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By Alan James
International Mission Board
A few packed boxes lined the back wall of Jerry Rankin’s office at the International Mission Board’s Richmond, Va., headquarters in preparation for his Aug. 1 retirement as president.
After 17 years as IMB president—and 23 more on the mission field—Rankin and the 164-year-old organization are no strangers to transition and change.
It was a different time in 1993 when Rankin became the IMB’s 10th elected president. The Internet was just getting started, terrorism still was seen as something that happened overseas, a gallon of gas in the United States averaged $1.16 and Twitter and Facebook didn’t even exist.
In the mid to late ’90s, Rankin and the organization grappled with new ways to get the gospel into tougher, more restricted places. Though the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union had opened mission opportunities years before, more and more countries were beginning to deny access to missionaries.
Rankin’s predecessor Keith Parks “had initiated some very creative approaches ... to send missionary personnel into restricted countries and people groups, and initiate nonresidential missionary strategies where people could not actually live among the people they were targeting,” Rankin recalled.
“But that had not really gained the traction to have a significant impact on our global strategy ... and literally one-third of the world did not have access to the gospel,” he added. “We were still in a paradigm of basically sending missionaries where missionaries were welcome and could serve.”
Out of this challenge emerged New Directions, a strategy that focused less on individual countries and more on getting the gospel to all peoples around the globe.
“It was a monumental shift,” said David Garrison, who has served with the IMB for 27 years and is its global strategist for evangelical advance.
“Before this, every country had its own mission ... but all those missions, one by one, dissolved into people group teams,” Garrison explained. “For the first time, the IMB engaged the entire world for the sake of the Great Commission, rather than just where we had personnel serving.”
In 1993, when Rankin began his tenure as president, the organization saw nearly 4,000 missionaries and their Baptist partners help start more than 2,000 churches in 142 countries. In 2008, more than 5,500 IMB missionaries helped plant nearly 27,000 churches and engage 101 new people groups for a total of 1,190 engaged people groups.
Even with that progress, Rankin and the IMB have seen their share of challenges and heartache.
In the wake of Sept. 11, the IMB lost eight missionaries to both random and targeted Muslim extremist attacks. Bill Koehn, Kathy Gariety and Martha Myers were killed Dec. 30, 2002, by a gunman at Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen. Bill Hyde died when a terrorist’s bomb exploded in a Philippine airport in March of 2003. David McDonnall, Larry and Jean Elliott and Karen Watson lost their lives nearly one year later, when insurgents attacked their vehicle in the Middle East.
“It brought into focus the reality of the kind of world we live in today,” Rankin said.
The tragic events led the IMB to initiate more extensive preparation for missionaries headed to dangerous places.
“Interestingly, it didn’t deter the interest in missionary service,” he noted. “With each incident we had a prolific spike of applications of people willing to give of their lives, which I think was an amazing factor.”
With more than 5,000 missionaries and all its resources, the IMB will never have enough missionaries to reach the whole world, Rankin said.
But if the denomination could mobilize and challenge 16 million Southern Baptists to be strategically involved overseas, the resources and the potential are there to fulfill the Great Commission, he contended.
In the past decade, the IMB has focused more attention on forming stronger relationships with churches—and personalizing missions for them.
The IMB “has set the tone for getting churches more involved in missions,” said J.D. Greear, pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, N.C.
“They are always pushing the envelope, always striving after the nations,” he added. “I think what a lot of churches are looking for is not for the IMB to do missions for them, but they want to do missions through them.”
In the past eight years, Summit Church has started multiple partnerships with the IMB in difficult places and has more than 50 of its members serving overseas with the organization.
Rankin often has said he hopes his presidency will not be judged for the accomplishments of the organization under his leadership, but for how the organization is poised for the future.
In recent years, the IMB has entered another major reorganization designed to help streamline administrative work, create more cost-effective and focused approaches to fulfilling the Great Commission and reach people groups that have little or no access to the gospel.
“I believe God has blessed Southern Baptists,” Rankin said. “We stand on the verge of unprecedented opportunities to complete the task of engaging every nation, people and language with the gospel.” (BP)
Western Recorder issue date: August 3, 2010
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40 years of gospel missions
By Alan James
International Mission Board
It was 12-year-old Zachary Rankin’s first overseas mission trip. Though he had spent five years in Thailand as a child of missionaries, he had never been to the jungles of Peru—and neither had his grandfather, International Mission Board President Jerry Rankin.
In 2008, the two traveled about five hours by dugout canoe down river to spend a few days in a remote village with the IMB’s Xtreme Team missionaries who worked among a remote tribe known as the Yaminahua. They bathed in the river, slept in hammocks and ate monkey with the villagers.
The trip marked the potential beginning of a child’s commitment to missions. It also marked the sun setting on one man’s 40-year career—17 as IMB president—focused on helping take the gospel to every tribe, tongue and nation.
After going on two more mission trips since then—one in July to Haiti—the younger Rankin, now 15, said he plans to continue where his grandfather left off.
Missions “runs in my blood,” Zachary said. His grandfather “has been a huge influence on my life. I want to finish what he started.”
Missions does seem to run in the Rankins’ blood. Zachary’s parents, Russ and Angela, served in Thailand with their three children. The Rankins’ daughter (who name has been withheld for security reasons) still serves overseas.
Wisdom, focus, consistency and a commitment to the Lord’s work are a few of the words that longtime friend and IMB Executive Vice President Clyde Meador used to describe Rankin.
Meador recalled a conversation the two men had a few months before Rankin was tapped in 1993 as president of what then was known as the Foreign Mission Board. The organization would change its name in 1997.
“We were in a car, and I asked him, ‘What will you do if you’re president?’” Meador recalled. “He said, ‘That will never happen.’”
After much pressing by Meador, Rankin shared a list of things he’d do if he were elected—but he prefaced it again with, “That will never happen.”
The list included unifying the organization’s focus, streamlining decision making, restoring a sense of ownership to field staff and better equipping missionaries to do their jobs.
“Most of the things he said are what he has done,” Meador said.
Rankin and his wife, Bobbye, were appointed to East Java, Indonesia, in 1970. The couple and their two children spent the first few years on the field enduring rejection of the gospel, spiritual warfare and illness.
Rankin eventually saw progress in Indonesia before moving through the ranks to associate area director for South and Southeast Asia and to director for Southern Asia and the Pacific in 1987.
Rebekah Naylor, a retired medical missionary who served with the IMB for more than 30 years, reflected on her longtime friendship with the Rankins. Naylor served at India’s Bangalore Baptist Hospital during Rankin’s years as area director in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
She fondly remembered the encouragement and support both the Rankins gave her while she was on the field—including thoughtful notes from Bobbye.
“They were not just nice little notes that said, ‘I’m praying for you,’ but they were very personal, specific notes,” Naylor said. “The notes made me feel that she really was praying, concerned and involved.”
Naylor commended Rankin’s commitment to missions and steady leadership.
“He is definitely a person of prayer,” she said. “His faith was evident in all parts of what he did ... his relationships, vision and every aspect of his life. He is a person of vision and is able to communicate that.”
Rankin’s daughter said she always has admired her father’s ability to handle difficult decisions—and the occasional criticism that comes with being the president of the missions organization.
“Things that would crush or overwhelm the average person just seem to roll off his back because he keeps such an eternal perspective,” she wrote in an e-mail. “He has a remarkable ability to focus on the Lord.
“He can balance more things in his head than anyone else I know.”
Remaining accountable for his leadership is something Rankin has worked hard to maintain. He recently shared with staff that during his years as president, he annually met with a small circle of friends—mostly pastors—for a time of accountability. Each one in the group could call him at any time to check on his attitude, relationships and personal discipline, he said.
One called after important meetings to check his attitude, Rankin recalled.
“He asks if I am harboring bitterness or resentment toward anyone or if there is a strained relationship I need to clear up,” Rankin said.
Another called “out of the blue” to make sure he’s spending time with his family. “They always ask about my quiet time to be sure I am not neglecting my time with the Lord,” he explained.
Rankin’s son, Russ, said his father sees accountability and time with the Lord as absolute necessities. “He puts a lot of weight into that—a time of being on his face before the Lord and seeking the Lord’s direction.”
Russ added that his son, Zachary, wasn’t the only one affected by that trip he and his grandfather took to the Amazon Basin two years ago.
For Russ, the trip was just another example of why he’s grown to respect and admire his father.
“They end up in dugout canoes down the Amazon and having to eat monkey,” he said. “That’s what my 67-year-old dad takes his grandson on, and I’m like, ‘That is awesome.’
“It changed my son’s life, and that’s the kind of guy he is,” Russ said. “There’s no starched shirt and frills when it comes to that.” (BP)
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