NAMB moving forward - clarification

In response to my last post "Charting a GCR future for NAMB" I received a strong amount of affirmation. It appears that the message in the post resonates with people from across the country. It was encouraging to hear from so many who affirmed the idea of giving NAMB the freedom to chart a more effective future. However, there were a few individuals who contacted me and expressed some level of disagreement with the post as well. I want to take a short moment to address what appears to be the primary objection. The primary objective I heard from a few folks from across the country was a frustration because the numbers that NAMB reports concerning its missionary total include both paid and unpaid, volunteer missionaries. The sentiment these individuals expressed was those who are unpaid should be viewed differently than those who are funded and deployed by NAMB.

In my opinion, whether they are paid or volunteer really has nothing to do with the point of the post, or most especially for the need of a GCR. Whether these missionaries are paid and deployed by NAMB and the state convention(s), or whether they are unpaid volunteers, serving the kingdom in these locations, I think it is fair to expect that they are deployed in alignment with an intentional strategy under the guidance of a particular missiological NAMB vision and accountable to NAMB for their effectiveness. Either all NAMB missionaries (paid or volunteer) are deployed in accordance with an integrated and contextualized strategy for reaching North America with the gospel (which means that there is no difference between paid and/or unpaid) or NAMB is back to the original problem of developing and implementing an effective national strategy that unifies the whole toward a gospel-saturated vision of reaching the lost regardless of their presence on NAMB’s payroll. In either case problems still remain.