Parks Joins CBF

                                                                                                                                                                       Vol. VI, No. 1, January 1993

Keith Parks, the ex-president of the SBC Foreign Mission Board who retired 31 October, has accepted leadership of the "Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's fledgling missions program." Parks made the announcement 30 November at CBF headquarters in Atlanta. He will begin his new duties 1 February. Parks had set three conditions prior to his acceptance: CBF must remain Southern Baptist, the program must recruit new missionaries, not just those now working for the SBC Foreign Mission Board, and CBF missions must focus on such needs as currently unreached peoples. John Jackson, chairman of the FMB, noted that Parks' decision "comes at the heart of our time for commitment to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering for foreign missions. It appears it has been deliberately planned and orchestrated. I personally feel it attacks foreign missions as it is now in operation across the world. ... I wish I could say something positive about it, but I cannot see this being a help to missions, but rather extremely harmful:" [BP]

Editors note: It will be interesting to see whether Parks' three conditions are met. (1) The CBF is already a new denomination in all but name with a governing council, a funding program, a seminary, a mission board, a publishing house, a newspaper, a press agency, an ethics agency, and an historical society. It seems probable that the CBF must declare itself a new denomination in the near future (say two or three years) or lose Its Impetus. Once that Is done, it will no longer be plausible to maintain the ever-more-transparent fiction that CBF remains Southern Baptist. (2) Perhaps the CBF will begin to hire missionaries other than those dissatisfied with the back to the Bible policies of the SBC Foreign Mission Board. In the long term, of course, all the SBC missionaries of moderate persuasion will either have adjusted to the new policy framework or will have resigned. However, considering that we have some 3,900 missionaries on the field, that CBF funds are quite limited, and that it costs approximately $100,000 per year to maintain one missionary in the field, it would appear to be a long time before CBF will be able to turn to recruiting new personnel. (3) There is an Immediate problem with Dr. Parks' third criterion: that the CBF program must focus on unreached peoples. To date that program has been centered on Europe

It is hard to see how those who continue to set up organizations and programs which compete directly with what the SBC does can claim in good faith to remain cooperating Southern Baptists. They certainly have the right to set up a new denomination if they wish, but there would appear to be a basic Integrity problem when claiming one thing and doing the opposite. Encouraging churches to give to the CBF rather than the SBC, to attend the seminary in Richmond rather than an SBC seminary, to donate to the new CBF missions offering rather than the Lottie Moon offering, to buy CBF Sunday School materials and books rather than SBC publications... these sorts of actions do not evidence loyalty to the SBC. We should pray for our moderate and liberal brethren that the Lord will make dear to them His will and that they will follow His will forthrightly regardless of monetary and/or tactical considerations. TCP