UNITED STATES, October 25, 2015 (Wall Street Journal): Peter and Jennie Stillman felt a divine calling to preach the gospel abroad. So the Southern Baptist couple left Texas with their three young daughters 25 years ago and became missionaries in Southeast Asia. Now, the Stillmans are responding to a new call: early retirement. They are among hundreds of Southern Baptist missionaries working abroad who are being summoned home in a move to slash costs, after years of spending to support missionary work around the world led to budget problems.
The International Mission Board, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention with 4,800 missionaries and 450 support staff, plans to cut 600 to 800 people from its workforce, a 15% reduction. It is starting by offering voluntary early retirement to veteran missionaries. Since 2010, the organization has spent $210 million more than it has taken in, officials said. Last year, it had a $21 million shortfall.
The cuts to the program, considered America’s flagship evangelical missionary organization, underscore a fundamental change in mission work as the church becomes more global and the tradition of lifetime assignments for Christian missionaries sent “from the West to the rest” declines. “There are seismic shifts happening in the nature of missions,” said Jim Ramsay, vice president of the Mission Society, an organization with Methodist roots based in Norcross, Ga. “Our role is changing, and our dominance is changing.”