Are Southern Baptists moving toward a self-funded missionary force?

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North America: Hanging in the balance
An Analysis
By Joe Westbury, Managing Editor, with additional reporting by J. Gerald Harris, Editor

How many North American missionaries do Southern Baptists have on the field? It depends on how you count them. NAMB lists 5,364 for the year ended Dec. 31, 2005. But nearly half of them – 45 percent – are Mission Service Corps and do not receive support from the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. And since NAMB was founded in 1997, the number of funded career missionaries has dropped by 10 percent, or 329 while the number of Mission Service Corp has jumped 34 percent, an increase of 827. NAMB receives about half of its budget – 45 percent – from the annual offering to put funded missionaries on the field.