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PHOENIX—Missionaries and chaplains, a U.S. Army general, a barber, two tornado victims and a redeemed young man mirrored the work of the North American Mission Board during its report to messengers June 14 at the 2011 SBC annual meeting.
“Knowing there are 318 million people in North America who need to know Jesus Christ stirs our passion as trustees,” NAMB trustee chairman Tim Dowdy, senior pastor of Eagles Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, Ga., told the messengers. “Last year, God led us to the right man, Kevin Ezell. We’re starting down the right road. I can’t wait to see what God does with us, together impacting the world for Jesus Christ.”
Ezell told messengers the months since his election have been very challenging.
“I have learned a lot in the nine months since I accepted this role, and I appreciate your patience and prayers,” Ezell said. “I hope to clearly communicate our direction in the midst of a very complex transition…. I am striving to bring a sense of strategic focus and efficiency to our North American missions.”
After thanking Southern Baptists for their support of the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, Ezell noted: “Biblical stewardship calls us to the highest level of accountability with these funds. I am doing everything in my power to spend each dime wisely. We must put more missionaries and more new churches in North America’s least-reached areas.”
Ezell then outlined how NAMB’s mission board’s staff has been reduced by 38 percent through retirement and separation incentives, saving the mission board $6 million a year. He said the budget has been cut another $8 million, including slashing the travel budget by half.
“These savings will go to place more churches and more church planting missionaries where they are needed most in North America,” Ezell said. “I believe you cannot judge the effectiveness of an organization by the size of its staff, but NAMB is not taking one step backwards. We intend to do more with less infrastructure.”
SEND NORTH AMERICA
The new “big picture strategy” for church planting, called Send North America, will enable Baptists to penetrate lostness through a regional mobilization strategy, Ezell said.
“Already, 80 percent of NAMB’s resources are invested through the state conventions to go to underserved areas—even before Send North America. But this strategy will send even more in that direction.”
The GPS—God’s Plan for Sharing—initiative will continue to be one of the entity’s top priorities under NAMB’s new vice president for evangelism, Larry Wynn, Ezell said.
Ezell promised that, under his watch, future financial stewardship at NAMB will demand “accuracy, transparency, effectiveness and efficiency—not smoke and mirrors.” He then clarified and put into perspective some oft-quoted NAMB statistics—for instance, that Southern Baptists planted 769 new churches in 2010, not the 1,400 to 1,500 a year usually reported in the past.
“When the old NAMB counted church plants, they didn’t ask for church names or addresses or planter names. The new NAMB is asking and only counting churches for which those details can be obtained,” Ezell said. “The old NAMB had no system for consistently tracking new church plants across the 42 state conventions. We are working with the states on such a system.
“Also, the old NAMB had no definition of a church plant agreed upon by all of our state convention partners,” Ezell added. “The new NAMB is working on that with state partners, to write a definition we all can adhere to.”
Ezell generated laughs and applause when he said, “If Walmart can track how much toilet paper it sells every hour, we should be able to track how many churches are planted each year.”
The mission entity president also spoke to the question of how many missionaries NAMB has.
“It’s been said that NAMB has more than 5,100 missionaries serving in North America,” Ezell said. He said 3,480 of NAMB’s missionaries are jointly funded with the states; 1,839 are spouses, some with ministry assignments and some not; 1,616 are Mission Service Corps missionaries who receive no funding from NAMB; and 38 are national missionaries, who are paid 100 percent by NAMB. In addition, NAMB has 3,400 chaplains—1,350 of them military chaplains—and 955 summer student missionaries on its rolls.
Ezell also gave time for a testimony on lack of gospel presence in Canada, and honored the ministry of the 85,000 trained disaster relief volunteers in the SBC. He challenged individuals and churches to participate in the entity’s Send North America Strategy. For more information, visit namb.net and click the “Mobilize Me” button.
