CEE Story From The Mission Field
One Pastor’s Campaign
August 29, 2003
In a move to provide a grassroots "radical response" to the International Mission Board's shortfall in funds this year, a Florida pastor has begun an e-mail letter-writing campaign to urge Baptists to chip in a little extra to get missionaries on the field.
Shane Tucker, bivocational pastor of Santa Rosa Shores Baptist Church in Gulf Breeze, Fla., told the Florida Baptist Witness he believes Southern Baptists should respond in a "radical way" to the record number of missionaries who are on standby waiting to spread the Gospel overseas. His challenge is "that every Southern Baptist church would give $2 per member to the IMB before September 30, 2003."
In two follow-up challenges, Tucker urges Southern Baptist churches to increase their 2003 Lottie Moon offering by 33 percent over last year's and also to increase their Cooperative Program giving by 1 percent of their annual budget for the 2004 budget year.
"The IMB cannot make this happen," Tucker wrote,"but neither can a collection of Christians working on a grassroots effort. Only God can make this happen."
Tucker's initiative was prompted by a June 5 announcement by the Southern Baptist Convention's IMB, which reported that the 2002 Lottie Moon Christmas offering, while setting a new record, nevertheless fell almost $10 million short of its $125 million goal, complicating a financial situation stressed by declining income and a rapidly increasing missionary force.
"How will they preach unless they are sent?" from Romans 10:15 is the scriptural mandate that Tucker said has been on his heart. "The question is not whether we have the missionaries," he said, "but, 'Do we have the senders?'"
Tucker, a former International Service Corps volunteer who served in Tanzania in 1998, said he and his wife, Heather want to hold the ropes for the ones God is calling overseas.
The thought of more than 100 missionary candidates being put on hold or deferred until next year is alarming to Tucker, who said he believes a lack of funding shouldn't prevent them from acting on their call.
Tucker emphasized his allegiance to the SBC's Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists' longstanding channel through which financial support from the tiniest churches ends up flowing to the IMB, NAMB, the six Southern Baptists seminaries and other missions and ministry efforts of the SBC and state Baptist conventions.
Tucker said this time, however, "there is a problem [because] our giving has not increased proportionately" with numbers of those who've answered a call to missions. "I believe if God has called out all those people to go overseas and preach the Gospel, they should be sent," Tucker said.
Read the complete article by Joni B. Hannigan found at www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com.