The 2010 SBC Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) intentionally brought radical shifts in NAMB’s leadership, strategy, and priorities in funding and staff.  Are Southern Baptists better off and stronger, or worse off and weaker?  What are the measurable results and the impact on the self-regenerating missions funding and sending system?  What is happening at the local level in the midst of the national rebranding and PR efforts? (NAMB transitioned to a team of 30 staff members in Events and Marketing and 1.5 Evangelism staff members)

 1.  70 year Lows in SBC Baptisms, both Nationally, and per Church 

The decline in total baptisms is rapidly picking up speed, and baptism ratios are worsening.  SBC churches baptized 600,000 less people the last 8 years than the 8 years prior to the GCR.  NAMB not only terminated virtually all of their national evangelism staff, they eliminated SB funding for evangelism staff in partnership with State Conventions.  The NAMB President recently announced to the State Execs further cuts in evangelism through State Conventions to local churches to fund a speaking tour approach.  Southern Baptists agree that evangelism is a biblical command for all.  The Bible reveals that God has given evangelists to the churches.  However, during the NAMB President said in his address to the SBC in June 2016, “church planting is evangelism.”  Is that so?

2.  40 year Lows in number of SBC Churches Started

Southern Baptists are planting less than half the number of churches post GCR, but spending 3.5 times more money to plant fewer churches.  In 2018, the SBC saw only 624 new churches compared to the high of 1,781 new plants in 2004 and 1,578 in 2008.  NAMB wrestled control of planting outside of the south from local leaders and partners in State Conventions and Associations.  The controls for the national assignment of NAMB was then largely handed off to a few local mega churches.  The result… in 2018, historic low number of plants and NAMB only reported assessing 220 church planters.  Claims of better plants with much higher survivability is not proven out in the facts.  The total number of churches started and surviving is radically lower.

3.  Weakened Partnerships 

One retired State Executive Director stated, “partnership is dead in the SBC”.  Weakened and broken partnerships with State Conventions and Associations has been a mark or stain of the post GCR strategies.  Historically non-Southern Associations received funding to be the face of the SBC outside of the South, but they have been defunded by NAMB post GCR.  First NAMB sought to make the non-Southern DOM/AMS church planting catalysts and then defunded them completely.  In spite of brand new efforts by NAMB to woo AMSs, publicly and strategically Associations and States have been marginalized.  Has this contributed to the record lows in baptisms and church planting?

Furthermore, regional mission, ministry and evangelism efforts all across the US have been cut (Ocean City International Missions in Maryland, Brantley Center in New Orleans, Appalachian Mountain Ministry).  These places provided a place for Southern Baptists, young and older, to get their first taste of missions while seeing SBC cooperation and partnership at work.  However, NAMB has abandoned those efforts.   See NW State Exec Dr. Randy Adams’ outstanding article on the importance of Cooperations with local leaders in the SBC.    https://randyadams.org/2018/06/07/trust-and-partnership-a-recovery-program-for-the-sbc/

4.  Mega Church Focus 

Focus has shifted to working with and funding select mega churches.  However, existing churches have received less focus and fewer helps from the SBC nationally.   More SBC missions money entrusted to NAMB is going to start a few high profile, highly funded churches and to start new campuses of favored mega churches.  Concerns are being expressed that some of those “campuses” are not growing from effective evangelistic efforts, but rather are drawing people and resources from existing churches in that area.   

For one new church plant in Pennsylvania, NAMB purchased a church building for $500,000, built the planter a brand new $500,000 home, and also hired two church planters as they merged into the new plant.  NAMB gave them titles and jobs in Send Relief and as a Send City Coordinator. NAMB has committed to spending $62 million to purchase houses for temporary housing for planters, 40% of them over $400,000.  Of note, larger houses seem to be in the hands of people who are somehow connected to the NAMB President or an influential mega church or are controlled not for planters, but for a mega church pastor to host someone they place in the home.  In a 2010 published interview Ezell said, “I can see where someone might say, ‘Well, he will just give money to his friends to plant churches.” Let’s #OpenTheBooks in a new demonstrated commitment to TRANSPARENCY and see to whom the money has gone.

5.  Nationalization of the SBC

In a “Washington knows best” approach, the SBC national has transitioned intentionally to be less responsive to the local leaders and more directive and more centralized in setting strategies, priorities, and goals with mission funds.  This was one of the stated objectives of the GCR.  As well, NAMB transitioned money from a broad approach to evangelism, missions and church planting to a nationalized approach to church planting while gutting evangelism.

Instead of being a resource and responding to local leaders and strategies, NAMB began working around them, even in Disaster Relief.  NAMB recently spent $11 million to set up one Send Relief location/property, Clarkston, GA, Local leaders are the best resources to know and meet the varied needs of people in their area.  Furthermore, for new members of SBC cooperating churches outside of the South, they KNOW NOT Lottie, Annie, NAMB, IMB, the CP or EC or the SBC.  They know the local and state leaders in front of them.  When times get tough, local, not national, matters more!

For a Deeper Dive into “Is NAMB Working?”

In the spring of 2017 I did a series of articles on “Is the New NAMB Working?”  I explored several areas: (1) Introduction/Questions to Consider, (2) Baptisms, (3) Church Planting, (4) Partnership and the SBC Ecosystem, (5) Financial Stewardship, (6) Leadership and (7) Oversight and Accountability.   You can find these articles at https://willmcraney.com/category/namb/

Conclusion

Regardless of the varied intentions of the 2010 voters, the power play that was the GRC has been a complete failure (excluding a few mega churches and those receiving significant NAMB funding).  Make no mistake about it, the GCR was a successful play for power.  However, failure accompanied it with both obvious and unseen damages to the Southern Baptist mission and partners.  As was part of the celebrity driven plan, we have a weaker, maybe neutered Executive Committee.  Maybe we need new LEADERSHIP, a new DIRECTION, and a new real commitment to COOPERATION and PARTNERSHIP, IF it is not too late!

Ownership of the Decade

NAMB President Kevin Ezell said in an Oct. 8, 2010 published interview with Christian Index editor Gerald Harris , “I will take ownership of the next decade.”  Here it is…

Yesterday’s announcement of a new Senior Vice President of Evangelism and Leadership stirred enthusiasm for many inside the SBC.  Beyond the affirmations of a beloved pastor and gifted preacher in Johnny Hunt, cautious hope abounds that Southern Baptists may be making efforts to regain their zeal and historic commitment to intentional evangelism in both established and new churches.  Hunt shared, “I want to lead Southern Baptist churches to put evangelism back on the front burner again,….Jesus came to seek and save the lost, we know what He is doing. We must join Him.”

Several recent developments mark a new era with new opportunities for Southern Baptists to recapture the primary purpose of the International and North American mission efforts, evangelism that results in transformed disciples and new churches.  After a review of the written mission and ministry assignments of NAMB, I will summarize the developments and pose a vital question.

Through a short series of articles beginning with this one, I will seek to explore the issues involved in setting a new era of evangelism, past, present and future.  Over the series I will seek to provide helpful perspectives on matters such as: our historic evangelistic past, current state of and challenges to evangelism both nationally and locally, cautions along the journey, and some worthy benchmarks for our collective evangelism efforts in the SBC.

NAMB’s Mission and Ministry Assignment Includes Evangelism

Mission…

“The North American Mission Board exists to work with churches, associations and state conventions in mobilizing Southern Baptists as a missional force to impact North America with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through evangelism and church planting”

Two of NAMB’s six primary ministry objectives/assignments from the SBC include evangelism.

1. Assisting churches in planting healthy, multiplying, evangelistic Southern Baptist Churches in the United States and Canada.
2. Assisting churches in the ministries of evangelism and making disciples.

For the last 8 years as both church plants and baptisms have declined, NAMB has principally operated on the NAMB President’s repeatedly used public statement that “church planting is evangelism”.  For some this has been acceptable.  However, for others, this statement is objectionable and unbiblical.  NAMB almost exclusively works with the some 2,500 church plants within their first 3-4 years, while largely ignoring enhancing the evangelism efforts of the other 44,000 established churches which contain some 95% plus of SBC church members.

Recent Developments

Coming out of the 2017 SBC Annual Meeting, the then SBC President Steve Gaines appointed an 18 member task force to explore ways to turn around the steady declines in baptisms which had hit new 70+ year lows in spite of the population growth of North America.  The task force results reported in Baptist Press, proposed that “That the North American Mission Board employ ‘senior level leadership’ tasked with “involving churches, associations, and state conventions in outreach to the lost, as well as providing evangelism training and resources.”

Sunday, August 26, 2018 brought the public announcement that Pastor Johnny Hunt of First Baptist Church Woodstock would be assuming a new role of Sr. Vice President of Evangelism and Leadership at the North American Mission Board upon approval by NAMB Trustees in their Oct. 2, 2018 meeting.  Hunt and NAMB leaders have the opportunity to reset the priority of intentional evangelism in the SBC.

Early Views

Will the hiring of Hunt and the reestablishing of a VP level leadership of evangelism really make a difference?  Some are optimistic about the restoring of the historic position of a VP of Evangelism at NAMB (formerly HMB).  Some seem to think it will make little difference.  And still others are shaking their heads in disbelief that the national mission board was without significant staff and financial resources committed to evangelism.

Life-long vocational evangelist Gary Bowlin said about the Hunt hiring, “Now, maybe we can get back to the main thing being the main thing!” William Thornton on SBC Voices intimates his view the hiring of Hunt should quiet critics and may be implying his view that NAMB evangelism staff are not useful to evangelism and the purposes of NAMB.  He wrote, “NAMB critics should be satisfied with this, since they have found NAMB’s lack of an evangelism staff to be profitable route to gripe about the SBC’s declining baptism numbers.”

Priorities and Values Revealed

Evangelism is at the heart of the mission and the history of NAMB (Home Mission Board preceding it).  However, contrary to some views, everything done in Jesus’ name is not evangelism.  By looking at a person’s calendar and checkbook, you will know their priorities.

NAMB budgets provide for mission and missionary personnel.  However, NAMB budgets used some $40 million in SBC given mission gifts to purchases houses over a few years.  In 2017, $8.8 million budgeted for Capital Expenses.  Out of NAMB’s $125 million budget in 2018, only $6.6 million was budgeted for evangelism.

Regarding staffing, Paul reminds us in Eph 4:11-12  “¹¹ So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”  Clearly Christ not only uses pastors to equip the people for the work of the church, but others too, including evangelists.  Any strategy void of calling out, encouraging and supporting those with evangelism gifts is lacking Biblically.

The NAMB President terminated their entire evangelism staff during his tenure, and now has just one bi-vocational evangelism staff member, Joel Southerland.  In my 30 plus years of research, writing, engagement, training and teaching in evangelism and church planting, I don’t know one single person historically or personally that would advocate a national mission board only having one evangelism focused staff member.  NAMB is an evangelistic missionary organization with an annual budget of $125 million and net assets approaching $400 million.

One Story

I received a call several weeks ago about a former NAMB evangelism missionary.  In the conversation, it was relayed to me that our mutual friend and former NAMB evangelism staff member was out doing interviews with a restaurant seeking employment to provide for the basic needs of his family.  The former staffer not only has an enormous heart for the lost, but is the most effective inner city evangelist that we know.  He has shared Christ even in the midst of active drug deals.  But yet this effective and faithful inner-city evangelist cannot find continued ministry through our NAMB even when the leaders have placed such an emphasis on reaching the cities?  How can this be?

In the last 8 years, under the current NAMB leadership, the evangelism budget has been slashed by almost two-thirds and the evangelism staff has been reduced to almost zero.  During the last eight years, baptisms have plummeted in the SBC by 30%.  Is it possible to make a case the evangelism staff and budget cuts/reallocations have helped the SBC churches be more effective in evangelism or even plant more churches?

Closing Question

In closing, Hunt is known as a leader who makes things happen and happen in big ways, which naturally has prompted questions among Southern Baptists. One big question being asked is will Hunt bring a real, measurable change in the priorities, evangelism staffing and use of financial resources of NAMB to recapture intentional evangelism for all churches in partnership with States and Associations in keeping with their MISSION or will NAMB leaders continue as is with only the façade of a change taking place with his hiring?  Time, budgets, staffing, finances, and engagement with State and Associational partners will tell shortly.

The turning of a new year brought celebrations, resolutions, and new health club memberships!  On a more serious note, for many people and organizations, including churches and their leaders, it was a time for reflection, and then a refocus toward the future.  The turning of a new year provides churches the opportunity to reflect on what is “their” business and “how is” business.

Reflection

While there are churches which had banner years and we rejoice with them, sadly overall 2016 was another year of major declines for churches and Christians.  During the year, some 8,000-10,000 churches in the U.S. closed their doors and discontinued all ministry and mission efforts as a gospel witness.  On December 31, 2016 some 300,000 less people professed that they are Christians than they did on January 1, 2016.  While the statistics vary, too many pastors are discouraged and too many are leaving church ministry.  Many church leaders and pastors are frustrated by the lack of progress and 48% in a survey of 1,500 pastors indicated they often feel the demands of ministry are more than they can handle.

Sound the Alarm, BUT don’t panic, as we are not without hope.  However, we cannot continue to function in a faithful fashion without considering all our ways.

With the church in the US is in such decline, forward leaning churches evaluate their church ministry systems in light of the objectives of the church.  When necessary, advancing churches are making adjustments or are considering complete overhauls of the major systems of the church: particularly the people-reaching/conversion approaches, discipling processes, and leadership development systems.

The external and internal factors impacting churches are numerous, intertwined, and often unnamed.  However, naming a few of the challenges may provide some new handles to church leaders.  Here are a few to factors to consider that are at play in every church in the world…

• Spiritual – The church has a spiritual enemy and is in a constant battle. The enemy is actively seeking to destroy churches and people, uses schemes, and does not play fair.
• Flesh – All churches are impacted by the fact that we as people are fallen beings and have the short-comings that accompany the flesh.
• World – We live in a world and radically changing culture that has values that are counter to the values of Christ. And, the shapers of perspectives and values in the US are experts in influencing both those who know Christ and those who do not.
• Organization – The church is an organism that wears organizational clothes. Sometimes there is a good fit, good communication, and helpful norms.  However, some of the challenges come from having systems that don’t currently fit the demands before the church.

Just as in war, the battlefield terrain and environment matters.  The strategies, operations and tactics must adjust to fit and support the situation on the ground.  Today, churches in the U.S. function in a radically changing culture, bringing complexities, new challenges, and new opportunities in tow.  Our strategies, operations and tactics must adjust to help the church accomplish its assigned mission.

Pastors and church leaders of established churches are inheriting the essential systems that were designed to reach the lost, grow the saints, and develop leaders in a foregone era.  Leaders evaluate both how the systems are working today and whether adjustments or new systems are needed to address the emerging changes in their ministry environment.

Other Factors

Among other factors, here are a few perspectives for consideration regarding many of our historic ministry systems designs.  Our systems and approaches were designed and developed…

• for different cultural times and based on Western educational approaches that have less application and impact today.
• when the church was the center of the community.
• when there were more nuclear intact families, with two-parent homes, and more moms at home with the children.
• when people were lost, but often closer to the conversion line of faith than they are today, as they held more of the foundational beliefs associated with Christianity,
• when life, including family life, was less complex and more personal and communal than today’s environments with its more modern technological advances.
• when the American values and communities were more influenced by Judeo-Christian values.

Refocus Forward

The church is an advancing body of people who are seeking to live out the Great Commandment and carry out the Great Commission.  How a church trains leaders, develops disciples, and reaches the lost through conversion really matters.

On Jan. 26-27, through the ministry of The Church Strengthening Network, I will be leading a two-day training workshop on the conversion and reaching systems and approaches of local churches.  The event is titled  “Forward Church Growth: Strategic Systems & Fresh Approaches for Kingdom Advance”.  Each participating leader or team will not only explore the facets of a growth system, but also develop a framework of a strategy for their church, share it with the group, and refine the strategy with post-conference follow-up advisory calls with the conference leaders.

Training Conference:

Details & Registration for the two-day workshop: Forward Church Growth:  Strategic Systems Fresh Approaches Tickets

Join in on Facebook discussions: Facebook: Church Strengthening Network

The American church is in major decline and it will take some major rewiring and rebuilding, not just tinkering to bring necessary change. It will take courageous leaders who intentionally set a new course and work with others who are on a different course as well. On Oct. 6, those who are engaged in exploring how to address the larger challenges and opportunities before the church will gather to hear from a wise man, who like the men of Issachar, understands the times, Pastor Harold Bullock.  When Harold speaks, I listen.  I know of NO ONE more qualified by life, study, ministry, and wisdom to speak to us on these vitally important related topics.

Assuming a church knows it purpose and where it is going, it is important to look for and read the signs correctly. This is especially true when the church in America and individual churches are experience warning and danger signs at virtually every turn and signpost. Statistically, for some forty or fifty years the number of actively engaged followers of Christ in a local church has declined. A steady, significant and consistent pattern, that now according to the latest Pew Research has some 8% fewer American adults claiming to be Christians than just 7 years ago in their earlier study.  THIS IS MONUMENTAL and ALARMING DECLINES!

The Southern Baptist Convention is considered to be one of the most effective denominations in evangelism and church planting (starting). However, the SBC is reporting a 70 year low in baptisms. Additionally, in spite of their recent all-in emphasis on church planting, are starting some 500 fewer churches per year over the last 6 years, resulting in about a reduction of 35%.  SBC seminary President Chuck Kelley warned that Southern Baptists are losing the South faster than they are making gains in the non-South.

When one examines the moral, ethical, and behavior impact of the church on the culture and even among those call themselves Christian, it is also alarming. Many of the cultural ills are not only present in the church, they are there in equal rates.

So, it is apparent the church in American and individual local churches are in desperate need of asking essential questions that will impact its future. Think About It… (1) it is wise ask questions, (2) wise men ask good questions, and (3) if you ask the wrong questions, you will get the wrong answers. The church in American cannot afford to be on a plane flying to the wrong destination.

Church Questions Asked…

Church at different points in its history have asked and sought to answer different questions. Your church may have been at a different stage and asking different questions, but it appears we have been asking these questions….

• Pre 1970 How do we make good church members?
• 70s What’s wrong with some of them?
• 80s How do we draw them into a crowd?
• 90s How do we help them with life-skills?
• 00s How do we connect with them outside the walls of our facilities?

These are not bad questions or wrong questions, there are just other essential and fundamental questions we need to asking today in the midst of such major statistical decline and based on the relative low impact we are having on those engaged with our churches or on the society around us.

In an upcoming conference on “Rewiring the American Church”, Pastor Harold Bullock and I will be leading the group through several vitally important areas facing the church today.

I will be examining the Questions we must address to see the church advance: Foundational, Key, Model Producing, and Other Questions.

Harold Bullock will be addressing several matters related to hidden factors which are negatively impacting the church and presenting challenges to every church pastor and church leader. He will then explore how to address those challenges and provide paradigms and practical helps to begin addressing them.  Three pastors from Los Angeles will join us to tell their experiences in seeing people move from lost, to ordering their lives around Biblical values and teachings.

If you are a thinker who is an influencer in your church or among multiple churches, you will benefit from the opportunity to learn from Harold Bullock and our other guest leaders.  I encourage you to make every effort to join us.

Conference Details & Links:

• Oct. 6, 2016 – Thursday at LifeBridge Church (formerly Harvest Bible Chapel) in Windermere, FL
  • 9:00 AM – doors open
  • 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM Conference
  • 5:30 Informal buffet at McRaney’s home for additional causal conversations with each other and the conference leaders
• Required reading to participate –  “Rewiring the American Church” by Pastor Harold Bullock.

Information, Registration & Host Hotel Registration Link

Facebook Page Link

At the 2016 Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Kevin Ezell, the President of the North American Mission Board spoke to SBC Messengers.  He asked the question:  “Is the New NAMB Working?  Dr. Ezell answered the question with anecdotes, stories about good things happening in the lives of individuals and families who were connecting with Christ through the ministries of new churches.  His answer to the question he raised was “YES!”

Yet, while we rejoice that people have come to Christ through new church plants, deeper questions need to be asked.  Questions that are answered by analysis, not anecdotes.  When 47,000 Southern Baptist churches, by their mission giving, entrust $120 million per year to NAMB, and when actions by the NAMB leadership can have a deep and broad impact on the life of the SBC and its mission, we need to evaluate the New NAMB by taking a serious look at its actual performance compared to the years before “the New NAMB” was put in place.  And we need to seriously evaluate its impact on the cooperative spirit that has been the genius of SBC mission efforts.

In this series of articles I have tried to ask serious questions and take an intelligent look at the actual results of the New NAMB.

Evangelism

SBC baptisms have dropped by 45,000 per year after NAMB virtually eliminated our national Evangelism Team, slashed evangelism budget by two-thirds, and stopped the historic practice of jointly funding evangelism staff with state partners.  These ministry areas were focused on helping local churches to evangelize. NAMB justified the cuts by saying that by focusing on church planting, greater evangelism would be done because new church starts are 3 to 4 times more effective in evangelism than existing churches.  I demonstrated by data and analysis how that idea simply is not factual.

• Baptisms have dropped 18.7% per church during the last six years.
• Investing 2 times more in 2017 in purchasing homes for planters than we are nationally on evangelism ($12 million to $6.3 million).

Church Planting

In spite of successful public relations campaigns and public releases, the church planting results and the baptism results of the church plants are quite troubling and on a steep decline.

• The SBC under the New NAMB is planting 444 LESS churches per year over the last six years than the previous NAMB—while SPENDING THREE and HALF TIMES more ANNUALLY than what the previous NAMB spent.
• Church planting in non-southern states has been taken over by NAMB in ever increasing nationalization and centralization efforts moving the staffing, financial, and strategic decision making responsibilities to NAMB as opposed to state and local leaders who are closer to the mission field.  Joint funding and partnership for church planting at the local and state levels has been eliminated for the “NAMB Knows Best” approach.

Partnership and Cooperation

In the arena of Partnerships and Cooperation in SBC relationships, there is strong evidence that NAMB has…

• Used its financial assets to buy favors, threaten people who raise questions, and undermine the ministries and careers of leaders who will not “bow” to its demands—which eats away the cooperative spirit that has helped the SBC mission efforts flourish. My own case was merely one of those.
• Replaced the cooperative spirit characteristic of the previous NAMB with strong-arm moves to dominate State Conventions and Associations.
• Eaten away the cooperative culture built in the SBC over generations. One State Executive Director said to me, referring to the actions of NAMB leaders:  “Partnership is dead in the SBC.”

Financial Stewardship

In the arena of financial stewardship, questionable new realities have emerged.

• While sending some money on to the mission field the New NAMB has kept back large amounts, swelling its “unrestricted reserves” from $204 million in 2010 when the New NAMB was installed, to about $285 million in 2014. By its operating guidelines, it should only carry $60.5 (1/2 of annual budget) in reserves.  Why has this massive amount of money been accumulated when the current mission need is so high and SBC experiencing such declines?
• Around $62 million has been committed to buy “houses for church planters” in various states, effectually putting NAMB into the real estate business. Some have questioned if this is actually an attempt to hang onto large amounts of money without it being accounted for as part of the NAMB reserve holdings.

Character of the President

Because we serve a Holy God who is intimately engaged in our lives and ministry efforts, the character of our leaders is of utmost importance.  The reverse of a biblical passage is true: if God be against us, it does not matter who is for us or what strategies we employ.  It pleases Jesus to have righteous leaders who lead righteously.  In the arena of the Character of our NAMB President, he…

• Communicated with deception and falsely about himself, others and church planting
• Violated his word and Strategic Partnership Agreements
• Abused and Misused Power, Position and SBC Money
• Demonstrated Punitive, Vindictive and other related behaviors against fellow servants

Factual evidence has been presented that Dr. Ezell lied in writing multiple times, made false accusations against a sister SBC State Executive Director, and made public and then secret financial threats against a State Convention (staff, planters, and evangelistic ministries and mission efforts). Ezell secretly tied the withholding of $1 million annually to the BCMD on my removal as the Executive Director which was later revealed in personal and public settings by the BCMD President Bill Warren.  Warren was privy to Ezell’s threat.

Financial records and BCMD minutes reveal that Ezell virtually immediately paid off the BCMD after my termination.  These actions serve as part of the basis of legal complaints of libel and contractual interference filed against Dr. Ezell/NAMB.

As Pastor Wolverton exhorted, “Dr. McRaney is telling the truth….Please don’t continue to sweep this under the rug.”

Oversight and Accountability

Off the record, national leaders verbally acknowledge it.  The SBC Trustee system is broken.  The Trustee men and women who are serving are not broken and are people of goodwill, but the systems and the climates that surround their work is broken.

• It is apparent that the NAMB Trustees were too trusting of Dr. Ezell’s accounts and “asleep at the wheel” initially. However, when the Trustee officers wrote a full denial 20 hours after receiving my “Letter of Concern” they moved into neglect of their duties as Trustees functioning on behalf of all Southern Baptists.  When the entire Trustee Board released a public statement in June 2016 that they had completed a “thorough examination and review” and found nothing of concern without a single conversation with me or cross examination of Dr. Ezell’s testimony, they moved into realms of cover-up and public damages to me.  As BCMD Pastor Steve Wolverton wrote Dr. Ezell and the Chairman Herring, NAMB Trustees’ claims of a complete investigation a “charade”.
• Regarding the declines in baptisms and church planting, along with damages to local and state partnerships, cooperation, and financial stewardship, and their own oversight and accountability, concerns are glaring.  The negative impact will affect both the short-run and the long-term effectiveness and mission capacity as the New NAMB has contributed to the dismantling of the SBC mission supporting ecosystem.
• Informed SBC leaders recognize once the local, state, and national arms are separated or eliminated, they will never be put back together again.  As times surely get tougher in North America, local and regional will matter more than national on the frontlines.

Broader Awareness

Many SBC leaders are aware of the New NAMB’s problems.  They see the deteriorating trust and the possibility of serious damage to the SBC cause.

When will the leaders who see the damage compounding finally speak up?  I know that some do not want to “create a mess” and others simply fear the consequences of raising their voice.  They have seen others damaged who have spoken up.

But, how many more hundreds of millions of SBC mission money must be used to prop up NAMB prestige amid its failing strategies?

How many more millions must be used to destroy the SBC cooperate spirit as the money is used to pay for the threats, “pay offs” and subterfuge that are advancing domination from a national level rather than cooperation across all levels?

Since the publication of this series began, more and more stories have come to me about the damage done to ministry leaders by the actions of the New NAMB and its leader, Dr. Kevin Ezell.

When will SBC leaders who “know the score” finally have the courage to call for a serious outside investigation of the actions of the NAMB President and his subordinates?  When will they finally call for an accounting by the New NAMB for its stewardship of money and people?

Proverbs 24:11-12 reminds us that when we see the damage being done to others, pretending not to see will not satisfy God.

Prov 24:11-12  Deliver those who are being taken away to death,
And those who are staggering to slaughter, Oh hold them back.
¹² If you say, “See, we did not know this,”
Does He not consider it who weighs the hearts?
And does He not know it who keeps your soul?
And will He not render to man according to his work?

May God grant us men of goodwill who will courageously exercise the stewardship that has been entrusted to them by Southern Baptists—and the Lord!

Series of Articles – “Is the New NAMB Really Working”

Part 1: Introduction

Part Two: Baptisms – ABRIDGED

Part 2: Baptisms – Full Article w/ Fact Links

Part Three: Church Planting – ABRIDGED

PART 3: Church Planting – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 4: Partnership – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 5: Financial Stewardship – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 6: Character – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 7: Oversight and Accountability

The Rest of the Story: The Why’s of Our Legal Complaint Against NAMB President Kevin Ezell – article and video by McRaneys

A sacred trust exists between the President of NAMB and Southern Baptists. One man is entrusted with enormous power, prestige, and resources to shape individual lives and direct the mission of the SBC in North America. Southern Baptists sacrificially invest themselves and their resources, for the sake of an eternal purpose, to the tune of $120 million every year. The President of NAMB makes decisions that impact staffers and thousands of planters and evangelists all across North America.   The President is responsible to live honorably before God and man, to steward the financial resources, to steward both the staff and the missionaries who represent SBC efforts in Alpharetta across the land, and to set the direction and priorities for Southern Baptists in reaching North America.

This essay is the sixth and final installment of a series entitled “The New NAMB: Is it Working?” It is offered as a rebuttal to the report by Dr. Kevin Ezell to the messengers of the SBC Annual meeting in June 2016, entitled, “It is working.” I have sought to ask and answer several “better” questions than the weaker ones NAMB has been asking. This article will address the question: Have NAMB leaders reflected Christ in their attitudes and actions with others as they steward the trust placed in them by SBC churches and members?

Sometimes situations demand that the facts be laid out beyond a cursory look. This is one such time, for I will be dealing with a person God created and loves who has been entrusted with much. Communicating as accurately as possible is an expectation from God and is only right in this situation. I will not cover every fact or document that supports my claims regarding Dr. Ezell, but this treatment will necessarily have some length. While I cannot cover it all, I have attached links below to a number of articles and fact sheets that examine these areas in greater detail.

The claims I make are serious, impacting the lives of many employees, the institution of NAMB, its President, and our trustees both at NAMB and in other parts of the SBC. I must not make these claims without also providing numerous examples and supporting evidence. While acknowledging there is much I do not know, I am deeply troubled over the matters I do know and can easily support with specific evidence.

Three Important Leadership Qualities

According to Dr. Jimmy Knott in It’s All About Leadership: Be a Leader Worth Following,three qualities of a Credible Leader worth following emerge: (A) Authentic Character, (B) Exceptional Competence, and (C) Relational Connection. This raises the question: “Are there significant lapses found in Dr. Ezell?” The following examples are illustrative, but not exhaustive. Consider these facts, along with the ones described in the list of online links following the article.

A. AUTHENTIC CHARACTER

Most human actions and thoughts are out of the sight of others. Take Orlando, for example. It has 66 million visitors per year.  This is over 20 million more than NYC. While Orlando is publicly known to be a safe city, it is abundantly clear that many crimes take place that are either unreported by the victims or unreported by the Orlando press. Therefore, the actions of the perpetrators go unnoticed in public and probably by most of those who know them. The same is true for Christian leaders.

My pastor revealed in a sermon that we all have three persons inside of us: public, private and secret.  Character and integrity requires the public, private and secret persons as revealed in their actions to be the same. The following are examples of wrongful character revealing things by Dr. Ezell occuring mostly out of sight of others.

1. Deception and False Communication

Dr. Ezell falsely stated that I refused to meet with him prior to canceling the historic Strategic Partnership Agreement. I have seven emails requesting meetings with Dr. Ezell. The General Mission Board President of the Baptist Convention of Maryland-Delaware, Mark Dooley, reported to the General Mission Board in February of 2015: “He (Dooley) has personally seen the email correspondence that supports the opposite. McRaney has repeatedly asked Kevin Ezell, ‘Can we get together?’ Which was met with very short, terse responses, and not an openness to meet.”

Dr. Ezell falsely stated that I violated the Strategic Partnership Agreement regarding two hiring procedures by not contacting NAMB staff, that I had repeatedly and willfully violated the agreement, and as such, I was the sole reason for the cancellation of the agreement with the convention, at a loss of one million dollars to the convention for planters, missions, evangelism, and eight jointly funded staff positions. Three convention officers examined these claims and concluded: (1) Neither I nor the convention violated the hiring agreement procedures, as evidenced by a NAMB Vice President’s own communication, along with the hiring dates involved, and (2) NAMB had, in fact, violated the agreement in seven specific ways, some knowingly for their benefit and to the detriment of the convention. NAMB Vice Presidents Christopherson and Davis disproved Dr. Ezell’s accusations with their own emails and calendar.

Dr. Ezell falsely stated that I did not return a phone call from NAMB Mobilizer Kevin Marsico. This is the first of three stated concerns by Dr. Ezell in his only communication (Nov. 2014) regarding any possible conflict with me. The second was that I violated the hiring procedure of the agreement, which was false. The third was that I added a new requirement that planters must reinvest in the regional ministry around them AFTER NAMB required the convention to remove the requirement for planters to give to the Association, which was true. The only recorded call by my Executive Assistant from Marsico occurred in October 2013 just after I was hired. Marsico called to express a welcome and offer his assistance, which does not require a return phone call.

2. Violations of Dr. Ezell’s Word and of the SPA by NAMB

NAMB violated the SPA, including the very manner in which Dr. Ezell cancelled the SPA, without communicating with me as the Executive Director in advance on his intentions.

Dr. Ezell violated the agreed upon terms of our March 11, 2015 meeting. He said he would bring two NAMB Trustees, in order to satisfy our terms, but he only brought one. He tried a power play to change the location at the last minute, requesting that we change the meeting place from the convention offices to his hotel a few minutes away. He changed the agenda from “not talking about the past” to his “talking mostly about the past” after I had the opening turn and talked about our joint ministry and the future. Convention leaders perceived this as Dr. Ezell’s attempt to control the meeting and get us out of balance with his tactics. Convention Chief Financial Officer Tom Stolle described Dr. Ezell’s behaviors as “petulant.” One convention leader noted in front of our team: “You showed remarkable restraint. If that had been me, I would have come across the table at Dr. Ezell.”

Dr. Ezell falsely stated that I resigned, not that I was terminated, and that he did not interfere in the process, and in fact, was not even involved. This was reported by Baptist Press in the article dated June 20, 2016 entitled MD/DE Investigation “Concluded.” The fact remains that I was terminated. It is decidedly untrue that I was told to “resign or be terminated” by a vote of the General Mission Board of the convention on June 8, 2015. The later term “resignation” was offered and even requested by the convention if I would accept a to-be-determined severance agreement that was not agreed upon until weeks after my termination.

The convention officers provided false information in their statement released on March 24, 2016. It is abundantly clear, the officers of the convention misled the public stating a resignation on June 9, 2015 and the vote of the board to terminate me on June 8, 2015. It is apparent to many that this decision to provide cover for Dr. Ezell was also an effort to cover themselves concerning the quick, unjust, and induced termination. Lots of ministers in this story are having a hard time telling the truth!

I requested a correction to Baptist Press leaders and to Dr. Page and the Communication team after their article on April 13, 2017. In doing so, I provided them with the first page of my separation agreement with the state convention which clearly indicates I was terminated on June 8, 2015, just days before the 2015 SBC Convention.

At the State Executive Directors meeting in California in February 2017, Dr. Ezell stated that he had talked with some State Executives that he trusted regarding the hiring of a new young leader at NAMB. Reportedly, Dr. Ezell represented that he received counsel and implied support of the proposed hire. However, two of the state executives interrupted Dr. Ezell to communicate the exact opposite. One Executive Director replied to Dr. Ezell, “I told you this was the response you would get.” Why did Dr. Ezell speak falsely in front of State Executives who he knew could confront him publicly? Is he in the habit of being loose with the truth?

A highly respected former State Executive has relayed stories of Dr. Ezell calling him for counsel only to learn later that Dr. Ezell misrepresented what that former State Executive had said. Why would Dr. Ezell do this? Was he borrowing credibility without regard for the truth?

Documented evidence on lies by Dr. Ezell

If Dr. Ezell acts with deception, makes false accusations, and speaks falsely about his own behavior and conversations with State leaders, can he be trusted to represent the truth without guile? If Dr. Ezell will make false accusations against a brother, then what else will he do to damage someone? If he misrepresents conversations, can he ever be believed? Dr. Ezell did not follow Biblical commands to clear up relationships, nor did he accept my offers to do so. Then, he lied about it. So, why is Dr. Ezell communicating with deception in the ways noted above? There appears to be a character problem.

3. Abuses and Misuses of Power, Position and Money

On Dec. 2, 2014, Dr. Ezell in violation of the terms of the agreement, threatened the BCMD with a Notice of Cancellation Letter, which would have resulted in the loss of $1 million from the convention. This money was already committed to funding church planters, missions, evangelism and eight jointly-funded staff members. Incidentally, state convention churches annually contributed about $950,000 per year to NAMB through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering and NAMB’s portion of Cooperative Program gifts. Similar amounts were exchanged in both directions, yet Dr. Ezell threated to withhold NAMB’s committed resources due to his false allegations, while still continuing to accept the almost $1 million funds from the state convention.

As noted above, Dr. Ezell based his cancellation on the false accusations against me. Later, Dr. Ezell stated that NAMB would withhold financial support to the state convention as long as I remained the Executive Director. There are several smoking guns on Ezell’s threat. Numerous public verbalizations of the Ezell threat were made by the state convention President Bill Warren, who orchestrated my termination. One can follow the money trail. Significantly, the day after I was terminated, Warren stated, and later verified, that he believed the Lord would have him to be the next Executive Director.

Dr. Ezell made good on his promises. The state convention budgets and the board meeting minutes reveal post-termination additional gifts and financial commitments to the state convention in the amount of $675,000 payable in 2016 and $825,000 payable in 2017.

On February 5, 2015, Dr. Ezell texted a threat to a board member during a board meeting that Dr. Ezell knew was taking place. He threatened the Executive Director and the leadership of the state convention. The meeting resulted in 100% vote to: (1) reject NAMB’s offer to take over 100% of church planting and any partnership agreement establishing such terms, and (2) affirm support for my leadership and my approach in dealing with NAMB.

Dr. Ezell’s threat did not serve the purposes of NAMB in evangelism and missions or assist a ministry partner in the state convention. So why did Dr. Ezell make the threats and the false statements within them? Is there not a character problem?

Several State Executive Directors, SBC pastors and members of the press have discussed the new 2014 version of the Strategic Partnership Agreement NAMB was pressuring state conventions to adopt. I highlighted changes from 2012-2014 agreement in an article Going Going Gone Sold: Essential Elements of SBC Mission Efforts. We see the existence of gag orders on the State Conventions and the threat of funding cuts if the gag orders were violated or if state convention staff talked negatively about NAMB, or even revealed the terms of their Strategic Partnership Agreements.

The Christian Examiner editor wrote, “Several Southern Baptist state convention leaders have accused the denomination’s North American Mission Board (NAMB) of linking financial support from the national entity – funding for church planting and other ministries – to secretive Cooperative Agreements which include a clause that threatens to withhold ministry funds to the states if disclosures about the agreement – or concerns – are shared publicly.”

State leaders and pastors have expressed concern that Dr. Ezell is using gag orders, threats, and strong-arming tactics. This does not reflect the spirit of a cooperative partnership, but rather one of coercion. So why did Dr. Ezell use such tactics with several State Convention executive Directors? Is there not a character problem?

4. Punitive, Vindictive and Other Behaviors

Dr. Ezell interfered in my working relationship with the state convention by working around me and talking with Board President Bill Warren instead. In fact, Warren stated to the executive leadership team and the officers that Dr. Ezell told him that if McRaney would behave himself for six months, Dr. Ezell would talk with me. In essence, Dr. Ezell was putting me on probation for six months from talking with him. What a power move to dominate me and damage my leadership! What happened to wanting to meet as he falsely claimed? Where is the application of the basic teachings of Jesus? Was Dr. Ezell punishing me? It appears that Dr Ezell is having difficulties with telling the truth. His character is once again being exposed.

In a meeting of selected state convention officers to discuss how to address Ezell’s Notice of Cancellation, a former state convention President with national influence shared his experience and knowledge with the officers on December 16, 2014. This leader noted that Dr. Ezell is known to be vindictive to those who oppose him, regardless of the validity of the concerns.

I had speaking engagements scheduled for the fall of 2016 in Mississippi and Florida. Evidence indicates that Dr. Ezell and NAMB representatives engaged in efforts to interfere with my speaking opportunities to provide for my family financially. I have since received additional confirmation of Dr. Ezell’s involvement.

Dr. Ezell or other NAMB leaders posted my picture at the Welcome Desk of NAMB headquarters in Alpharetta, Georgia. Why?  What message was being sent to everyone who saw this 8 x 10 picture?  NAMB attorneys communicated to my attorney that it was over “security” concerns. Really? Is this the action of an innocent man or the act of a guilty man? The picture, in full view, was taken in the fall of 2016 by a current Executive Committee member of the SBC who is a highly respected leader.

In early April 2017, a former state leader testified that he was told Dr. Ezell made a call to a ministry leader where the former state leader was being considered for a new position. Dr. Ezell had no responsibility or involvement with that ministry, yet chose to damage a fellow minister with his negative perspectives. The former state leader was looking to reengage in ministry and provide for his family. The man is working through his hurt and trying to make a living. Is it any wonder he has not yet come forward to expose Dr. Ezell’s involvement? Ezell has shown by word and deed who he is and what lengths he will go to in order to get what he wants and to damage people as he pleases. Wherever is there a place for this kind of activity in Christian work?

Dozens of national and state leaders have used the following descriptors of Dr. Ezell. They know, but keep silent for their own reasons, such as concern for the SBC or possible personal retribution. These words are being used to describe Dr. Ezell: vindictive, unstable, reckless, petulant, and impulsive.

Leaders lead out of who they are! What does this sample of KNOWN actions say about Dr. Ezell? Who knows what else has happened that has remained unspoken? Do these representative actions reveal poor character? Are they behaviors of a Christian who is sensitive to obeying Biblical commands? Should this leader be entrusted with setting direction and leading our staff and missionaries? Should he be stewarding the enormous resources of Southern Baptist Churches and members? How many times can you intentionally bear false witness to your actions and the actions of others? How many times can you intentionally seek to damage brothers and fellow leaders? How many times can you threaten and bully individuals and state conventions while keeping a position of trust as the President of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention?

B. EXCEPTIONAL COMPETENCE

NAMB is charged with helping the SBC evangelize North America. In 2010, Dr. Ezell began an all-out single focus on church planting. This strategy has caused dramatic shifts in staff, state partnerships, financial priorities, and associational partnerships.  What have been the results of Dr. Ezell’s leadership as he turned NAMB and parts of the SBC upside down?

NAMB as noted in my two previous articles on Baptism and Church Planting, has reduced the evangelism budget to 5% of the annual $120 million budget. During the last six years this has been reduced from $20.6 million to $6.3 million. The New NAMB has defunded the vast majority of NAMB national evangelism staff to assist state conventions and churches. In 2017, the $6.3 million for evangelism is roughly half of the $12 million used to purchase homes for church planters.

The church planting budget has increased each year, so that it now represents in 2017 an increase of 3.5 times the amount of funds budgeted in 2010 for church planting. NAMB has budgeted $62 million to purchase homes for church planters over about a six year period, with 89 homes already purchased.

In non-Southern states, NAMB has defunded jointly funded state evangelism staff, including the State DOMS where they are most needed, almost all the collegiate student ministers, and the joint funding for Association ministries and DOMS.

Have those landscape changing strategies produced the results as promised in the key SBC metrics? Absolutely not. To the contrary, in every single significant measureable, Southern Baptists are in alarming decline. Here are key facts which I discuss in more detail in the previous articles on Baptist and Church Planting.

1. Baptisms

Baptisms are down 18.7% per church over the past six years under the New NAMB. Total baptisms are down over 45,000 per year during the past six years compared to the previous six years. Baptisms are at a 70-year low, and in a continual slide downward, even while the US population and the number of SBC churches is increasing. New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Dr. Chuck Kelley noted, “Southern Baptists are closer to losing the South than we are to reaching North America. If we lose the South, eventually, we lose everything.” What do these numbers say about the effectiveness of the strategy that has dismantled much of evangelism at local, state and national levels? Has NAMB helped Southern Baptists be more or less effective in NAMB’s primary mission assignment?

2. Church Planting

The foundational statistic used to justify the radical overhaul of “all things NAMB” to support the single focus of church planting is misleading and flawed, whether by statistical ignorance or intentional guile. Church plants and established churches have baptism ratios based on membership that are within a few percentages of each other. While there are many good reasons to start churches, the new churches are nowhere near the NAMB reported “three to four times more effective in evangelism” statistic.

The following are calculations based on reports by NAMB and reports found in SBC Annuals each year. Southern Baptists are planting 444 fewer churches per year during the past six years compared to the previous six years, in spite of current 2017 expenditures that are 3.5 times greater than in years past. The SBC has planted 2,665 fewer churches during the past six years than during the previous six years. The New NAMB National Strategy has produced (a) reduced funding for evangelism, (b) weakened SBC ties, (c) diminished trust levels, (d) weakened relationships, and (e) reduced evangelistic collaboration. The strategic and tactical problems being discussed are planter placement, satellite campus funding, funding outside networks, and nationalized control.

Dr. Ezell initiated these radical changes and presided over the radical declines. His strategic decisions, in addition to his character, have impacted NAMB and the SBC in remarkable ways. In the question of competence, is NAMB helping to produce healthier and stronger results? Or has NAMB and the SBC hastened downward?

C. RELATIONAL CONNECTION

The President of NAMB is a leader for all Southern Baptists, pastors, laypeople, Associational missionaries, and State Convention missionaries and strategists. He needs to relate to a wide variety of people as Southern Baptists are a diverse group geographically, ethnically, racially, in terms of age, church size, worship style and language. His relationships and the relationships he fosters by protecting and enhancing trust and goodwill will impact the SBC for decades to come. His failures in these areas also impact us. We are a people who operate as volunteers who choose to work together in cooperation. The President of NAMB needs to be adding to trust and goodwill among all parts of the SBC family.

By observation and experience, anyone who has a brief encounter with Dr. Ezell will recognize his affability. He presents a warm and inviting first impression that seems to make people feel comfortable. However, a non-Southern State Executive noted to others that Dr. Ezell is “affable, but not nice.” He noted that he had observed Dr. Ezell’s actions and relayed that he was not a man who could be trusted, would not keep his word, had intentionally hurt people he knew, and was not someone he would describe as nice.

Why is this being said about Dr. Ezell? What does this State Executive Director’s comments to others say about Dr. Ezell?  Is this also tied to faulty character, faulty strategy, and faulty perspectives on who Southern Baptists are, as by his own words when hired, he had disengaged from NAMB as a pastor?

NAMB Presidents cheer on and build up SBC partners. However, it appears that Dr. Ezell has started multiple new partnerships outside the SBC, while at the same time setting strategies and setting large budget allocations that have damaged SBC sister partners, both at the local and state levels.

Why? Maybe this reflects his perceived mandate from the GCR. Maybe this reflects his own bad experiences and lack of personal engagement with his Association and/or State Convention. Maybe he had bad experiences or just could not see from his megachurch view how either of these entities were really contributing to the whole of the SBC, and in fact, are the backbone in various ways. I have captured some of the issues of partnership in the SBC ecosystem by writing various articles linked below.

Dealing with Decline: The Future of Southern Baptist Cooperation

Going, Going, Gone, Sold: Essential Elements of the SBC Mission Efforts

Is the New NAMB Really Working? Partnerships

“A long-tenured national leader declared, “Partnership is dead in the SBC.”  He, I and I am sure you, all hope he is wrong.  However, groanings deep inside SBC life are indicating that walls may be beginning to crumble. The violations of trust and good will among and between SBC entities and Southern Baptists to their local, state and national agencies may not be able to be repaired. When the nationalization is fully set, and it is deep into the process, what has been dismantled and taken apart for short-term gains, will forever not be able to be put back together again. God has used the SBC, but God is not obligated to bless in the future. God help us!”

Is Dr. Ezell’s perspective accurate or are the perspectives of leaders who have invested the bulk of their ministry in serving the people and purposes of Southern Baptists? Are partnerships strong or are they closer to “dead?” Why, or better yet, how can the SBC maintain cooperation, advance together, and operate under the blessing of God if our NAMB President is building new partnerships, but damaging SBC ones?

The Damages and Hurts are Personal as Heads Turn Away

For me Dr. Ezell’s action are personal, but I recognize that Sandy and our girls are but a few of those who have had to deal with the consequences of being on the wrong side of Dr. Ezell. Southern Baptists deserve better from their NAMB President.

Not a single, not even one single national leader ever reached out to me after my questionable and untimely termination, even though many of them have seen his character firsthand. In fact, only a few state leaders did so. I was the one beaten on the side of the road and watched my former friends and national level religious leaders walk by, literally on the other side as they went on their SBC business way. The congratulatory calls and the letters came when I was appointed to the position by God and elected by the Board, but NOTHING after my unjust termination. Where is the Soul of the SBC and its leaders?

Sadly, most of the men I have talked with are in the know. They know the truths shared above to ring true with their own experiences with Dr. Ezell. In fact, one national leader has a file he keeps on things just related to Dr. Ezell. Yet, the sound of silence among these men is deafening. The Bible is so clear. When we know the right thing to do and do it not, it is sin. (James 4:19) The mostly loving thing the NAMB Trustee leaders and national leaders and even pastor friends can do is to encourage Kevin toward repentance and public and private confession. It is hard to live like this before a Holy God. There is freedom in Christ, but it begins with humility of heart that results in confession and prayer. (James 5:16)

Sandy and I have absorbed countless hurts. We love people and we are all in people in our work, ministry and in our personal lives. It is who we are. If you love deeply, you can experience deep joys and deep hurts. I will never forget the look on Sandy’s face as one of our top national leaders was coming down the hall in Columbus, Ohio, at the SBC in 2015, about eight days after my termination. She saw that leader quickly look away and skirt by us instead of reaching out to us. It spoke volumes and actually forecasted much of the reception or the lack of that we would receive from people like him who used to welcome us: ignore and deny and hope it goes away or the damage is limited. God is holy and just.

After thirty years of faithful and fruitful ministry among Southern Baptists, for 22 months now I have been unemployed, but now I have founded, “The Church Strengthening Network” and I am starting over to rebuild from no base. No calls have come offering help to get me back on my feet after this powerful bully knocked me down. I have been blown away and hurt all over again with such silence. Take a look at my resume and academic vitae on my website and see what you think. It has been pointed out to me that if I had a problem with alcohol, or an affair or outburst with an uncontrolled temper, someone would have to my rescue and offered help. But because I am the victim of libel and interference by the NAMB President and dare to speak truth, there are no calls or offers to help. As one State Executive said, “The SBC knows how to handle adultery and embezzlement, but not how to handle a bully.”

When a man repeatedly speaks falsely and seeks to damage others, he is unfit to lead and has forfeited the trust and privilege of stewarding people, money, and priorities that originate in the pockets of faithful and generous Southern Baptists. If hearts get right with Jesus, the NAMB Trustees will know what to do to make restitution and restore me. If not, my suggestions would only add words to this document. I tried absolutely everything to prevent taking this matter to court for justice, but to no avail. The sins are not just of a man, but of an agency and others. The sins were not just against a person or a people such as the state convention (and probably many others around North America) but against God Himself. The offenses were not just personal, but involved organizational neglect and a pattern of bullying by the NAMB President that has been ignored and denied. If you would like to hear the story behind the filing of the legal complaint, you can hear my wife Sandy and I discuss the matter on our website and read the related article.

Conclusion

Every child of God is a work in progress, not yet perfected. However the qualifications of those who seek spiritual leadership, such as pastors, are demanding and exacting. As to the President of NAMB, we must have high demands in terms of authentic character, exceptional competence, and relational connection. Dr. Ezell has significant failures in all three areas.

From my personal experience and documented facts, it is apparent to me there are serious and obviously disqualifying behaviors that have been identified by numerous SBC national, state and associational leaders. The patterns are the same. The damages widespread, not isolated. The conclusion should be obvious to those with eyes to see, minds to perceive, hearts to feel, and a willingness to obey God.

With Dr. Ezell’s patterns of misleading communication and his affability and a $120 million budget that he is controlling, it is no surprise how Dr. Ezell has fooled many trustees, developed a loyal band of followers, and convinced many people to disregard the documented and court filed complaints of libel and tortious interference.

Dr. Ezell’s actions do not reflect the spirit of Christ or the spirit of brotherly love and cooperation expected by all Southern Baptists. However, as I have said and written repeatedly, the facts are documented, verified by witnesses, and are unimpeachable. At some point Dr. Ezell moved away from doing the will of Father and got focused on other wills. Perhaps it was his own will. The intentions of his heart are of little importance, frankly. As Proverbs 20:11 reminds us, “Even small children are known by their actions, so is their conduct really pure and upright?”

LINKS TO RELATED ARTICLES:

 Is the New NAMB Really Working Six Part Series

 Open Letters

 Initial Letter of Concern to NAMB Trustees

 June 2016 Letter to NAMB Trustees

 Troubling Times Under Dr. Ezell

 Ezell’s Lies and False Statements

 Summary of Claims/Accusations Against Ezell

 McRaneys Tell Story of Ezell’s Overreach

 The Whys of the Legal Complaint Against Ezell/NAMB

 Going Going Gone, Sold: Essential Elements of SBC Mission Efforts

 Dealing with Decline: The Future of Southern Baptist Cooperation

 Supporting Documents

 Statements of Fact: Detailed Version

 Timelines – NAMB with MD/DE Convention – Three Versions

When it comes to Southern Baptist church planting, strategic matters cannot be addressed in soundbites or 140-character Tweets. One must first gain a wider and deeper understanding of the issues. I began my exploration in a PhD seminar on the History of SBC Evangelism in 1989 at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. I had the privilege of reviewing the dusty SBC Annuals and tracing SBC church planting from its earliest roots to determine its impact upon evangelism.

In 2010, Southern Baptists went “all-in” with church planting as our sole evangelism focus. This approach radically impacted NAMB, State Conventions, Associations, and practically everything and everyone engaged in SBC evangelism.

This essay is the third part of a series entitled The New NAMB—Is It Working? Throughout this series, we are exposing the questions being asked by NAMB as weaker questions than the better questions we are asking. Today’s “better question” is this one: What are the numbers and types of church plants and what are the evangelistic results of these plants?

Affirmations

Virtually all Southern Baptists strongly affirm the ministry of church planting, the missionary role of church planters, and the provision of reasonable measures to assess, train, and deploy planters into their mission fields. The New NAMB has brought greater awareness of these benefits, sought to engage partnering churches, and increased the overall value for church planting among SBC pastors and leaders. We are grateful and celebrate that there are plants which are impacting their local ministry contexts. Lives are being changed and the gospel is reaching new people.

Flawed Fundamental Assumption

However, this New NAMB focus on church planting was built on the statistically faulty belief that church plants are 3-4 times more effective in evangelism than established churches. The communication of this fact with baptism ratios based on membership was and continues to be either statistical ignorance or intentional deception in order to sell this approach to Southern Baptists.

The origins of this flaw are found in the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report adopted by SBC messengers. The statistic cited above was used to convince Southern Baptists to go “all-in” with church planting. This has proven to have unintended consequences in evangelism, partnership, associations, and state conventions.

Consider the following example. An older established church averages 100 in worship, has 300 members, and baptizes ten people. A new church plant averages 100 in worship, has 50 members, and baptizes ten people. Notice the only difference is a membership of 300 for the existing church and 50 for the new plant. Using the flawed approach of the baptism-to-membership ratio, we would reason that new churches, with a ratio of 1 to 5, are performing six times better than existing churches, with a ratio of 1 to 30. However, using the legitimate comparison of the baptism-to-attendance ratio, we would reason that new church plants and existing churches are performing precisely the same, each with with a ratio of 1 to 10.

Do you see the problems caused by national leaders sharing misleading statistics with Southern Baptists? Do you see the problems caused by building an entire national strategy off of only one misleading statistic? This glaring mistake has deeply damaged large portions of the SBC and hindered our evangelistic effectiveness.

The Cost of our Flawed Strategy

The cost to adopt this approach has been enormous relationally, financially, evangelistically, and in terms of staffing and partnering with local, state and national SBC entities. As one State Executive said, “Partnership is dead in the SBC.” Terminating 37% of NAMB staff in the first eight months of Ezell’s tenure not only removed those staff members, but also removed all the relationships and goodwill they had built up through years of service to various NAMB partners at the local, state, and national levels.

The evangelistic effectiveness of Southern Baptists has been on a sharp and steady decline during the years of this emphasis. Consider just three statistics regarding our baptisms as we compare the Former NAMB Era (FNE) of 2004-2009 with the New NAMB Era (NNE) of 2010-2015.

1. SBC Total Baptisms declined by 13% from the FNE to the NNE.

2. SBC Baptisms declined by an average of 45,289 per year from the FNE to the NNE.

3. SBC Baptisms per church declined by an average of 18.7% during the NNE.

Under the New NAMB, each year we are investing in church planting 3.5 times more Southern Baptist dollars than we were investing under the Former NAMB—76.1 million in 2017 compared with $20.9 million in 2010. In spite of spending 3.5 times more money, the New NAMB is actually starting fewer churches per year than we were starting previously, as discussed in the next section. In 2017, the NAMB Church Planting Budget of $76.1 million is more than twelve times greater than the NAMB Evangelism Budget of 6.3 million.

Under a new project, the New NAMB is budgeting $62 million to purchase homes for church planters over a period of six years. NAMB has already purchased 89 such homes. This move into owning and managing property for planters has not been noted by this writer in the history of the SBC. In 2017 alone, the $12 million budget for purchasing church planter homes is nearly twice as much as the $6.3 million NAMB budget for evangelism.

Other costs have impacted evangelism dollars and staff. NAMB virtually eliminated all national evangelism staff specialists, defunding State Directors of Evangelism and other state evangelism staff in non-Southern states, reducing the NAMB evangelism budget from $20.6 million in 2009 to $6.3 million in 2017, and cutting off funding for various regionally effective evangelistic ministries. Previously, these jointly funded evangelism staff positions in non-southern states served both the planters and the existing churches who fund NAMB and develop missionaries serving North America.

Charting Our Decline in the Number of SBC Church Plants

The New NAMB had a church planting goal of 1,500 per year before revising it down to 1,200. However, the New NAMB has averaged 924 plants per year. During the six years prior, NAMB averaged starting 1,368 churches per year—even after adjusting downward the inflated number reported, which included not only SBC Church Plants, but also already existing Non-SBC churches who chose to affiliate with the SBC during that year. Based upon these calculations, the SBC has been planting 444 fewer churches per year in the New NAMB Era, despite our investment of 3.5 times more money.

1. Former NAMB Era (2004-2009) Church Plant Total—8,211

This church plant total takes into consideration an estimated 1,150 churches previously included in this total that were not really SBC Church Plants at all, but merely existing non-SBC churches that chose to affiliate with the SBC during these Former NAMB Era years.

2. New NAMB Era (2010-2015) Church Plant Total—5,546
   This church plant total takes into consideration an estimated 1,150 churches previously included in this total that were not really SBC Church Plants at all, but merely existing non-SBC churches that chose to affiliate with the SBC during these New NAMB Era years.

Subtracting 5,546 from 8,211, we see that the SBC has planted 2,665 fewer churches in the past six years than we did in the prior six years. With much less fanfare, it appears that the Former NAMB was planting more churches with less money while still funding evangelism efforts nationally, regionally, and locally.

The New NAMB Nationalized Church Planting Strategy Results

1. Reduced Evangelism Funding
   Reduced funding for evangelism through the local missions and ministries of our associations

2. Weakened SBC Ties
   Weakened local SBC ties by the removal of the requirement for church plants to reinvest in local ministry through their Associations

3. Diminished Trust Levels
   Diminished levels of trust in NAMB by pastors, DOMs and state leaders

4. Weakened Relationships
   Weakened vital relationships and partnerships impacting local and regional ministry

5. Reduced Evangelistic Collaboration
   Reduced collaboration and partnership with Southern state conventions including their evangelism staff and their church planting staff, resulting from the 2012 revised Partnership Agreement

New NAMB Church Planting Strategic and Tactical Problems

The New NAMB strategy employs a number of short-sighted approaches offering quicker initial results, while also leading to possible long-term negative consequences. These approaches make NAMB appear “cool” and “successful” while the underlying reality exposes this view as an illusion.

1. Planter Placement
   The placement or approval of church planters with little regard for their contextual fit, little consideration of the cross-cultural gifts possessed by each church planter, and little effort to offer additional preparation

2. Satellite Campus Funding
   The possible funding of the satellite campuses started by megachurches as a form of “church planting” when the megachurch views this merely as an extension of their own local church

3. Funding Outside Networks
   The concern that NAMB is using SBC funds, in partnership with non-SBC organizations, to start churches identifying with networks and organizations not historically Southern Baptist in their values and commitments

4. Nationalized Control
   The concern that the New NAMB, by employing anationalizedstrategy of church planting, is controlling matters at the federal level of our cooperation, to the detriment of both the church plants themselves, and the local and regional Southern Baptist partners historically lending their support and expertise from a vantage point closer to the field

Conclusion

Southern Baptists took a leap of faith with the present church planting or bust approach. We bought into the sales pitch that starting more churches would be worth it. Few Southern Baptists had any idea this approach would require the dismantling of the very fabric of the SBC—our historic relationship with state conventions and local associations. Few Southern Baptists had any idea this approach would require the cuts that have obliterated our evangelism budgets and staff at the local and state levels.

When evaluating this “all-in” approach, Southern Baptists must determine if the gain has been greater than the loss. Granted, gains have been made in publicity and enthusiasm, but these are matters of style and not substance. The fact is that in our church planting, our baptisms, and our cooperative work, we have suffered major, possibly irrevocable damages. The overall costs are too high. The benefits are too low. Southern Baptist are now much weaker in our strategies, our results and our level of trust. When we evaluate the data concerning church planting at NAMB, we can only come to one conclusion: “It is not working.”

Some things cannot be addressed in a soundbite or 140 character Twitter post.  The matters facing Southern Baptists churches and the increasing challenges we face demand a more thorough analysis as we evaluate our current course as Southern Baptists.  One must understand wider and more deeply before seeking to evaluate or adjust strategy for an organization the size of the SBC.

My exploration of the impact of church planting began in a PhD seminar on the History of SBC Evangelism in 1989 at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.  I had the privilege and task of reviewing the all the dusty SBC Annuals to determine, “The Impact of Church Planting on Southern Baptist Evangelism“.  In the major paper I traced church planting in the SBC from its earliest roots and examined the various flavors and its impact on evangelism in the SBC.

Since 2010, Southern Baptists have gone all in with church planting as the single focus of its evangelism and mission efforts in North America.  Is this single focus working in meaningful and lasting ways for Southern Baptists?  That questions is one of several questions that deserve to be explored?  While there are some positive results there are also major concerns as well, particularly on the impact on evangelism results now and in the future.

A flawed foundational statistic was used to justify the “all in” and single focus strategy.  The same flawed statistic continues to be misused to convince Southern Baptists to support and fund the New NAMB approach to the neglect of all other approaches to helping churches evangelize North America.    There are a number of great reasons to start new churches, but basing the focus on the statistical lie that church planting is 3 to 4 more effective in evangelism is not it.

NAMB President Ezell once again misused the statistic of membership to baptism ratios in his proclamation to Southern Baptists “It Is Working” in June 2016 in St. Louis.  He communicated to Southern Baptist the baptisms to membership ratios as 1:14 for plants and 1:52 for established churches, and stated publically that the plants are making up for the lack in evangelism of established churches.  He must know better.

How can I say this?  In 2002, I was asked and hired by Dr. Ed Stetzer on behalf of NAMB to complete a research project on “Church Planting as an Evangelistic Strategy“ and report the findings back to the Former NAMB leadership.  One of the requests was to compare the evangelistic effectiveness of church plants to established churches.  One finding from the research was that church plants at that time had marginally better average attendance-to-baptism rates and marginally better average Sunday School attendance-to-baptism rates.  I did not explore and compare the membership baptism rates because that would be a useless and unrevealing number.  Baptism ratios can reasonably be based on average worship attendance or the average small group attendance, BUT NOT membership.  Why? The typical SBC church has 3 times more members than average attenders and church plants typically have more attenders than members.

To see this clearly, consider the following:

An illegitimate comparison that is misleading…

• Older established church – averages 100 in worship, has 300 members, baptizes 10 people. The membership baptism ratio would be 1:30 or 10 baptisms out of 300 people.
• New church plant – averages 100 in worship, has 50 members, baptizes 10 people. The membership baptism ratio would be 1:5 or 10 baptisms out of 50 people.
• Using this flawed approach New Churches 1:5 and Existing Churches 1:30; which is a difference of six times, but both churches are averaging 100 in worship and baptizing the same numbers of people.

 A legitimate comparison

• Older established church – baptism based on attendance would be 1:10
• New church plant – baptism based on attendance would be 1:10

Do you see the problems of national leaders sharing misleading information with the SBC people?  Building a national strategy off one primary completely misleading statistic has proven to deeply damage large portions of the SBC and our evangelism effectiveness.  Additionally, its impact will be felt by Southern Baptists for decades.

For a current real life example of strategy based on flawed information, read about Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos.  Her business was initially built on good intentions to help people around the world.  Hope grew as the technology was tested, and the business exploded in growth.  But later it was discovered that she had sold some of the best minds and wealthiest people in America was built on a false medical information and unattainable dream.  The 33 year old’s new worth of $4.5 billion went to zero overnight and many, many people were hurt as the truth was revealed.

We are people of truth, serve a God of truth, and share the truth.  It is imperative that Southern Baptists leaders tell the truth to Southern Baptists, lest our efforts come crumbling down and damage His Kingdom.

Affirmations

Virtually all Southern Baptists can agree on several affirmations.  We affirm the ministry of church planting.  We affirm the missionary role of church planters and their family and we should take loving and reasonable measures to assess, train, and deploy planters into fields with human and financial support, and work to connect them to local churches and others islands of health in their region for greater support.

The New NAMB has brought greater awareness of the ministry of this missionary, sought to engage partnering churches to undergird them, and increased the overall value for church planting among SBC pastors and leaders.  We are grateful and celebrate that there are plants which are impacting their local ministry contexts.  Lives are being changed and the gospel is spreading to new people.  However, the reality is, that some of this would happen with or without local, state or national support.  From a few reports being shared among guys connected to the mission field, the New NAMB approach is working in some church planting, but there are others where it is reportedly not going well at all for the plants themselves or the local associations as redundant tracks are being built which is creating more confusion.

Planting Statistics and Facts

Dr. Ezell stated that the New NAMB had a church planting goal of 1,500 plants per year that was restated to the SBC in 2013.  During the last six years under his tenure, the New NAMB has averaged 924 plants per year.  On Feb. 8, 2016 Dr. Ezell publicly revised the goal to 1,200 plants per year in his presentation to NAMB Trustees.  The average number of plants for the six years prior to the New NAMB was 1,368 after adjusting the number down for the average number of churches who became a part of the SBC by affiliation, not new starts.  Using the numbers we have and adjustments down, the SBC is still seeing 444 less churches per year started during the last 6 years compared to the 6 prior years.

Dr. Ezell has claimed that it is impossible to compare the number of plants in the New NAMB to the number of plants in the Former NAMB.  One of his concerns about past reporting is the possible duplication in counting and that new plants were not required to receive their unique SBC ID number.  Another concern related to the number of affiliating churches that could have been reported in the pre-2010 reporting of new SBC congregations.  However, in my calculations, I took into account one of the major factors, that of churches which have affiliated with the SBC as a church, but was not started by the SBC.  In comparing the last six years to the six years prior to the New NAMB, I reduced the number of churches reported in the SBC Annual (Baptism and Plants 2004-2015) by the average on a per year basis.

2004-2009       8,211    (9,361 reported minus an estimated affiliated 1,150)

2010-2016       5,546    (reported church starts, also reported affiliated 1,150)

2,665     less churches reported started during last 6 years than prior 6 yrs.

I do not know the church plants Dr. Ezell is contesting prior to his becoming President.  Not knowing how to calculate an allowance for them, I share the best figures I can calculate with an allowance for churches that are affiliated, but not started in 2004-2009.  On average, it appears the SBC is starting some 444 less churches each of the last years, while spending initially two times more money and now 3.5 times more money than the Former NAMB used to start more churches.  It is possible that Dr. Ezell can make a case for some differences in the calculations of church plants in prior years without SBC ID numbers, but I suspect he cannot account for the some 2,665 less churches even after an allowance of 191 per year for possible affiliation instead of being newly started.  With less fanfare, it appears that the Former NAMB was planting more churches with less money and still funding evangelism efforts nationally, regionally and locally.

Ideally church plants are started with focus on evangelizing lost segments of society.  Southern Baptists should be reluctant to fund church starts to provide Christians with a new church that is more to their liking.

In 2007 Dr. Ed Stetzer while working at NAMB conducted a study on 2000 church plants started between 2000 and 2005 in 12 different denominations and networks.  In surveys with 500 of those churches, he discovered a membership baptism ratio of 1:5 for churches during their first four years (p. 16 above study).  Dr. Ezell reported in recent SBC church plants to be 1:14.  The membership baptism ratios are 65% worse in the SBC than the ratios discovered by Dr. Stetzer on plants in his study.

A better way to compare the currently known data and accurately reflect reality would be to say that new church baptism ratios to members is 1:14, while all 47,000 churches in the SBC have baptism ratios to average attendance of 1:19.  As new research is completed on baptisms to average worship attendance in new churches, appearances are that the differences in new and established churches will only show small differences in ratios.

It thus appears that already existing local churches are a significant factor in evangelism, with new church plants only slightly more effective.  Therefore, helping them with evangelism may be a significant way to bring people to Christ.

Yet Southern Baptists dismantled their entire multi-faceted approach to evangelizing and disciplining North America based primarily on the belief in a statistical lie that church plants were 3 to 4 times more effective in evangelism.

Financial Matters

The New NAMB is investing 3.5 times more SBC dollars per year into church planting the last year of the Former NAMB: 76.1 million in church planting in 2017, compared to $20.9 million in 2010 (p. 294).  By any thoughtful look at the numbers, we are spending 3.5 times more and actually getting less church starts each year.  At the same time we have virtually eliminated NAMB evangelism staff specialists, defunding State Directors of Evangelism and other state evangelism staff who were there to assist both new and existing churches, reduced the evangelism budget to 5% of the New NAMB’s annual budget, and removed focus and funding for various regional effective evangelistic ministries.  The church planting budget ($76.1 million) is over 12 times more than the budget for Evangelism ($6.3 million) in 2017. (see Financial Management p. 1)  This means 43,000 existing churches of the total 47,000 churches that have had a 1:19 attendance to baptism ration are receiving little to no help with evangelism.  Instead, the vast majority of funds are being spent to start new congregations whose actual evangelism effectiveness is only slightly better than the existing churches.

Under a new project, the New NAMB is budgeting $62 million to purchase homes for church planters over about a 6 year period (see p. 2 under Financial Management).  In the last published report, NAMB had purchased 89 homes (see #III).  This move into owning and managing property for planters has not been seen by this writer in the history of the SBC.   The 2017 budget for purchasing homes for church planters ($12 million) is twice as much as the entire NAMB budget for evangelism ($6.3 million)

Church Planting Targets

Southern Baptist historically have planted churches with the DNA embedded from the mother or sponsoring church.  This would have included a commitment to similar doctrine, governance, and a cooperative form of mission advance through the Cooperative Program.  Since we are planting churches in radically different places and seeking to reach into new subsets of people groups, we need to be clear on the essentials we are trying to instill into the DNA of the new church.

The SBC should steward the resources of Southern Baptists by investing in church plants which have or develop

• Evangelistic heart and effectiveness
• Planter/pastor that is equipped and supported by local relationships
• Capacity to be self-supporting, self-governing, self-determining
• Commitment to the Baptist Faith and Message
• Long-term commitment to a cooperative spirit and funding of missions as a stewardship of the investments made into the plant
• Connected to and invested in the various expressions of the SBC ecosystem: local, state, and national
• Intentionality and effectiveness in developing disciples who are then engaged with community impact for Christ

Unknowns but Vital

To better evaluate the effectiveness of the New NAMB strategy it would be very helpful to discover two pieces of information that are currently unknown from a reliable source.

The first is survivability rates of the new church plants.  Church planting is both an art and science with some unique challenges to its growth and sustainability.  In the absence of access to current and reliable survivability rates, I can only relay that I have been told that the survivability rate of plants during the New NAMB is similar to the reported national averages in all denominations which is around 68% at the four year mark.

Another unknown is the long-term commitment of the new plants to essential values and practices of past generations of SBC churches and plants.  The challenges in this area are increased because of our approaches to church plants and the North American culture in which we are planting.

Strategy and Tactical Concerns

The following are possible concerns related to the strategies and tactics being used by the New NAMB

• Short-sighted Approaches — It appears that we are using tactics that produce quicker results, result in NAMB looking “cool” and successful but have long-term negative consequences.
  • Placing and/or approving planters to ministry fields that are far removed from their past contexts of living and ministering without examining these issues, preparing the planter and his family, and without connecting them to adequate local churches and leaders of healthy churches in surrounding areas. This will result in more planting failures, which damage not only the planter and his family, but also reflects negatively on all parts of the SBC family to all the individuals and churches which partnered with and supported the planter.
  • Funding satellite campuses of some mega churches. Danger lies in the growing belief that the faithful CP giving of smaller and mid-size churches is being taken and then redistributed back to mega churches who plant campuses around them that in turn not reach lost people, but reach the church members of those small and mid-size congregations.
  • Partner with (not sure all that it entails) with historically non-SBC churches to plant churches. I assume this means that SBC funds are being used to start churches who primarily relate to and are committed to non-SBC entities and mission efforts.  Such known partnerships include: Harvest Bible Chapel, Acts 29, McLean Bible Church and most probably several others.  I don’t know if we are counting them as SBC church plants for our records, but it would be worth inquiring of a NAMB Trustee.

• A Nationalistic Approach and Devaluing of Local and State Partners
  • Setting policies, practices, assessment requirements, training programs, and the like from Alpharetta far from the mission fields. The Former NAMB typically worked to supplement local and regional strategies around common objectives with NAMB.In the past we operated from the assumption that pastors and leaders on the local field would best know their needs.  The new approach means that officials at a far distance are assuming that they best know the local needs.  This is a significant shift for us.
  • Employing church planting staff that works in various states beside the non-Southern state conventions, but come under the selection, supervision, and support of the New NAMB – not the State Convention.
  • Directing all things church planting from Alpharetta, instead of being responsive to state and regional priorities and processes that fit their context and are connected to and held accountable by local pastors and churches.
  • The 2014 removal of the historic requirement of church plants who are receiving SBC funds to reinvest into the local association of churches and missions around them. When questioned, NAMB leadership said, “they need to earn theirs” with “they” referring associations and the DOMS who serve the local churches.
  • Defunding of partial funding of DOMs in non-Southern states in 2012 with the new partnership and budget agreements with state conventions.
  • Reported some if not all state Executive Directors have been informed that NAMB plans to fly all planters to Alpharetta for “orientation”. For the first time in the history of NAMB, the money and time is being spent to connect the planters directly to NAMB rather than the ministry at the local and state levels.
  • NAMB is beginning to inform some non-Southern State Executive Directors that when the State DOM positions open up, NAMB intends to not replace them because that is an “antiquated” role. NAMB will select the next leader and will be eliminating the SDOM position, and requiring the new hire to be involved directly with two church plants.  Reportedly there was no reply from NAMB to one Exec. Director who expressed concerns about the other and wider duties of the SDOM outside of church planting.

• Financial Matters
  • Lack of local and regional financial controls and accountabilities with money entrusted at the national level for local ministry. Stewardship of SBC resources is best closer to the field and closer to local accountability
  • NAMB leadership stewards a $120 million annual budget in addition to $320 million in net assets to strong-arm, reward, punish and use to purchase goodwill and favors. This money used to be entrusted primarily to state leaders and staff who then were under the authority of local pastors and churches.
  • Funding directly to more church plants and/or their sponsoring churches, when historically the funding for planters/plants almost exclusively went through the state conventions.  The direct funding fosters loyalty to the New NAMB, but not to the Southern Baptist Associations and State Conventions.

• Trust of NAMB
  • Selective following of Strategic Partnership Agreements (SPA) with State Conventions
    • Violating, ignoring and changing the terms of SPA has and will continue to erode trust if it continues.
    • See my article on “Going Going Gone, Sold: Essential Elements of SBC Mission Efforts — Major Changes in the Latest NAMB/State Convention Cooperative Agreements Shift SBC Ecology” 
  • Nationalistic approaches are eroding local trust and eroding local engagement and responsibility in non-Southern states

Conclusion

Southern Baptists took a leap of faith with Dr. Ezell and in the New NAMB in 2010.  They bought into the sales pitch that starting more churches was worth it.  Do you think they knew it would come at the expense of dismantling vital aspects the fabric of the SBC and virtually dismantling the entire budget and staffing priorities in evangelism nationally and at the local and state levels?

Statistically, the New NAMB in keeping with the Great Commission Resurgence were sold a lie, that church plants were so valuable and would be so effective in evangelism, that selling all other things NAMB and SBC partnership was worth it.  I believe this blind leap of faith based on a statistical lie has damaged the SBC in remarkable seen and unseen ways in the future.

Southern Baptists must determine if the gain has been greater than the loss with this “all-in” and single focused strategy to reach North America with the gospel.  While some gains in publicity and enthusiasm has been achieved, the planting, baptism, and impact on the cooperative work and partnership has suffered major, irrecoverable losses.  The overall costs are too high, the benefits too low, and Southern Baptist are weaker in strategic ways and in essential trust.

It might seem that turning back the clock would be best.  But, that is not an option for SBC leaders who must guide the SBC out of this blind jump into the unproven and damaging approach to growing our human and financial mission base.  Southern Baptist church members and churches desire better stewardship of their national missions agency.

Series of Articles – “Is the New NAMB Really Working”

Part 1: Introduction

Part Two: Baptisms – ABRIDGED

Part 2: Baptisms – Full Article w/ Fact Links

Part Three: Church Planting – ABRIDGED

PART 3: Church Planting – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 4: Partnership – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 5: Financial Stewardship – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 6: Character – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 7: Oversight and Accountability

At the 2016 SBC Annual Meeting, when Dr. Kevin Ezell presented a report from the North American Mission Board entitled It’s Working, he was referring to the implementation of NAMB’s new strategy over the past six years. However, his version of the storyline does not match the facts.  Is It Working? The answer to this question is a resounding “no”.  The baptism data supports such a conclusion.  Baptisms per church have declined 18.7% during Ezell’s six year tenure.

Purpose of NAMB

Evangelism is the major purpose for NAMB. Church planting is now the primary chosen strategy to accomplish this purpose. According to Ezell, “NAMB’s primary reason for existence is to help Southern Baptists reach North America for Christ. That is the mission that runs through everything that we do.” (It’s Working, June 15, 2016)  Evangelistic strategies should be driving the New NAMB and the results seen in baptisms. Planting new churches is not the ultimate mission—helping churches to be more effective in evangelism is the mission.

Key stats

While Southern Baptists are reporting 70 year lows in baptisms, any evaluation of results must consider the evangelistic effectiveness of the New NAMB and compare it with that of the Former NAMB.  Every typically reported statistic is worse the last six years compared to the previous six years when NAMB had a diverse approach to evangelism, a healthy budget and national staff focused on evangelism, were jointly funding state evangelism staff members, and had the entire North America in their view.  Three statistics of note among many others reveal the real status of our evangelism effectiveness.  From 2009 to 2015 Annual Church Profile…

• SBC Total Baptisms have an average decline of 45,289 per year during the New NAMB and that number is growing each year
• SBC Baptisms have declined by 13% during the New NAMB
• Including all 47,000+ churches, the average decline in baptisms of 18.7% per church

NAMB is not solely responsible for the evangelistic results of the SBC. However, we should thoroughly examine these results in light of the complete dismantling of their evangelism staff, and in light of their complete rejection of our historic approaches to evangelism. In lieu of these time-honored ministries, the New NAMB has adopted church planting as virtually the only approach to “help Southern Baptists reach North America.”

New NAMB Actions Crippling Evangelism

We have already seen that baptisms are in a steady and significant decline in the SBC under the direction of the NEW NAMB. Any serious exploration into the possible causes requires an investigation into the specific measures taken by NAMB over the past six years which may have contributed to these steep declines in baptisms. In stark contrast to the approach taken by the Former NAMB, the NEW NAMB took the following specific actions that significantly weakened SBC evangelism.

1. Massive National Force Reduction
   The New NAMB terminated some 37% staff members at the national headquarters within months of Dr. Ezell’s employment, including virtually all of the evangelism staff who focused on leading, training, and engagement on the ground in evangelism.
2. Massive Budget Cuts in Evangelism
   The New NAMB reduced the funds committed to evangelism from $20.6 million to $6.3 million. Today, out of the 2017  $76 million annual church planting budget, NAMB is spending $12 million to purchase homes for church planters while only budgeting $6.34 million for evangelism. Additionally, the six-year housing purchase project will spend $62 million in total for housing for planters.
3. Church Planting Tunnel Vision
   The New NAMB is focused almost exclusively on 4,000 church plants in 32 cities while under-resourcing the 43,000 existing SBC churches in evangelism who have the missionary force and funding inside their walls, along with an established presence.
4. Massive State Evangelism Defunding
   In 2014, the New NAMB revised the 2012 Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) by defunding all evangelism staff positions jointly funded by NAMB for decades in the 25 non-Southern state conventions. These positions included State Directors of Evangelism, other state evangelism staff, and the Baptist Collegiate Ministries staff evangelizing American and International students on college campuses.

Let’s evaluate the cumulative impact upon evangelism of the four catastrophic initiatives mentioned above. The New NAMB strategy has (a) practically eliminated its entire evangelism division, (b) slashed its evangelism budget by nearly 70%, (c) narrowed its focus to 8.5%of our churches and 0.2% of our cities, and (d) abandoned its historic commitment to assist sparsely populated state conventions with the resources necessary to employ evangelistic staff. Does it not stand to reason that evangelism in the SBC was bound to suffer as a direct result of these New NAMB initiatives?  This summary of the New NAMB strategy crippling evangelism raises important questions.

Appraising the New NAMB Rationale and Comparisons

Southern Baptists were told that church planting would become the primary focus of the New NAMB because it is the most effective evangelism strategy. Early NAMB press releases indicated that church plants were three to four times more effective in evangelism than established churches. This information was remarkably false and misleading, yet it was used to justify the radical changes made by the New NAMB and continues to be shared by our NAMB President in his claim that “it is working”.

There are two legitimate methods to compare the baptism ratios of church plants to existing churches based on either average worship attendance or average small group participation, and based on these approaches the evangelistic differences between new and existing churches is small.  To compare new to existing churches based on membership is inexcusable.  Also of note, current SBC church plants are dramatically less evangelistically effective than the churches studied by NAMB in 2007.

Southern Baptists were sold an evangelism dismantling strategy for a focus exclusively on church planting that was based on statistical ignorance or guile. Southern Baptists were and are being misled.  Dr. Ezell’s 1:14 ratio for plants to 1:52 ratio for existing churches based on membership may be statistically accurate, but completely faulty and misleading.  Baptism in all churches is 1:18.8 based on the infinitely more telling average attendance.

Additional Strategic Evangelism Pitfalls

     1.  Discussed Church Probation Policy

Instead of expressing concern, proposing possible aids or assuming some measure of responsibility for the declining baptism rates, Dr. Ezell communicated in at least two public settings his belief “that if you don’t baptize no one in two years, we should put them on probation and eventually kick them out.”  He stated those churches were “bad advertisement” instead of helping to equip the pastors who fund NAMB in evangelism.

     2.  Exclusive Focus on Unreceptive Areas

The New NAMB strategy is focused on reaching people groups that are hardest to reach, located in the most unreached areas, and comprised of the people most unreceptive to the gospel.  We are often sending in planters with little experience in ministry or demonstrated cross-cultural giftings or fruitful ministry.  Meanwhile, we are practically abandoning the places and people who were being reached with the missionaries and methods previously utilized.

     3.  Heavily Investing in Isolated Urban Ministry

The New NAMB invested all evangelism resources into church planting among the largest unchurched cities to the exclusion of virtually all other approaches to impacting lostness in North America.  The New NAMB destablized local and state support systems by defunding and pulling the requirement that church plants receiving SBC funds reinvest into local associations.  Often church planters are moved into mission contexts that are both radically different than their own without proven cross-cultural ministry effectiveness or equipping for cross-cultural minsitry.

     4.  Dismantling Four Layers of SBC Cooperation

History reveals that Southern Baptists accomplish more when we work together from the national, state, association and local church levels—not when a national organization picks a strategy for the day and forces it upon state conventions, associations, and local churches.  The New NAMB leaders are making decisions leading to or hastening the dismantling of the ecosystem of SBC life.  As mentioned above the New NAMB has defunded and removed the historic requirement of planters to reinvest in their association, and moved to a more nationalistic approach in the 2014 version of the Strategic Partnership Agreements with the state conventions.

Conclusion

SBC baptisms have been on a steady decline for sixteen full years—marking the first time in SBC history that we have ever observed such a slide.  Southern Baptists need the cart and the horse, but the New NAMB strategy has put the cart before the horse. Evangelism must be the leading edge, not the trailing edge operating on leftover human and financial resources. The New NAMB has become more effective in public relations and less effective in evangelism. The cold hard facts reveal that Southern Baptists are doing a historically poor job of evangelizing North America. We are not in need of a spin zone, but a reality check and a different strategic direction. It is not working.

At the 2016 SBC Annual Meeting, when Dr. Kevin Ezell presented a report from the North American Mission Board entitled It’s Working, he was referring to the implementation of NAMB’s new strategy over the past six years. However, his version of the storyline does not match the facts.

Is It Working? The answer to this question is a resounding “no” in light of the evangelistic results actually reported by SBC churches and church plants. While this is certainly not the kind of news anyone wishes to hear, the data nevertheless supports such a conclusion, which may explain why certain facts were either missing or misused in Dr. Ezell’s report.  Baptisms per church have declined 18.7% during Ezell’s six year tenure.

This essay is the second part of a series entitled Is the New NAMB Working? In the first part, the questions asked and answered by Dr. Ezell in his report were exposed as weaker questions than the better questions we are asking and answering in this series. Today’s “better question” is this one: How are Southern Baptists doing in evangelism as seen in baptism reports and in correlating comparisons under the New NAMB?

Our Evangelistic Mission

Evangelism is the major purpose for NAMB. Church planting is reportedly the primary strategy to accomplish this purpose. According to Ezell, “NAMB’s primary reason for existence is to help Southern Baptists reach North America for Christ. That is the mission that runs through everything that we do.” (It’s Working, June 15, 2016)

Evangelistic strategies should be driving the New NAMB. These strategies reveal the measure of their effectiveness by resulting in baptisms. Planting new churches is not the ultimate mission—helping churches to be more effective in evangelism is the mission.

Our Evangelistic Results

According to an analysis of data reported in Southern Baptist Annual Church Profiles, we can draw the following conclusions by comparing our last year under the Former NAMB with our most recent year under the New NAMB:

• Our baptisms per member have declined—1 to 46 in 2009 and 1 to 52 in 2015.
• Our baptisms per attender have declined—1 to 18 in 2009 and 1 to 19 in 2015.
• Our baptism total has declined to a 70-year low—345,737 in 2009 and 295,212 in 2015.

NAMB is not solely responsible for the evangelistic results of the SBC. However, we should thoroughly examine these results in light of the complete dismantling of their evangelism staff, and in light of their complete rejection of our historic approaches to evangelism. In lieu of these time-honored ministries, the New NAMB has adopted church planting as virtually the only approach to “help Southern Baptists reach North America.” Any evaluation of results must consider the evangelistic effectiveness of the New NAMB and compare it with that of the Former NAMB.

Declining Baptism Results Under New NAMB

New NAMB Era (NNE) vs. Former NAMB Era (FNE)

The evangelism statistics below compare the results of the past six available years (2010-2015) under the New NAMB with the results of the previous six years (2004-2009) under the Former NAMB. Under the leadership and strategies of the New NAMB, one seemingly positive result is that the total number of SBC churches did increase by 2.3%. We might assume such a result would increase our evangelism. However, when we analyze the statistics reported in the Annual Church Profiles during each era, this is simply not the case at all. In fact, as we compare the results of the New NAMB Era (NNE) with the Former NAMB Era (FNE), we discover the following:

• SBC Total Baptisms declined by 13% from the last 6 years FNE to the 6 years of NNE.
• SBC Baptisms declined by an average of 45,289 per year from the FNE to the NNE.
• SBC Baptisms declined by an average of 18.7% per church from 2009 (FNE) to 2015 (NNE).

Dr. Chuck Kelley, President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, is widely known for his research and teaching on the history evangelism in the SBC.  During a 2016 presentation, Dr. Kelley noted, “Southern Baptists are closer to losing the South than we are to reaching North America. If we lose the South, eventually, we lose everything.” (Is This a Great Commission Regression? NOBTS Chapel, January 19, 2016) Kelley later stated, “Lostness in North America is having a bigger impact on Southern Baptists than Southern Baptists are having on lostness.”

New NAMB Actions Crippling Evangelism

We have already seen that baptisms are in a steady and significant decline in the SBC under the leadership of the New NAMB. Any serious exploration into the possible causes requires an investigation into the specific measures taken by NAMB over the past six years which may have contributed to these steep declines in baptisms. In stark contrast to the approach taken by the Former NAMB, the New NAMB took the following specific actions significantly weakening SBC evangelism.

1. Massive National Force Reduction
   The New NAMB terminated some 37% of the staff members at the national headquarters within months of Dr. Ezell’s employment, including virtually all of the evangelism staff.  NAMB evangelism staff reductions along with cuts to evangelism staff and missionaries at the state and local level has left fewer people to engage in leading, training, and engaged on the ground with their focus on evangelism.
2. Massive Budget Cuts in Evangelism
   The New NAMB reduced the funds committed to evangelism from $20.6 million to $6.3 million. By reducing evangelism funding to 5% of the overall $120 million budget, NAMB was able to invest 2.5 times more funds toward church planting. Today, out of this $76 million annual church planting budget, NAMB is spending $12 million to purchase homes for church planters and only $6.34 million in evangelism in 2017. This means that the New NAMB is now spending twice as much on real estate as it spends on evangelism.  Additionally, the housing purchase project will spend $62 million in total for housing for planters.
3. Church Planting Tunnel Vision
   While its assignment is to reach all of North America, the New NAMB is focused almost exclusively on 4,000 church plants while under-resourcing the 43,000 existing SBC churches in evangelism. The New NAMB suffers from tunnel vision by focusing so exclusively on only 32 cities in North America.
4. Massive State Evangelism Defunding
   In the Former NAMB Era, and even in the early days of the New NAMB Era under the previous 2012 Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), NAMB jointly funded multiple evangelism staff members within the 25 non-southern state conventions to assist new and existing churches in evangelism. However, in 2014, the New NAMB revised the 2012 Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) by defunding all evangelism staff positions jointly funded by NAMB for decades. These positions included State Directors of Evangelism, other state evangelism staff, and the Baptist Collegiate Ministries staff evangelizing American and International students on college campuses. The cuts affected all of the 25 non-southern state conventions except for the Northwest Convention.

Let us pause a moment to synthesize and evaluate the cumulative impact upon evangelism of the four catastrophic initiatives mentioned above. A significant part of the New NAMB strategy has been to (a) practically eliminate its entire evangelism division, (b) slash its evangelism budget by nearly 70%, (c) narrow its focus to ten percent of our churches and 0.2% of our cities, and (d) abandon its historic commitment to assist sparsely populated state conventions with the resources necessary to employ evangelistic staff. Does it not stand to reason that evangelism in the SBC was bound to suffer as a direct result of these New NAMB initiatives?

This summary of the New NAMB strategy crippling evangelism raises a few important questions. If the New NAMB traded all of this evangelism infrastructure to accomplish something else, then what has been gained as a result of all that has been lost? What were we hoping to accomplish? What was the reason for doing all of this? And is this approach proving to be valid or invalid?

Appraising the New NAMB Rationale

Southern Baptists were told that church planting would become the primary focus of the New NAMB because church planting is the most effective evangelism strategy. Early studies were cited indicating that church plants are three to four times more effective in evangelism than established churches. This information was remarkably false and misleading, yet it was used to justify the radical changes made by the New NAMB. The study (Church Planting as an Evangelistic Strategy 2002) NAMB hired me to conduct and report on debunks the NNE claims and their rationale for making such radical changes to NAMB on behalf of all Southern Baptists.

Additionally, in 2007, Ed Stetzer conducted NAMB research and published a report entitled Research Report Church Plant Survivabilty and Health Study 2007 and powerpoint  Church Planting and Survivability. Comparing Stetzer’s data with the data shared by Dr. Ezell in his 2016 SBC Annual Meeting Report entitled It’s Working, a very different picture emerges.

1. Declining Baptisms in Church Plants Per One Hundred Members
   Church plants in the New NAMB Era report lower baptisms per one hundred members than church plants in the SBC and other denominations reported previously—20 baptisms per 100 members 2005 compared to NNE 7 baptisms per 100 members in 2015.  The drop in baptisms is a staggering 65% less than churches in the study by Stetzer.
2. Evangelistic Effectiveness Plants vs. Established Church
   In an upcoming study, church plants may be marginally more effective in evangelism when using baptism-to-attendance ratios instead of baptism-to-membership ratios.  However, the difference is not nearly as pronounced as New NAMB proposals advocating the strategy that church plants are 3 to 4 times more effective– instead in 2015 1 to 14 baptism ratio for members in church plants and 1 to 19 baptism ratio on attendance for all SBC churches in 2015.
3. Southern Baptist Impact
   Church plants under five years old represent 8.5% of our churches, and an estimated one percent of our baptisms and less than one percent of our financial contributions to Southern Baptist work.

Declining Baptism Results

Comparing Apples and Oranges

Statistics can be accurate and yet, intentionally or unintentionally, misleading. It is either guile or statistical ignorance to compare the baptism ratios of church plants to the baptism ratios of existing churches as long as the two ratios are based on membership. (Frankly, one would expect this reality to be crystal clear to Dr. Ezell when he included this information in his 2016 SBC Annual Report.)

The explanation is simple. Typically, membership in church plants is typically less than average attendance, as new seekers take time to explore the faith before trusting in Christ and joining the church. On the other hand, membership in existing SBC churches in 2015 is almost three times more than average attendance, since churches that have existed for years, in most cases, will have accumulated a list of inactive members still on the rolls, having never joined any other church. The disparity in baptism-to-membership ratios between church plants and existing churches is not due to the evangelistic success of church planting. Rather, it is due to differing membership roll tendencies.

More accurate assessments can be utilized in comparing the baptism ratios of church plants with the baptism ratios of existing churches. The best two approaches are to compare baptisms with either (a) the average worship attendance, or (b) the average small group attendance. These are the precisely the two measures I used when NAMB hired me to research, write and publish a paper  comparing the baptism ratios of existing churches and church plants in 2002.

A Historic Lesson in Reporting Evangelistic Decline
In 1946, when Southern Baptists were disturbed about the declining baptism rates and bothered by a baptism-to-membership ratio of 1 to 27.6, they reported it at the SBC Annual Meeting, rather than covering it up. They were concerned about the entirety of the nation, and worked in conjunction with state conventions and local associations for greater effectiveness. Notice the humility and the burden expressed concerning the situation. Is this not the proper way to report evangelistic decline?

For more than a decade, prior to 1943, we had witnessed a gradual decline in evangelistic results. Taking the convention territory as a whole, we had dropped to the alarming average of one baptism a year for every 27.6 church members. Accordingly, as we surveyed this serious drop two years ago, and as preparations went forward for our Centennial Celebration last year, it was felt, by your committee, that we should celebrate that historic year by placing a special emphasis on soul-winning. (1946 SBC Annual Evangelism Report, p. 30)

We would further urge the organized forces of all our cooperating states to maintain an organization which will give perennial attention to the work of Evangelism. We would encourage the growing of departments of evangelism wherever practical, in all the States, and as full correlation and cooperation as possible between these State Convention departments and the department of evangelism of the Home Mission Board, and/or its other missionary departments. (1946 SBC Annual, p. 31)

We would send forth the challenge to all our constituency to pray earnestly for revival fires among us, in congested City areas, in rural areas, everywhere throughout our territory, where Christ does not reign in all the relationships of men. Let us pray for, plan for, and expect the tides of Evangelism to rise on and upward, until his Name shall be made known to every lost soul within our Convention bounds. (1946 SBC Annual, p. 31)

Summary of Strategic Evangelism Pitfalls

1. Church Planting Tunnel Vision  The New NAMB is almost exclusively engaged in assisting about 8.5% (4,000 church plants) out of our 47,000 SBC churches, while investing little money or personnel to assist the other 43,000 existing churches. Meanwhile, the established churches are responsible for at least 98% of the baptisms of the SBC, and provide at least 99% of all funds given through the Cooperative Program and Annie Armstrong.
2. Proposed Church Probation Policy  The New NAMB appears to be considering the controversial embrace of a pastor shaming approach to evangelistic motivation. Reportedly, Dr. Ezell communicated his current thinking leaders in St. Louis in June 2016 at a Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary panel discussion  and again to State Executive Directors in February 2017 that churches who do not baptize anyone over a two-year period and are not investing in the CP should be put on probation. Ezell said, “And in my opinion, that if you don’t baptize no one in two years, we should put them on probation and eventually kick them out.   I am absolutely serious.  We got people wearing our uniform who are not on our team.  They are bad advertisement.”  Link to 4 min. video Apart from reservations regarding local church autonomy and our rejection of a ruling denominational hierarchy, Dr. Ezell’s proposal reveals an unwillingness to assume any measure of responsibility on the part of NAMB for these declining baptism rates. After practically obliterating our SBC evangelism promotion, slashing millions of dollars in evangelism budgets, and laying off hundreds of evangelism staff at both the national and state levels, Dr. Ezell explains the decline in baptisms by blaming the very pastors his organization has decided to no longer to equip for evangelism.
3. Defunding State Evangelism Directors  The New NAMB defunded their portion of the salary and ministry budgets of State Directors of Evangelism and other state evangelism staff. This seems utter foolishness if an organization’s purpose is to reach the lost in North America.
4. Exclusive Focus on Unreceptive Areas  The New NAMB strategy is focused on reaching the North American people groups that are hardest to reach, located in the most unreached areas, and comprised of the people most unreceptive to the gospel. While the intentions are admirable, this strategy is being implemented in cities by church planters who are often isolated and inexperienced. Meanwhile, we are practically abandoning the places and people who were being reached with the missionaries and methods previously utilized.
5. Heavily Investing in Isolated Urban Ministry The New NAMB foolishly invested all evangelism resources into church planting among the largest unchurched cities in North America to the exclusion of virtually all other approaches to impacting lostness in North America.  This approach was taken while making decisions to defund local and state support systems, undermine by defunding local associations who are there to help support the planters, and often move planters into mission contexts that are both radically different than their own without proven cross-cultural ministry effectiveness, and without connecting with healthy churches around them.
6. Dismantling Four Layers of SBC Cooperation   The New NAMB leaders are making decisions leading to or hastening the dismantling of the ecosystem of SBC life. History reveals that Southern Baptists accomplish more when we work together from the national, state, association and local church levels—not when a national organization picks a strategy for the day and forces it upon state conventions, associations, and local churches. As Southern Baptist have become disconnected at these four levels, even viewing some of them as unnecessary, baptisms in the SBC have been on a steady decline for sixteen full years—marking the first time in SBC history that we have ever observed such a slide.

Conclusion

With all due respect, how can we possibly conclude that in the area of evangelism, It Is Working in the Southern Baptist Convention today?  The New NAMB strategy has put the cart before the horse. Evangelism must be the leading edge, not the trailing edge. It must not be an afterthought in strategy operating on leftover human and financial resources. The New NAMB has become more effective in public relations and less effective in evangelism. In spite of all the inspiring testimonies and positive rhetoric presented by New NAMB leadership, the cold hard facts reveal that Southern Baptists are doing a historically poor job of evangelizing North America. We are not in need of a spin zone, but a reality check. It is not working. In all honesty, our leaders should stop reporting that it is.

Series of Articles – “Is the New NAMB Really Working”

Part 1: Introduction

Part Two: Baptisms – ABRIDGED

Part 2: Baptisms – Full Article w/ Fact Links

Part Three: Church Planting – ABRIDGED

PART 3: Church Planting – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 4: Partnership – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 5: Financial Stewardship – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 6: Character – Full Article w/ Fact Links

PART 7: Oversight and Accountability