One of the biggest missionary forces in the world is Baptist.  To be specific, the IMB [International Missionary Board] of the Southern Baptist Convention is a mighty force.  There’s also plenty of politics that surround it.

Since 2005 they have instituted a policy whereby they would refuse to send any candidates to the mission field who had not been baptised in a church that was either Southern Baptist or that exactly shared their theology on issues like the security of the believer. They also passed a policy that kept anyone from the mission field that had a private prayer language. In other words: tongues.  Speak in tongues and you can’t become a worker for the harvest under the watch of the IMB.

Despite this prohibition being absent from the document that outlines the SBC statement of faith [Baptist Faith & Message], this has been imposed on missionary candidates.  This ruling of course would have fallen at a time when many had already been sent to the mission field who spoke in tongues in the privacy of their own prayer life and were also baptised by immersion in a church that did not have all the right ticks in all the right boxes.  That left some missionaries in no man’s land.

At the moment a revolt is on the way.  Check out more details at the home of SBC dissent: SBC Outpost.