The SBC Executive Committee approved a recommendation to be presented to messengers in Columbus, Ohio, to enable NAMB to “provide specialized, defined and agreed upon assistance to the International Mission Board in assisting churches to plant churches for specific groups outside the United States and Canada.”

NASHVILLE (BP) — Chaplain-led ministry near overseas military bases someday may become part of the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) church planting outreach if a proposed ministry amendment is approved during the June 16-17 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The SBC Executive Committee approved a recommendation to be presented to messengers in Columbus, Ohio, to enable NAMB to “provide specialized, defined and agreed upon assistance to the International Mission Board in assisting churches to plant churches for specific groups outside the United States and Canada.”

EC leaders said the possibility of military chaplains facing religious liberty constraints is a key factor for the recommendation, though the wording allows for other contingencies that may prompt NAMB-IMB overseas cooperation in the future.

Our culture “is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity and to the Christian message,” EC chairman Mike Routt said in response to several questions raised before EC members voted without opposition to forward the recommendation to messengers in June.

“There might come a day to where our chaplains can’t really preach the Gospel,” Routt said. “How are you going to minister to these military bases overseas, to these military personnel if you can’t preach?

“So these chaplains, on their own, not paid by the government but on their own, would plant a church close to that base so that they could have a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church that our soldiers and their families could go to,” said Routt, lead pastor of Circle Drive Baptist Church in Colorado Springs, where the Air Force Academy and NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) are located, along with two Air Force bases and one Army base.

“This is just to be proactive,” said Ben Kelley, chairman of the EC’s Cooperative Program Committee, in case military chaplains are “restricted in what they can do” in sharing the Gospel.

Implementation, if it is ever needed, can proceed in cooperation with the International Mission Board and in matching stateside churches with potential church plants near military installations, said Kelley, a healthcare executive from Montgomery, Ala.

Questions raised during the EC meeting included why the International Mission Board couldn’t undertake church plants near military bases if need be.

Al Gilbert, NAMB’s vice president for evangelism, noted that the Executive Committee “approved the exact same language for the International Mission Board” in 2011 to enable the IMB to assist NAMB with unreached people groups in the U.S.

“Since that time, we have been working in agreement with them, defining special needs and agreeing upon ways they can assist…,” Gilbert said. The proposed ministry assignment amendment for NAMB, he said, is “an attempt to get consistent language for both of our boards to be able to cooperate globally for the Great Commission.”

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