RICHMOND, Va.—Fifteen months after calling on veteran missionaries to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message statement, Jerry Rankin has set a May 5 deadline for compliance.

Rankin, president of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, told missionaries their options are to affirm the current faith statement by the deadline, resign or be recommended for termination during next month’s IMB trustee meeting.

Rankin’s initial letter on the issue in January 2002 warned that the IMB’s earlier “failure to ask for this affirmation is creating suspicion that there are IMB personnel whose beliefs and practices are inconsistent with those represented by Southern Baptists.”

“While we believe this in unfounded,” he added, “we do not need an issue such as this to generate needless controversy, erode support and distract us from the focus on our task at such a critical time of opportunity around the world.”

Declining to name those who had raised such concerns, Rankin said missionaries’ willingness to endorse the statement would protect them “from charges of heresy behind your back while you are overseas and cannot defend yourself.”

The January 2002 letter came one year after IMB trustees voted not to require missionaries already on the field to endorse the revised faith statement.

In his latest letter to 31 missionaries, Rankin noted that he asked mission workers to affirm the revised faith statement more than a year ago. Since then, 98.7 percent of the IMB’s 5,500 overseas workers have done so.

Rankin wrote to one missionary: “I am grateful for your years of service and would be delighted if you should decide to affirm the current Baptist Faith and Message and continue your effective ministry with the IMB. Apart from that, I would like to ask that you consider resigning rather than maintaining a position that would undermine the integrity and credibility of the IMB.

"If I do not hear from you regarding one of these options by May 5, 2003, I will be recommending that the board take action to terminate your service in their May meeting.

“For the sake of the people you serve and our Great Commission task, I pray that you might reconsider your position and join your fellow missionaries in cooperating with the request I have made.”

Rankin said he believes several of the missionaries will yet choose to affirm the faith statement and others may choose to resign rather than be fired.

Letters to three missionary couples, however, do not give them the option of affirming the 2000 BF&M but ask them to resign. The three couples reportedly have served as IMB missionaries for more than 20 years each.

Those six workers “have clearly and publicly stated positions contrary to the BF&M that are beyond acceptable parameters,” Rankin said. “They have adamantly refused to be accountable to the IMB and Southern Baptist churches as requested.”

Rankin’s latest letter answers a question that had been circulating since last year’s directive: What will happen to missionaries who decline to affirm the revised statement?

At the time the initial letter was released, IMB spokesman Mark Kelly said no decision had been made about what would happen to missionaries who failed to comply.

In recent months, IMB officials also have refused to use the word “termination” when describing potential ramifications.

“I don’t think Dr. Rankin expects hardly anybody out there to register a concern,” Kelly said last year. “There’s no ax being held over anybody’s head.”

Explaining his reason for setting a deadline for compliance or termination, Rankin said, “We wanted this to be a decision the missionaries make for themselves. We wanted to give every missionary ample time to consider his or her response. If a missionary decides he or she cannot affirm it and therefore cannot continue serving through the IMB, we regret that but appreciate the integrity of conscience it demonstrates.”

In the past year, 32 missionaries submitted resignations that cited Rankin’s directive as a factor in their decisions. The resignations of eight other workers are expected at the May trustee meeting. One missionary couple plans to resign in August. Combined with the missionaries who received Rankin’s letter this month, more than 70 mission workers have declined Rankin’s directive.

Among concerns voiced by missionaries is that the faith statement is being turned into a creed and that the process has been politicized.

“We do not want to be fired,” Larry and Sarah Belew wrote last year. But they also “do not want to participate in the political power struggles of the SBC.”

“The way this document is being used is nothing short of creedalism,” added the Belews, missionaries to Asia. “We will not lower our commitment to being biblical Christians by constraining ourselves within the bounds of this document.”

“I do not deny their right to know what I believe and what I teach,” wrote Stan Lee, a missionary to Rwanda since 1977. “What I deny is their right to force me, on pain of losing my appointment, to sign an extra-biblical document written by men and revised three times in my lifetime.”

Rankin said his initial letter last year “was a collective appeal to assure Southern Baptists of the doctrinal integrity of the missionaries they send and support.”

“However,” he added, “the failure of some to affirm their accountability undercuts the credibility and support of all missionaries serving with the IMB in a time of remarkable evangelistic harvest and unprecedented opportunities.

“Most of our missionaries responded immediately to the request to affirm the BF&M, with many expressing appreciation for the opportunity to testify to what they believe,” Rankin added. “No one was coerced.

“We deeply regret losing any missionary, but we are accountable to the churches in this matter. If a missionary’s disagreements are so great that he or she cannot in good conscience promise to work in harmony with the BF&M, we feel he or she has an obligation to Southern Baptists to tell them so.”

Based on reporting by Baptist Press and Editor Trennis Henderson