TBMI - Missions Board

Tabernacle Baptist Missions International

Tabernacle Baptist Missions International of Greenville, SC, is spearheading a bold project that could revolutionize the face of foreign missions. “Bold” may not be the Word, but totally scriptural in concept and Word and more efficient in methodology as a standard we will stand by. We have entered a new phase in spreading the gospel that will allow churches of this nation to serve the purpose that God has established them to do! 

In a nation where self-serving bureaucracies and over-inflated administrative organizations are the norm, there comes a time when conservative Christians must change their ways of thought and question the forms and systems that they have followed in the past. It is true that oft-times there are organizations built up in the service of the Lord, but even those organizations can eventually become a hand-maid unto themselves and lose sight of serving the highest establishment that God has created, the very church of God! 

Few choices have been offered to that pastor of a local church when one from his flock is called to the service of the Lord on a foreign field. This saint has been called under the ministry of that church, and yet, immediately, the young candidate must seek the approval and acceptance of a mission board. Upon acceptance, the candidate will possibly sign an agreement stated that a percentage of his support will go to support the administration of the board and the often inflated salaries of its officers. 

The young candidate, upon signing such an agreement, becomes answerable to and subject to discipline from the board; thus, he comes out from under the authority of God’s highest establishment, the local church, and enters under the authority of a bureaucracy, the mission board. 

Overview: The year was 1814. A body of thirty-three Baptists met for the purpose of adopting a plan for sending “glad tidings of salvation to the heathen” (Massachusetts Baptists, September 4, 1814, page 66). They dubbed themselves “The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist De-nomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions.” The Reverend Adoniram Judson, Jr., who had been working in Rangoon, Burma, was appointed the first missionary. 

In 1844, James E. Reeve was appointed by the Home Mission society as a missionary, but was rejected by the General Missionary Convention upon the basis that his family owned slaves. Dr. Basil Manly, Sr., a former pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, SC, and President of the University of Alabama, sent a document of resolution to the General Missionary Convention stating that the Convention had violated the authority and autonomy of the local 

church, in it’s dictates concerning God’s will. The convention disagreed. …….. 

The year 1845 heralded the break between the Baptists of the North and those of the South as the Southern Baptist Convention was established for the purpose of “sending forth the glad tidings of salvation to the heathen,” with the intent of total local church authority over those sent forth. Since, the following century has precluded many changes in administration of foreign missions, but the norm is that of the original convention who completely denied that divinely established right of the local church’s authority over its own missionaries. 

Enter Tabernacle Baptist Missions International! 

In July of 1992, Tabernacle Baptist Church of Greenville, SC, established TBMI based on the philosophy and methodology outlined in the Word of God. The example of the apostles Paul and Barnabas, having conducted their missionary ministry out of and under the church of Antioch, serves as a model for this new endeavor, once again placing the reigns of control back into the hands of God’s highest earthly institution: the Local Church! 

With over twenty years of missions experience, TBMI is acting as an agency for other churches and sending forth her own by placing one hundred percent of the monies received for missions back in the missionary’s hand; there are not hidden garnishes to keep the burgeoning administrative burdens alive. The administrative budget for many boards can exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, funds that could be placed directly back into the hands of the missionary to more effectively serve the Lord in the regions beyond. In addition, TBMI’s missionaries will be answerable to their own local churches and re-main under their authority. Although, TBMI is a faith-supported mission, it will, in the future, still provide the available support services boasted by other boards. 

TBMI is staffed and administered by a local church that functions simply as a service facility for the candidate who wishes to serve the Lord on a foreign field. It is an organization supported by faith through the free-will offerings of its mother church and other interested sources. It is based on sound doctrine and bears the integrity and steadfastness of Tabernacle Baptist Church and its constituents.