Missions prof critiques ‘unbiblical practices’ at IMB_110303

Posted: 10/31/03

Missions prof critiques 'unbiblical practices' at IMB

By Mark Wingfield

Managing Editor

The International Mission Board should rid itself of “unbiblical” practices and alliances with Christian mission groups that do not enforce strict theological parameters, a missions professor has urged.

Keith Eitel, professor of Christian missions at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., outlined his concerns about the theological framework employed by the Southern Baptist Convention mission board in an eight-page paper. The document, titled “Vision Assessment,” reportedly has been distributed to all IMB trustees.

Eitel said he wrote the paper over the summer to summarize his perspective on the IMB's operation after being contacted by an IMB trustee who wanted to nominate him for a position there.

An IMB spokesman said the mission board has no comment on Eitel's paper.

In the paper, Eitel appeals for IMB trustees to “synchronize” the mission board “with the theological convictions of the SBC” and to “set the board's course directly back into the evangelical roots that were the convictions of the founders of the convention.”

For this to happen, he wrote, biblical and theological inquiry must not be minimized in importance.

While criticizing previous administrations of the SBC mission board prior to the fundamentalist campaign that began in 1979, Eitel also raises concerns about the current administration of IMB President Jerry Rankin.

He especially targets the IMB's participation in mission efforts with what the board calls Great Commission Christians–other Baptist and Christian groups working toward the same missionary goals.

Eitel charges that through these partnerships there are “no mechanisms in place to filter or check the entry of unbiblical practices other than the specific theological preparation of the individual missionary.”

And that link has been weakened, he said, because under Rankin's leadership, “there has been an obvious and apparently intentional move away from requiring seminary training for the key roles related to church planting and church development.”

Before the Rankin administration, such missionary candidates were required to have at least a master of divinity degree and two years of experience, he said. “Today, one may assume such roles with as little as 20-30 semester hours, and there is a spirit or culture within the board that downplays or undermines the need to even go to seminary at all.”

Eitel adds: “If it weren't for the trustees holding the line on this requirement, I am afraid that seminary requirements would be dropped completely.”

As a result of the change, he said, “I am concerned that evangelism, church planting and discipleship are in the hands of theological novices.”

Eitel also criticizes the IMB for allowing women in leadership roles–specifically in the role of regional strategy coordinators.

“Women, while certainly capable in numerous ways to do ministry, should not be placed in doctrinal or ethical authority over men, and the strategy coordinator role often causes this to happen,” he declared.

These same strategy coordinators–although he does not single out women alone as the culprits–because they are “theological novices,” he said, “frequently lead their teams to partner with theologically suspect organizations.”

The IMB's lack of stringency on theological and doctrinal training is a holdover from the previous administration of Keith Parks, Eitel charged. That's bad, he wrote, because Parks made clear his belief that Southern Baptists should be united around missions more than theological conformity.

Parks, he said, inherited and built upon a slippery slope toward liberalism that began in the SBC after World War I. This trend, he charged, placed increasingly more emphasis on personal experience than on a strict understanding of the Bible's edicts.

“Parks was saying that doctrine or theology divides us but missions unites us,” Eitel noted. In contrast, leaders of the fundamentalist movement within the SBC like Adrian Rogers “indicated that unless our theological convictions are solidly established squarely on an inerrant Bible, we will have no legitimate or reasonable basis for doing missions.”

Eitel concludes his paper with nine recommended actions for IMB trustees, beginning with an appeal to “recruit administrators committed to theological renewal of the board.”

He also asks trustees to “change the appointment criteria and procedures to encourage theological preparation” and to “change the entire curriculum and teaching staff” at the Missionary Learning Center, where missionaries go for specific training after appointment.