A personal mission for David Plat in regard to young, male, sniveling wimp SBCers

It has been almost two full years since I put up a post about how our International Mission Board's Journeyman program, the two to three year overseas program for single college graduates aged 21-26 is completely dominated by females. My humble 2012 post:

Young, male, restless conservative SBC seminarians: SNIVELING WIMPS

The irreverent phrase that not-so-gently stepped on the little twinkies of our young, single, male seminarians was, "SNIVELING WIMPS." How impolite, and impolitic of Plodder to call the few, the called, the proud, the chest thumping, set-the-world-on-fire young male Southern Baptist seminarians 'sniveling wimps'. Why do that?

Here's why: You can't get these guys to go overseas and serve the Lord in some of the more difficult places where the Gospel is needed the most...but you can get girls to do it. In 2012 fully two-thirds of Journeymen were FEMALES, not males, making that program the most inappropriately named program in the entire SBC.

The IMB, best I can tell, stopped reporting gender statistics for this program.

The 'sniveling wimps' article was, I think, my most viewed piece, mainly because Danny Akin tweeted it. He agreed with me on this if not on a lot of stuff.

Here's a recent comment I received. I've tweaked it a bit. The commenter was and is anonymous.

I'm a girl about to start my journeyman term. And let's just say out of the 30 or 40 single people being trained (a figure that includes journey people, apprentice, and career appointments) there are five single guys

....it is WAY harder for girls to go overseas single than guys...and WAY harder for single girls to come back from overseas...still single. 

The places in the world that need the gospel NEED male witnesses. Desperately....and so many things single women can't do in so many other cultures, especially in some parts of the world where the need for the Gospel is greatest. 

The excuse of the single males is that there are other things to consider...those men...clearly don't follow Jesus in a way that puts trust or faith in Him. 

Hey, single guys! Yeah, you Biblical He-Manhood and Subservient-Womanhood types. Here a bit of womanhood that should make you ashamed of yourself. You want patriarchy? Try being a real male and being open to serving in places as hard as this girl. Even if you do, you will have it easier than her because of the male-dominated cultures in these places. Nobody cares how well you conjugate greek verbs and how glorously expound the scriptures. Evidently, you haven't expounded The Great Commission sufficiently for you to believe it yourself.

So, what's Plodder's personal mission for David Platt? There are two parts to it.

1. Lend your voice to addressing the issue of young males wimping out of Journeyman service. These guys think you walk on water, Mr. Radical. Give 'em both barrels on this and see what happens.

2. You must be aware by now that some among these hundreds of single girls who answer God's call and serve in difficult places have not been adequately taken care of. What I mean here is that in my limited exposure to a number of 'Journeygirls', several were plopped overseas in a foreign culture and after a short while were isolated, left to live alone, with a support structure and system in place that some judge to be inadequate. This is risky, and irresponsible. The IMB is dodging bullets here. This is also unacceptable. One of the presumptions Southern Baptists have about our wonderful International Board is that we have vast resources and are diligent about taking care of our people. I believe that to be true in general. I'm pointing out a crack in the airframe here. It can be easily fixed.

I have confidence in you to lead in such a way that these are addressed. You are in my prayers.

As for my SBC colleagues who are young, male, restless, sniveling wimps...step up, brethren. We can't all be megapastors superstars and seminary profs.

[And, if the anonymous Journeygirl would email me at sbcplodder@gmail.com, my wife and I would consider it a honor to pray for you as you go.]

Meet the pastor of Lottie Moon's home church

How about a little irony on Friday?

The photo above (ABP) is of the new pastor of Scottsville Baptist Church in Charlottesville, VA, the church of which Lottie Moon was a member until her death in 1912. Bob Allen has a story about this here. Don't look for Baptist Press to be carrying this story.

We can all speculate safely about what Lottie would have thought about this, since she is not around to prove or disprove any assertions but I think I can safely say that Lottie would deplore one thing: the paucity of single Southern Baptist males who commit themselves to the two year Journeyman program which places singles and couples overseas for two years.

About two of three Journeyman personnel are...uh...female, a reality that troubles Danny Akin, me, and a few other Southern Baptists. One wonders if the SBC's Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a denominational artifice which may be focusing on the wrong 'hood - seems that manhood or the lack thereof is the critical factor these days, not inappropriate expressions of womanhood.

At the moment, my most read blog piece is Young, male, restless conservative SBCers: Sniveling Wimps.

I have been waiting for six months for someone to convince me that 'sniveling wimps' is an inappropriate descriptor for the Journeyman situation or at least explain why young SBC males aren't answering the call, or why God seems to be calling twice as many females as males to this work.

I wish the Scottsville Baptist Church and their new pastor well. 

Patriarchy has its limits, I suppose

What do we need to think about these  females, that gender-specific group that makes up fully two-thirds of the personnel of our Journeyman force of our wonderful International Mission Board? 

These are mostly single, college graduates who postpone marriage, home, kids, career, family to give two years to the Lord in overseas service, while their gender opposites cruise along on their dating, marrying career paths.

What must we think of this crowd?

I'd start by remembering the considerable history of single females on the international fields, Lottie Moon being the most famous but who is joined by many, many others.

I wrote about a year ago about the most recent Lottie Moon biography, Lottie Moon, the SBC's Most Heroic Figure. Author Regina Sullivan did a good job with this and I recommend it, although you will look in vain in the SBC to find any mention of it. The phrase "speculative feminism" has been used dismissively of modern treatments of our sainted missionary of long past.  Pay no attention to these. Read the book.

One notable thing about Sullivan's book is how Lottie Moon (and others) had considerable difficulty with men missionaries behaving administratively and attitudinaly badly. Read the book,  you will see.

Our current expression of ecclesiastical patriarchy, having been expanded in some SBC circles from "the office of pastor is limited to men" as outlined by the Baptist Faith and Message, is in a state of flux. Thank God those SBC leaders holding responsible denominational positions haven't lowered any patriarchal guns at the Journeyman program. Not a hint of it, but vigilance is the watchword on this.

While we are in the neighborhood: Quickly now, name one male SBC missionary figure of the past. 

Er, ah, ahem....

Lottie and patriarchy aside, because of a network of connections I have known several 'Journeygirls' (a term they use, not of my coining) and seldom find a better expression of Christian commitment and zeal than among them, not that the one-third male Journeymen lack the same.

Because of funding pressures, the appointments in this program can involve locations that entail service with some degree of difficulty and often relative isolation; nonetheless, these females answer the call. God bless them all.

Contrast that with the hotbed of our six seminaries brimming with mostly male students strolling to class, holding high minded theological discussions with fellow neophytes. Some of our seminaries, Southeastern and Midwestern come to mind, have taken to promoting themselves as "Great Commission Seminaries." One might rightly conclude that the "Great Commission" concept has not been fully embraced.

Manifestly, the current SBC emphasis on patriarchy has not filled the IMB with male mission candidates.

Young, male, restless conservative SBCers: Sniveling Wimps

 

Perhaps there is a more polite way to describe our bright, highly committed, single Southern Baptist young men but I humbly offer 'sniveling wimps' as one possibility of an apt description in the light of a startling statistic:

Two-thirds of the personnel who serve in the International Mission Board's Journeyman program are females. 

Let's see. Southern Baptist churches give over $300 million to our International Board to reach the world for Christ. An important and significant part of their mission force is a two year program for single college graduates and married couples without children. The IMB describes it thusly:

For the past 40+ years, more than 5,500 adventurous young college graduates have served all around the world as Journeyman missionaries. These Southern Baptist, twenty-something, single or married with no children college graduates wanted to do something more after graduation than just jump into a secular career ... they wanted to be on mission with God.

Apparently, far fewer of our finest male college grads are very adventurous. Two-thirds of those serving in the Journeyman program are females.

It gets worse.

Many of the priority locations for these personnel are in countries where males are culturally dominant and females highly restricted. So, God must have willing males to bridge this cultural divide? No doubt God does. Apparently, just not among Southern Baptists. It's the "willing males" who are deficient in the SBC not God.

Hey! You! Yeah, you. Young, restless, single, educated, reformed or not reformed. You! We will pay your way. We will give you a salary. We will train you. We will help you learn a language. We will stand behind you with vast resources. All you have to do is to be willing to go.

Oh, you're busy on the  warm and nurturing campus among encouraging friends and erudite professors. OK. 

Most of us, and few others, are aware that Southern Baptists are mainly responsible for The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. It is probably unfair, but the CBMW makes news primarily in the area of pronouncing what females cannot do in ministry positions or reacting to such things.

There are things to be explored here but I would recommend that the CBMW refocus at least some of their energy on Biblical Manhood and relax on the Womanhood business. Perhaps they could get funding to supply spiritual testosterone to the young, restless, educated males in the SBC so that they would step up to the task of The Great Commission somewhere other than church saturated Ft. Worth, Texas, reformed hotbed Louisville, Kentucky and elsewhere.

Perhaps our young, single, male seminarians, white hot for Christ, would lay aside plumbing the depths of supralapsarianism or the joys of the hypostatic union long enough to offer themselves to the Lord for service in some place where the name of Christ is seldom heard.

I ask: Is God calling only females to these places overseas? Surely not. If He were, it would be the Almighty's joke on Southern Baptists who disallow females as Senior Pastors but use them for the more significant service overseas.

Surely, a young man entering the SBC pastoral ministry where he will likely serve single-staff, mostly rural churches for his career and where he will be dealing with a people group who are Gospel-saturated could at least consider that God may call him to one of the many people groups elsewhere virtually without the Gospel.

And shouldn't every complementarian enthusiast, those who may be sitting behind a desk or standing behind a comfortable pulpit pontificating about women in ministry, begin by apologizing to every woman who has answered the call of God and has or is serving in these places where men were needed but who were unwilling to answer the call?

At the very least the IMB should rename the Journeyman program to the Journeywoman program or just the Journey program.

Lottie Moon, could you send us some more strident and pointed letters from the foreign fields...and address them to the young men of the SBC.
__________________

Addendum: The IMB does not release gender statistics for their mission personnel but I have heard SBC leaders address this issue of the female-dominated Journeyman force. Danny Akin in particular, I understand, minces no words with the young men at Southeastern seminary. I have also heard SBC presidents on the same subject.

As always, I welcome some more informed SBCer persuading me that a nomenclature other than "sniveling wimps" would be more appropriate.