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Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2003
Giving channel set up for missionaries who refused to sign 2000 BF&M
By Robert O'Brien
DALLAS, Texas - Texas Baptists have taken another step to help Southern Baptist missionaries forced to leave the mission field because they would not affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M).
The Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT) is establishing a channel for donations designated for specific missionaries, who choose to return the mission field on their own.
The designated gift channel will be separate from a general $1.3 million transition fund Texas Baptists set up last year. That transition fund gives support in the United States for up to one year for missionaries terminated, resigned or retired from the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board because of the BF&M controversy.
E. B. Brooks, BGCT coordinator of church missions and evangelism, said the new channel will distribute only donations designated to specific missionaries, not establish a fund for distribution to missionaries in general.
"The gifts must meet criteria provided to donors by our Texas Partnerships Resource Center," Brooks said. "Missionaries funded by this process must also meet certain criteria established by our resource center."
The resource center is in the process of working out details of criteria and policies for channeling the funds, but, in the meantime, missionaries from any state who have returned to the field or plan to do so may contact the resource center. Potential donors from any state may ask for a list of those names as they become available.
Veteran missionaries Ted and Frances York, terminated from Benin, West Africa, said the Texas Baptist initiative offers "great encouragement" to missionaries who came home wondering about their next step.
"Though we do not know if or when we will go back overseas, we are glad to know that there is a channel in the making - and we truly are thankful for what Texas Baptists are doing," said Frances York, now in Boiling Springs, where she and her husband are missionaries in residence at Gardner-Webb University.
Veteran missionaries Houston and Charla Greenhaw, who retired early over the BF&M issue, have returned to serve in Brazil, using Texas Baptists as a channel for their support.
Houston Greenhaw said the support from churches, flowing through the Texas Baptist channel, "freed us from the necessity of either promising to conduct our ministries according to a document (BF&M 2000) foreign to, and often irrelevant to, the culture in which we work, or walking away from that culture and our ministries."
Don Sewell, who directs the Texas Partnerships Resource Center, said the office is currently in contact with three returning missionary couples, including the Greenhaws. "We don't expect large numbers to participate, but we will serve as a channel for those who qualify," he said.
At least 77 missionaries have left the International Mission Board because of the controversy.
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