with Southern Baptists about the crisis we are facing as a convention and in cooperative giving.
One illustration of that crisis is the fact that, just since I became IMB president, the IMB has lost 20% in Cooperative Program revenue. That loss is not in actual dollars but in the actual value of the actual dollars. While CP giving has slowly declined, inflation has dramatically increased and, thus, cut deeply into the vital resources necessary to fund our missionaries. When basic inflation is applied to year-over-year giving over the past seven years, the IMB has lost the equivalent of $20 million Cooperative Program dollars — the amount necessary to support 300 missionaries.
Why haven’t we called home 300 missionaries? Two reasons. First, at the IMB, we are committed to stretching every penny given by Southern Baptists for the greatest efficiency in the work. Second, gifts given through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering® for international missions has come to the rescue. Our missionaries have contacted 93% of Southern Baptist churches to build relationships with them and inspire them to give more generously through the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon offering and, thankfully, modest growth of the Lottie Offering has helped us keep missionaries on the field, even while losing the equivalent of $20 million in inflation and Cooperative Program funding decline.
I believe the time has come for us not only to recommit ourselves to sacrificial giving through the Cooperative Program, but also for us to ask, “What does this generation of Southern Baptists expect from their CP dollars?” and “How can we best use those dollars to reach a lost world?” I’m praying someone will step to the forefront and lead that effort.
As for the 50.41% of national CP dollars that make it to the International Mission Board, most of that — like all the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering — goes overseas to fund gospel advance on mission-field work. In fact, approximately 10% of IMB revenue is spent in the United States, and even most of that 10% is spent vetting, training, and providing a support infrastructure for missionaries overseas.
What is the return on the investment Colorado Baptists are making in Kingdom work through the IMB? I’m pleased to report that this past year, through IMB missionaries and their Baptist partners working alongside of them, 1.6 million people had the opportunity to hear the gospel. Half of those who heard engaged with the message and messenger enough to be challenged to respond; 155,000 professed faith in Jesus; and 68,000 were baptized as believers. Praise the Lord for these changed lives!
At the end of January, I preached at the Brazilian Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil. IMB’s work in Brazil dates to the second half of the 19th century. Over more than 140 years, we have sent more than 1,000 missionaries to Brazil. As a result of that investment and the ways God has used our missionaries and Brazilian Baptists, today the Brazilian Baptist Convention has more than 14,000 churches, a home mission board, a foreign mission board, three seminaries and, as a people, absolutely love your International Mission Board.
I can’t tell you how many pictures I took with Brazilians of all ages and ethnic backgrounds who wanted a picture with the IMB president because they or someone in their family was won to the Lord or discipled by an IMB missionary! As a gift to me and the IMB, they designed a stone tablet covered by a map of Brazil. Printed on that map is the surnames of all 1,000-plus IMB missionaries who have served among Brazilians. The experience was a great reminder to me of how God has used and is using the generosity of Southern Baptists to change a lost world.
While we celebrate what God has done through Southern Baptists over the past 180 years and through the Cooperative Program over the past 100 years, we also recognize that lostness in our nation and around the world is growing. The investment Southern Baptists make in sending missionaries must also grow. Thankfully, we are seeing exponential growth when it comes to those responding to the call to missions. Late this winter, the pool of candidates in the missionary-application pipeline hit an 18-year high of 1,569, an increase of 500% since I became president.
At the IMB, we are thankful for the generosity of Colorado Baptists and your faithful giving through the Cooperative Program. Simply put, the IMB would not exist without the Cooperative Program. Be assured that the IMB is working hard alongside your churches to champion and reinvigorate this vital resource for addressing lostness. Thank you for joining in this effort.
The nations are waiting. We still have much to do, together.
Dr. Paul Chitwood is the President of the International Mission Board.
