A contemporary evaluation of the history and present status of Southern Baptist Missions For more than 175 years the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has been sending missionaries around the world to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. It has also developed strategies and methods that have been adopted by numerous other missions groups. Make Disciples of All Nations tells the story of this groundbreaking organization, including its most recent developments. Besides recounting its historical development, the contributors to this volume critically evaluate the IMB's strategies and methods, as well as examine its controversies, regional developments, and organizational changes. The concluding chapter explores how Southern Baptist missions can best adapt to an era of global Christianity. Students, missionaries, and those involved in supporting them will be informed and encouraged by this account of one of the oldest and largest missions organizations in the world.
""In 1976, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted its Bold New Thrusts in Foreign Missions with the overarching goal of sharing the gospel with every person in the world by the year 2000. The formation of Cooperative Services International (CSI) in 1985 and the assigning of the first non-residential missionary (NRM) in 1987 demonstrated the Foreign Mission Board's (now International Mission Board) commitment to take the gospel message to countries that restricted traditional missionary presence and to people groups identified as having little or no access to the gospel. Carlton traces the historical development along with an analysis of the key components of the paradigm and its significant impact on Southern Baptists' missiology. Dr. Carlton has produced an outstanding, one-of-a-kind work addressing the influence of the non-residential missionary/strategy coordinator's role in Southern Baptist missions. This well written, scholarly text examines the twentieth century global missiological currents that influenced the leadership of the International Mission Board, resulting in a new paradigm to assist in taking the gospel to the nations. Dr. Carlton writes as both a missiologist and a missionary. This work reveals the keen eye of a scholar, but also the heart of a practitioner who desires to see the multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches across the globe. This text is a must-read for anyone longing to know more about the recent history of the International Mission Board and the theology and missiology behind the SC role and church planting movements."" J. D. Payne, National Missionary, North American Mission Board and Assistant Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. ""I have enjoyed friendship and partnership in the gospel with Bruce Carlton in different capacities. When I served as the Strategy Coordinator for a South Asian city Bruce was my supervisor. He helped me understand what I was trying to do and how I should be doing it. Since my return to pastoral ministry in America, Bruce has been a missiological dialogue partner. In both capacities Bruce has been a ""flame stoker""--fanning the flames of commitment to ""make disciples of all nations."" I'm glad that Bruce has taken on the task of explaining and evaluating the development of the Nonresidential Missionary (NRM) and Strategy Coordinator (SC) paradigms. He writes from three important perspectives. Bruce writes as an insider. In Cambodia Bruce was a practitioner of what has developed into the SC approach. His work was at the wellspring of hundreds of reproducing churches. After leaving Cambodia, Bruce taught and mentored many men and women in methodologies for planting reproducing churches. Bruce has lived through the development of these paradigms as an effective practitioner. Bruce writes as an insightful researcher. He asks important questions about the NRM, SC, and Church Planting Movement paradigms and searches for honest answers. Finally, Bruce writes as a respecter of the relational character of missions. On the front lines of gospel advance the Spirit mediates the word through people. Grand strategies and paradigms also develop within relational contexts. From these three perspectives Bruce helps us understand why the paradigms have developed as they have and equips us to ask key questions as we look forward."" E. Coye Still, III, PhD R. Bruce Carlton served in Asia from 1986 to 2007 as a church planter, Strategy Coordinator and trainer in areas and among peoples with little or no access to the gospel. He is the author of Acts 29: Practical Training for Facilitating Church-Planting Movements Among the Neglected Harvest Fields, a manual for training Strategy Coordinators that has been translated into seventeen different languages. Presently, Carlton serves as the Associate Professor of Missions at Boyce College, a school of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.
This sesquicentennial history of the Foreign Mission Board presents world missions as the heartbeat of Southern Baptists. Traces the roots of Southern Baptist missions to the visions of William Carey and the Judsons and explores its growth as a driving force within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Legendary Southern Baptist missionary Charlotte "Lottie" Moon played a pivotal role in revolutionizing southern civil society. Her involvement in the establishment of the Women's Missionary Union provided white Baptist women with an alternate means of gaining and asserting power within the denomination's organizational structure and changed it forever. In Lottie Moon: A Southern Baptist Missionary to China in History and Legend Regina Sullivan provides the first comprehensive portrait of "Lottie," who not only empowered women but also inspired the formation of one of the most influential religious organizations in the United States. Despite being the daughter of slaveholders in antebellum Virginia, Moon never lived the life of a typical southern belle. Highly educated and influenced by models of independent womanhood, including an older sister who was a woman's rights advocate, an open opponent of slavery, and the first Virginian female to earn a medical degree, Moon followed her sister's lead and utilized her extensive education to successfully combine the language of woman's rights with the egalitarian impulse of evangelical Protestantism. In 1873 Moon found her true calling, however, in missionary work in China. During her tenure there she recommended that the week before Christmas be designated as a time of giving to foreign missions. In response to her vision, thousands of Southern Baptist women organized local missionary societies to collect funds, and in 1888, the Woman's Missionary Union was founded as the Southern Baptist Convention's female auxiliary for missionary work. Sullivan credits Moon's role in the establishment of the Woman's Missionary Union as having a significant impact on the erosion of patriarchal power and women's new engagement with the public sphere. Since her initial plea in 1888, the Missionary Union's annual "Lottie Moon Christmas Offering" has raised over a billion dollars to support missionary work. Lottie Moon captures the influence and culminating effect of one woman's personal, spiritual, and civic calling.
David Garrison, PhD University of Chicago, defines Church Planting Movements as rapidly multiplying indigenous churches planting churches that sweep across a people group or population segment. Garrison's Church Planting Movements: How God Is Redeeming a Lost World signaled a breakthrough in missionary church planting. After the publication of Garrison's book in 2004 it became impossible to talk about missions without referencing Church Planting Movements. Church Planting Movements examines more than two-dozen movements of multiplying churches on five continents. After presenting these case studies, Garrison identifies ten universal elements present in each movement. He then broadens the circle of examination to identify a further ten common characteristics, factors identified in most, but not all, of the movements. He concludes his examination with a list of "Seven Deadly Sins," i.e. harmful practices that stifle or impede Church Planting Movements. Important for evangelical readers, the author returns to his findings to see how they stand up to the light of Scripture. What he discovers is that Church Planting Movements are much more consistent with the New Testament lay-led house-church movements that swept rapidly through the Mediterranean world in the face of hostile opposition than today's more sedentary professional institutionalized Christianity. Learn more about Church Planting Movements from the book's website: www.ChurchPlantingMovements.com.
"When the author's father died, Marc Jolley decided that he needed to write something for his sons about what was important in his life. The result, while not a full autobiography, deals with three things in his life that have shaped it more than others; it is about what he loves: baseball, God, and family, but not necessarily in that order all of the time. This memoir, then, is about what the author "knows" and to that extent, each sentence is true in the best tradition of Hemingway. Safe at Home is both a phrase used in baseball and an expression that captures the importance of family." "This story is about how faith, family, and baseball have intersected in his life, an intersection that occurs at home. Critical moments of Jolley's life have seen God, baseball, and family impact at very important times in his life. Whether losing game after game in little league, watching the World Series with his father, or quitting the high school team, the presence of family and his faith shape how he overcomes disappointment or celebrates the sheer joy of playing. Collecting baseball cards in 1968 provides him with a lesson in race and his mother's faith that opens his eyes to a world he never knew."--BOOK JACKET.
