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Friday, Feb. 28, 2003
By Trennis Henderson
Consider this scenario: You take a temporary leave of absence from your job - actually more of a transfer than a leave since you still are fulfilling assignments for your employer. When it's time to return to your primary role, you are told the company's vision statement has been revised and you must endorse it before you can resume work at your office.
In fact, your supervisor tells you that if you don't affirm the new vision, you will no longer be employed there.
You ask whether the company's parent corporation or board of directors is requiring longtime employees to affirm the statement and the answer is no. Is there a company policy requiring such action? Again the answer is no. What about the CEO? Is he making this a requirement for employment? No, you are told, he is simply making a request.
With that information in hand, you decline the request to affirm the company's revised statement. The result? Your supervisor says you can no longer work for the company.
When you express concern about being terminated, your (former) supervisor responds: No, we're not terminating you. In fact, we haven't terminated anyone over this issue. You simply will no longer be our employee.
Sound surreal? Incredibly, that is what is happening to a small group of Southern Baptist International Mission Board (IMB) missionaries.
Recent reports indicate that veteran missionaries on stateside assignment (formerly called furlough), who haven't signed an affirmation of the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message, are being terminated by IMB officials. Even more incredibly, IMB officials reportedly have told the affected missionaries it isn't termination at all; that it's simply a matter of the missionaries' decisions keeping them from serving.
In addition to the "non-terminations," several missionaries have resigned rather than violate their convictions against signing an affirmation of a man-made document being used as a creed.
While the numbers remain comparatively small (about 1 percent of IMB's approximately 3,400 career missionaries), IMB officials acknowledge that up to another 1 percent still have not signed the affirmation "requested" a year ago by IMB president Jerry Rankin.
Some observers have suggested it isn't that big a deal if only 32 missionaries have resigned so far and perhaps that many more will not be allowed to continue serving. Why even bother reporting or worrying about such a small number?
Of course, Jesus took a different perspective about caring for those in the minority. In the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus asked: "What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep, and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture, and goes after the one which is lost, until he finds it?"
If Jesus cares that deeply about one lost soul, imagine His concern for a few dozen faithful, God-called missionaries who refuse to compromise their convictions.
Surely there is a better way to handle the current IMB crisis other than for an IMB official to call missionaries and warn them there will be "consequences" if they don't follow Rankin's directive. At the very least, IMB leaders should be candid enough to acknowledge that refusing to allow stateside missionaries to return to the mission field or continue employment is, in fact, termination.
Some readers will agree that veteran missionaries should be treated better. Others will view the IMB's actions as appropriate and necessary. Whatever your views, you can contact Rankin by phone at (804) 219-1207 or by e-mail at jrankin@imb.org.
(EDITOR'S NOTE - Henderson is editor of the Western Recorder, Kentucky's Baptist newspaper where this column first appeared.)
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