I visited Folkston Funnel at the extreme south end of GA where the two major former Atlantic Coast Line RR routes from the NE/Atlantic Seaboard and from the Ohio/Mississippi Valley merge into a single route that enters Florida. I had lunch in Folkston at a deli a few blocks from the funnel.
I went to the IMB command center which was set up on the second floor and talked to Fonceil Blake. She gave me a schedule of the meetings. I also talked briefly with several people who handle the logistics of putting on the BoT meetings. I recommended to them that they consider putting up a video podcast – not necessarily real time – of the plenary session on the IMB web site.
Dr. Mike Hand served as my host during the entire three day series of meetings that made up the BoT sessions in Jacksonville. Dr. Hand is a Special Assistant to the President of the IMB. He serves as an interface between the IMB and pastors and state executives in the Western USA.
This is a thumbnail sketch of some of the history leading up to my attendance in Jacksonville:
Dr. Hand, my former pastor Dr. Tom Elliff, and I had lunch in August. At that time I shared my concern regarding what -- at the time -- I perceived to be excessive and unnecessary divisiveness on the Board of Trustees [BoT] of the IMB. I felt that the issues ostensibly under contention, namely “private prayer language” and “baptism/re-baptism” did not have sufficient theological content to warrant what was apparently a serious breach of comity between some members on the BoT. It was becoming public knowledge that at least some members on BoT were quite polarized giving rise to significant Blogging activity, lengthy “position papers” (or diatribes depending upon your view), placing members under censure, marginalizing members by withdrawing their committee assignments, and even attempts – which were not successful – to have board members kicked off the board.
I felt that this bickering by the board was “taking the oxygen” out of any other news coming from the IMB. The IMB was making significant progress in re-vamping their operations to be more effective. The work of the missionaries on the field should be our main focus – not people on the BoT writing position papers to delineate their position on some a theological position relative to that of the senior management of the IMB or other board members.
In recent months, I became aware that the dissention is mostly -- maybe even totally -- over since those trustees most involved in the battle had left the board due to resignations or having completed their term of office. However, I decided to attend the Jacksonville meeting anyway since both Mike and Tom suggested that I go. They were talking it up to me saying things like, “If you go you can see for yourself what is going on. If you go to the commissioning service it will be a life-changing experience”.
I contacted Fonceil Blake, Dr. Rankin’s executive secretary, and asked her if there were any public sessions of the Board of Trustees’ meetings I could attend. She said, “The plenary session is open to the public and you can attend it and I look forward to seeing you”. I contacted Dr. Paul Chitwood, Chairman of the Board, and asked him if I could attend. He also encouraged me to attend.
Mike left me a note at the front desk at the Omni which I picked up at about 4PM when I checked in. He took me to dinner where we discussed a few things. Also, we met Dr. Gene Williams who is a member of the BoT from North Carolina. He has been an evangelist for many years.
At Dinner, Mike told me that as a result of the bad economy, there was a decrease in funding received from SBC churches to the IMB. The shortfall in CP and Lottie Moon receipts reached the point in the Spring and Summer of 2009 that it was necessary for the IMB to delay sending a number of missionaries to the field due to lack of funds. To address this situation, a number of SBC seminaries and churches have taken special “Supplemental Lottie Moon offerings”. Mike reported to me that enough funds were raised in the last several months to enable 25 more missionaries – with their families – [IBM lingo is “missionary units”], previously in limbo, to be sent in November.
Mike also told me about a meeting where the status of the GII project would presented to the IMB BoT trustees. He invited me to attend it. The GII project is more formally known as the Guttenberg II project. It is being rolled out as a key way to get God’s word out to whole new demographic groups: Just as the Guttenberg bible ushered in the mass distribution of God’s word in printed form; so GII is going to be a tool to introduce God’s word in story form.
The GII meeting described the project of making a set of Bible story videos in “Middle Eastern street-Arabic” which is both linguistically and culturally appropriate for disseminating God’s word to people in North Africa, the Middle East and SE Asia. This extends the “Jesus film” project by including both OT and NT stories. Like the “Jesus film”, the GII videos are designed for target audiences who are more able to assimilate Biblical content in audio/visual -- as opposed to written -- form. The IMB is implementing the GII project. This involves producing and disseminating these videos including distribution on DVDs and via the internet. During the meeting, a few trailers of various videos were shown with snippets from both the OT and NT. I can tell you first hand that these videos really “light up” the Biblical narrative without using any Hollywood gadgetry.
The GII videos are shot in Arabic. It is planned that they will be dubbed into a number of languages – most specifically those languages of SE Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa that have a large Muslim population. The trailer that was shown to the BoT – as well as the Samuel/Saul video – was dubbed into English. Watching the videos a person could tell that they were dubbed but this didn’t distract from the impact of the story.
The video on Samuel and Saul -- taken from the Biblical account in I Samuel -- was screened in its entirety. The script of that video is very tightly linked to the Biblical text. I kept telling myself over and over again, “Wow, I don’t remember that from my own reading of the Bible.” So I read the relevant passages after the presentation using the Biblical text I have on my laptop. Sure enough, the factoid depicted in the video at issue was tightly in-sync with the Biblical text. My problem was either that my grasp of the Biblical narrative was deficient or I had unwittingly “overloaded” the story due to looking at it through my own cultural lens. It is amazing how these stories take on a whole new vibrancy when they are no longer bogged down by 21st Century North American cultural apparatus. I don’t know much about Middle East culture, but from what little I know having worked with various people from the Middle East in Silicon Valley who are Muslims, I can see that these videos would be orders of magnitude more effective in transmitting the meaning of the Bible to them than I’d ever be quoting scripture and “preaching” to them.
I picked up a couple of DVDs at the meeting: a trailer with highlights of several OT and NT videos, and the I Samuel video that was shown to the trustees. I also picked up a “Performance Brief” giving a high level overview of the Gutenberg II project including the financial situation regarding funds spent and funds still needed. The “still-needed” funds are for the production of the rest of the videos in the series and the distribution of the videos. To date, 15 of the 21 videos in the series are completed. The total budget for the project is $12,000,000. Of this $7,634,043 has been given.
Mike introduced me to Dr. Rankin and his Bobbye after the GII meeting and I talked with them for a few minutes.
The Chairman’s council and Trustee forum are held on Tuesday morning. These meetings are restricted to Trustees only so, of course, I couldn’t (and didn’t) attend them. Instead I drove down to St. Augustine and checked out the Castillo de San Marcos which is an old fort dating back to Spanish times.
Tuesday at lunch Mike introduced me to Billy Hoffman, Director of Development, of the IMB. We discussed the GII project and the funding that the IMB has allocated to that project. Billy mentioned that a portion of the funding needed for this project is being underwritten by gifts from individuals. These gifts range from $1000 up to seven figures.
This lunch really blew me away. We went to a Mexican place across the street from the hotel at Jacksonville Landing on the waterfront overlooking the St. Johns River. Billy and Mike ordered something modest like a taco or burrito, but I ordered the “Mexican Plate”. This is what I order here in OKC when I go with my daughter to Chelino’s. I was expecting maybe rice, refried beans, a taco and a burrito on a plate. What showed up was TWO (count ‘em two) plates with tons of stuff: taco(s), enchilada(s), refried beans, rice, burrito(s). . . There was no way I could eat even half of this!
After lunch I was hanging out with Mike in the reception area outside the meeting rooms. Mike introduced me to Dr. Chitwood and we had a brief conversation.
I attended a banquet for members of the BoT and their spouses as well as IMB staff and new missionary candidates. There were around 200 people at the banquet.
In the evening, Mike and I attended an “Affinity Committee” meeting of the BoT. In this meeting, appointees describe to the committee their testimony and calling. The particular Affinity Committee I attended was the one for North African and Middle Eastern Peoples. Due to potential security concerns I am not reporting their names of the candidates, the work they are going to be doing or the place they are going. At the conclusion of the meeting, everyone joined in prayer for the new candidates.
First Baptist Church is about five blocks north of the St. Johns River waterfront. Mike and I walked from the hotel to the church where the commissioning service was held in about ten minutes. The service was held in the main auditorium of FBC Jacksonville. I don’t know how to estimate how many people were present at the service but it must have been at least 2000. The service included each mission candidate couple making a brief statement. Then Dr. Rankin preached a commissioning sermon. After this the candidates lined up in the aisles of the church all the way from the front to the back of the sanctuary. All the people moved over to whichever candidate was nearest to them, placed hands on them and prayed for them. Then, each candidate was handed a certificate indicating that they had been commissioned for service as a missionary of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. I’m pretty “fact based” -- rather than “feeling based” -- but I have to admit that I was moved to tears along with just about everyone else in attendance. For me attending this service was “life changing”.