NAMB chairman proposes IMB merger

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The North American Mission Board is located at 4200 North Point Parkway in Alpharetta. It was created in 1997 by the merger of the former Radio-Television Commission, Brotherhood Commission, and the Home Mission Board. The HMB relocated to the Alpharetta campus on Memorial Day Weekend in May 1995 after a long history in downtown Atlanta.

As Southern Baptists ponder the implications of Woodstock First Baptist Church pastor Johnny’s Hunt’s declaration for a “Great Commission Resurgence,” one denominational leader has gone on record with a surprising admission of his own.

Tim Patterson, trustee chairman of the North American Mission Board who signed the declaration, has stated that the agency where he ministers should be merged with the Richmond, Va.-based International Mission Board.

Patterson made a point to tell the Florida Baptist Witness on May 4 that he signed the statement in his official role as chairman of the agency and not as simply a pastor or ‘private citizen’ of the denomination. In his interview with the state paper he further stated that Southern Baptists should have a “singular world mission agency,” stating publicly what many have talked about privately – a merger of the SBC’s two missions boards.

The statement apparently took the Alpharetta-based agency off guard. Within hours of Patterson’s statement NAMB officers were evaluating the board chairman’s position and unable to make an immediate response.

Patterson, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., said he has been concerned about the “direction of our denomination for some time,” noting the SBC’s declining statistics.

While the society, culture, and world has changed in the last five decades, the SBC structure has not, he told Editor Jim Smith.

According to the Witness, “Patterson said the ‘greatest’ change in the SBC has been the ‘shift back to a biblical center where we honor and believe in the inerrancy, infallibility, and plenary inspiration of the Word of God,’ but while the SBC’s ‘message is stronger’ its ‘methods remain antiquated’ with inefficient agencies.

“We duplicate properties, personnel, and programs and thus are not good stewards,” he said.

Because “North America is now just as much a foreign mission field as any other country or continent” with diverse people groups and cultures, we need a singular world mission agency that does not lessen its emphasis on missions in North America or any other part of the world, but enhances it,” the paper quoted him as saying.

Patterson said the way Southern Baptists structure, fund, and administer the denomination’s agencies – which include his Georgia-based agency – is “overly bureaucratic and bloated. If we combine our efforts and funding, we could be much more effective and become better stewards of God’s resources.”

Patterson told the Witness that he signed the GCR statement as NAMB trustee chairman because of his long history in denominational life, which has allowed him to have a “very good, first-hand understanding of how our systems work or don’t work.”

Tim Patterson is senior pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Fla., with a term of service beginning in 2001. He is the agency’s longest tenured trustee and will be considered for a second term as chairman at NAMB’s May 20 board meeting in Jackson, Miss.

Noting that he is the longest tenured current NAMB trustee, Patterson said he has seen the organization “at its best and worst.”

Signing the declaration as NAMB chairman is “to make a personal statement that from my personal perspective as the chairman, I see the need for a Great Commission Resurgence.”

NAMB’s trustee body, which has not issued a statement regarding Hunt’s declaration, meets on May 20 in Jackson, Miss., for a commissioning service at its regularly scheduled meeting. At that meeting Patterson will have completed his first term of service and will be considered for a second term as lead officer, unless there is opposition from the floor.

While much behind-the-scenes discussion has been given to merging the two missions agencies, Southern Baptist seminaries are not exempt from talk of consolidation. Those six entities (Golden Gate, Midwestern, New Orleans, Southeastern, Southern, and Southwestern) continue to struggle for Cooperative Program funding as other conservative seminaries – such as Mid-America Seminary in Memphis, Tenn., and Liberty Seminary in Lynchburg, Va. – have cut into their ranks.

NAMB was created in 1997 after a merger of the former Brotherhood Commission of Memphis, Tenn., the Radio-Television Commission of Fort Worth, Texas, and the Alpharetta-based Home Mission Board. That merger was the result of an exhaustive study carried out by the SBC Program and Structure Study Committee from 1993 to 1995.

That committee was appointed by the chairman of the SBC Executive Committee in response to a motion referred from the 1993 SBC meeting in Houston, Texas. At that meeting, then-California state convention executive director C.B. Hogue asked that the SBC president appoint a seven-member study committee to evaluate the effectiveness of the SBC and its agencies.

That committee’s report, which became known as the Covenant for a New Century, was presented to SBC messengers at the 1995 Atlanta annual meeting. SBC bylaws require such far-ranging structural changes be approved by two consecutive annual meetings. With the document passing both the 1995 and 1996 (New Orleans) conventions, the three agencies were phased out in the coming year and NAMB was birthed at the 1997 convention in Dallas, Texas.

While Johnny Hunt’s statement is simply a personal declaration and carries no official denominational weight, it could be codified in the coming weeks into a more official document to be presented at the SBC annual meeting in Louisville. At that point it could be referred to a special committee for further study and then, if deemed that it has substantial backing, could begin the study process that led to the Covenant for a New Century 14 years ago.

Geoff Hammond began his term as NAMB’s second president in May 2007. He is the agency’s first bilingual leader and the first president to have served as a missionary with both NAMB and the IMB.