HMB prepares for NAMB during final meeting
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--Directors of the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board held the agency's final full board meeting April 16, taking several actions in preparation for the new North American Mission Board.
On June 19, NAMB will assume the work of the 152-year-old Home Mission Board, along with the Brotherhood Commission and Radio and Television Commission as part of the restructuring of the Southern Baptist Convention.
HMB directors approved a resolution requesting board members who will serve incomplete terms due to dissolution of the agency be considered as "prospective nominees for future service as trustees for NAMB when appropriate opportunities for service become available." The resolution requested names of those people be submitted to the SBC Executive Committee and Committee on Nominations.
The board also passed a resolution encouraging the Implementation Task Force overseeing the restructuring and NAMB trustees to increase "personnel, missionaries and monies spent" on SBC work among ethnics and African Americans. Recommended by the board's committee which oversees church starting, the resolution cited growth in language and black churches as justification.
Another resolution authorized the HMB's administrative or executive committee to act on behalf of the full board in matters necessary for dissolution of the agency and creation of the new North American Mission Board.
Ernest Kelley, HMB interim president, reported preparation for the new agency "led us to ask the most probing and difficult questions about our purposes, programs and employees."
He said a number of issues have given him the ability to deal with termination of HMB employees, "not the least of which is the conviction that Southern Baptists must be more focused on reaching our nation for Christ. The North American Mission Board will do that."
Kelley also told the board, "I have also been strengthened knowing that we have used a fair and equitable process ... that we are offering a generous severance package ... and that the (severances) will not affect our missionary force."
Kelley also commended the board and HMB management staff for their good stewardship. "The new agency will begin with a strong financial picture because of the generous support of Southern Baptists and the stewardship of this board and management."
In other actions, directors:
-- approved 22 new home missionaries and endorsed 119 chaplains.
-- voted to return Utah Missions, a previously independent ministry based in Oklahoma, to its founder. The ministry, which monitors and produces education material about the false doctrines of Mormonism, became a subsidiary of the HMB in 1991. Kelley reported a new NAMB strategy will be more intentionally evangelistic.
-- approved a resolution opposing construction of a proposed 20,000-seat outdoor amphitheater on property adjacent to the HMB offices in Alpharetta, Ga.
