NAMB funding to state conventions: "Entitlements"?

I don’t know of any Southern Baptist who can speak about missions with more credibility than Jerry Rankin, immediate past president of the International Mission Board. 

Rankin wrote a blog article on the North American Mission Board yesterday:

NAMB Deserves Our Support

Here’s a portion of it:

For years [NAMB] has been a conduit of funding for state conventions; partnership agreements channeling their work through these and other entities have left little margin for initiative and resources to take the gospel to underserved and neglected areas. Meanwhile baptisms have continued to decline and church growth has stagnated outside the Bible belt…

…It is understandable that there would be denominational leaders disagreeing with changes in strategy and priority; after all it means reductions in subsidies and elimination of effective programs and staff fulfilling significant roles.  

Collectively and cooperatively we can have the resources and resolve to make a difference, but not if the priority is to continue traditions and maintain the status quo. Why should NAMB’s strategy and resources be funneled to state programs in the Bible Belt that already receive the bulk of Cooperative Program funding and are where there is the  greatest concentration of established churches in the world.

Certainly there are still vast swatches of lostness, needs for ministry and areas new churches need to be planted everywhere, but should not churches in those states take more responsibility for the mission where they are located and free NAMB to represent us in areas that have a dearth of churches and  minuscule resources? No one likes to give up entitlements, but if we truly have a heart for reaching the lost everyone should be willing to make sacrifices in their own programs to get it done.

One notices that he used the term “entitlements” in a context that questions NAMB’s legacy practice of “funnel[ing]…state programs in the Bible Belt”.

“Entitlements” you say, Jerry? That’s a pretty strong term, and not particularly positive either.

Those who are paying attention, an admittedly small slice of Southern Baptists, are aware that a number of state convention leaders are doing some fairly serious complaining, something SBCers consider a God-given right, about changes at NAMB that affect their budgets. These executives, one presumes, are complaining even more loudly in private than they are in public.

The complaints stem from changes in funding formulas and policies. NAMB’s critics may speak of such things in terms of how the organization has dictated changes, how they have been heavy handed, or how historic cooperative relationships have been discarded. 

None of this language for Jerry Rankin. Read the whole piece. 

It is infused with frank terminology like “subsidies,” “continue[ing] traditions,” “self-interest,” “provincialism,” "status quo," and, yes, “entitlements.”

Ouch...but I cannot say that each of those terms are accurate.