Wednesday, February 08, 2006

PRAYER LANGUAGE & SOUTHERN BAPTISTS: Wade Burleson: Open Letter to SBC

An Open Letter to My Beloved SBC,

The work of the Southern Baptist Convention through the International Mission Board takes my breath away. Some of the finest, godliest men and women I have ever met are right now serving us as SBC missionaries and are taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to people groups around the world.

I wish everyone could hear the reports I hear as a trustee of our IMB. Anytime you get an opportunity, attend an appointment service in your area. It will forever change your perspective about missions.

Having voiced my support of the IMB staff, missionaries, and the ever expanding mission work of the SBC, I wish to voice a deep concern about the direction some of the trustees of the IMB seem to be moving. Not all trustees, but many in key positions of leadership.

In essence, I am deeply saddened by the actions of the board regarding the new baptism and tongues policies.

Though I am a new trustee to the IMB, I fought hard over the past six months to stop the new polices from going into effect.

In essence, the new polices state that if you ever used a "prayer language" in your Christian life you are not qualified to serve on the mission field as a Southern Baptist. The former IMB policy , under which the IMB operated for decades, stated that a person who "advocated" or "practiced" tongues publicly on the mission field would be fired, but in the past, the IMB refused to concern itself with what a missionary did in the privacy of his prayer closet."

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