Southern Baptists Lose Almost 1,000 Missionaries as IMB Cuts Costs

http://www.chron.com/life/houston-belief/article/Financial-issues-promp…

One out of five Southern Baptist missionaries overseas - or nearly 1,000 total - have volunteered to leave their posts to help the denomination’s mission board deal with its financial straits. That’s in addition to the departure of a third of the staff of the International Mission Board, also mostly through a voluntary program.

“Obviously, this number exceeds what we needed,” said its president, David Platt, at a trustee meeting this week. But he said the departure of 983 missionaries means the mission board will be in improved financial health.

is the system we non-SBCers are supposed to emulate?

Notice also that in order to encourage more people to be missionaries, the SBC missions agency changed its views on speaking in tongues. I can’t help but think this reflects, to some extent, John Piper’s influence among Southern Baptists (and perhaps even Fundamentalists).