Since the publication of the preliminary report of the GCR Task Force, many are expressing their concerns, which is a healthy hallmark of Southern Baptists. Most of the discussion has centered upon the proposed reinvention and release of the North American Mission Board, especially the proposed termination of cooperative agreements with State Conventions. I have been working on a dissertation on one of the most important corresponding secretaries of the Home Mission Board (now NAMB), who presided over what I am calling the “First Great Commission Resurgence” among Southern Baptists. After the Civil War, Southern Baptists (along with the South) were a broken people, weak in fulfilling the Great Commission. Perhaps it would be a good exercise to listen to advice from Isaac Taylor Tichenor, who was named the “Father of Cooperation”[1] and the man who the Southern Baptist Convention owed its “continued existence and its great success.”[2]

I. T. Tichenor was the corresponding secretary of the Home Mission Board from 1882 to 1899. He was one of the first to push for a cooperative system of giving. He was one of the visionaries behind the Sunday School Board. He was also one of the first to implement what is now the Annual Church Profile. Tichenor came to the board just three years after the SBC seriously considered dissolving the board. During his tenure, the board and the SBC would undergo a tremendous revival. The year before Tichenor came to the HMB, they only had 38 missionaries.[3] The next year the missionary force had grown to 95[4] and by 1899 the missionary force had grown to 653.[5] Though it is difficult to determine exactly how many churches were born under Tichenor’s tenure, at least 3,399 churches were constituted and at least 7,334 missions were planted.[6] Membership grew from 2.3 million in 1881[7] to over four million in 1899[8], an 83% decadal growth rate (the SBC has had a 5% decadal growth rate over the last 17 years). What advice would Tichenor give us today?

While not neglecting the rest of the world, Tichenor would encourage us to give attention to North America first, then the rest of the world. Following the command of Jesus in Acts 1:8 to reach the Jerusalem of Southern Baptists, Tichenor stated, “We challenge the Christian world to the proposition that the evangelization of this country is, among human affairs, the mightiest factor in the world’s redemption.”[9] This belief did not exclude the evangelization of immigrants and foreign peoples in America. Rather, he saw them as divinely brought to America’s shores so that Southern Baptists might win them to Christ. The Home Mission Board appointed missionaries to Cubans, Germans, French, Italians, Asians, and many other ethnicities. As Southern Baptists won these foreign peoples to Christ, these foreigners would be able to spread the gospel to lands from which they came. The world could not be reached unless the homeland was evangelized first.

Tichenor would encourage increased cooperation between NAMB, the state conventions, associations, and churches. In his first year as corresponding secretary, Tichenor visited every state convention, many associations, and many churches in the convention. He listened to their needs and asked how the Board could aid in the evangelization of their towns, cities, counties, and states. Tichenor trusted the local church to raise up missionaries who would be identified by the associations and states eventually being jointly appointed by the church, association, state, and HMB. In the following years, he told the states to keep more than half (an average of 51.7%) of the monies collected for the Board and use them to fund missionaries and build church buildings. Further, he encouraged states to help each other. In reference to the need for older states to send people to Texas, Tichenor stated, “The average number of men employed in the older States is about forty. On this basis Texas ought to have more than two hundred missionaries. Nor ought the brethren of the older States hesitate to aid them in supplying this destitution.”[10]

Tichenor would encourage appointments of church planting missionaries rather than church planting pastors. Currently, most church planters are funded for three years and expected to plant just one church. Tichenor funded the missionaries for one year at a time (they could re-apply for another year if needed) and expected them to plant many churches. Before Tichenor’s tenure, the average HMB missionary serviced one or two churches. Throughout Tichenor’s tenure, the average HMB missionary serviced four churches. In 1895, the average HMB missionary serviced eight churches! In a publication entitled Our Frontier Missionaries, Tichenor quoted the testimonies of many HMB missionaries. One stated,

I am going all the time. The Lord calls and I must go . . . I preach in school-houses,
dwelling houses, and dug-outs, which are holes in the ground and poles laid over, and dirt
thrown over that. Sometimes I find a family of ten in one room of that kind, and yet I find
room to stand and preach Christ to the people . . . I have made a great sacrifice in coming to
this country, but I do it for Christ, and he will repay, I know. I preach to four missionary
churches and several stations every month regularly, and sometimes more. I receive
members by letter or baptism every meeting.[11]

Tichenor listed the work of missionaries as preaching the gospel, making religious visits, establishing Sunday Schools, organizing churches, building church buildings, and distributing Bibles and tracts. They were multi-functional missionaries.

Tichenor would encourage NAMB to focus on the multiplication of small churches, thus saturating the cities, counties, and states. Tichenor especially targeted the cities for gospel saturation. Missionaries were sent to major cities, even within the Old South where there were already many churches, with the expectation of planting multiple churches, many times with just a mile’s distance between plants. Tichenor’s 100 year (1898 to 1998) vision for Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Arizona was to plant 10,000 churches with membership of 2,000,000 (100 churches per year).[12] The average church size would be 200 members. He believed the population in these states would total 10,000,000 people, which meant that he wanted a church for every 1,000 people.

Tichenor would encourage NAMB to have a church building fund. In 1883, Tichenor’s report to the SBC asked for the establishment of a church building fund. He stated, “With a house of worship, a church will soon care for its own wants; without it, the effort at permanent establishment is prolonged into years of toil. In many places more can be accomplished by money to build houses than to support Missionaries.”[13] As stated earlier, over the next seventeen years, Tichenor told states to keep a majority of the funds collected on the field for the HMB and use the money to buy land and build buildings for missionaries. An acre or two would be bought and a “house of worship” would be built, mostly by grants from the HMB. Throughout the week, the “house of worship” would be used for schools and other meetings. The church building became the social hub of the growing community.

Tichenor would encourage NAMB to strengthen key existing churches. An HMB missionary was often sent to an established congregation in a key city in order to refocus the church on growth and church planting. One example of this was the work in New Orleans. In 1883, Tichenor asked the board to build a “house of worship” for First Baptist and help eliminate the debt of Coliseum Place where two HMB missionaries were working, respectively. The house of worship for First Baptist helped the church to grow so much that the next year they planted Valance Street Baptist Church. The debt on Coliseum Place was retired the next year and allowed the church to plant a work among the “colored people.” Due to a fire that destroyed the First Baptist’s house of worship in 1892, the Board again funded the construction of a new house of worship for the congregation. The strengthening of these key churches aided in the expansion of the gospel in New Orleans and abroad.

Tichenor would encourage NAMB to keep a small staff, distribute most of the money to missionaries and building church buildings, and have little left over at the end of the year. When Tichenor began his tenure with the HMB, the only employees were Tichenor and the former corresponding secretary, William McIntosh. These two men received a combined salary of $3,414.58 out of $45,195.27 HMB expenses, which was 7.6% of the expenses. The amount that went directly to missionaries, to the state conventions to send to supplement weak state missionaries, or to build church buildings was $33,895.63, which was 75% of the expenses. By 1899, the staff had grown to only four employees who received a combined salary of $4,800 out of $205,430.54 HMB expenses, which was 2.3% of the expenses. The amount that went directly to missionaries, to the state conventions to send to missionaries, or to build church buildings was $194,688.54, which was 94.8% of the expenses. From 1884 to 1899, Tichenor’s annual salary of $2500 was never raised. It was common for the Board to end the year with little cash left on hand (Example: 1892 just $71.21).

Just by comparison, the 2009 NAMB expenses showed 12.08% of the total expenses went to Administrative costs while 41.64% went to Missionary Appointment Support and Equipment.[14] Evangelism and Social Ministries was 15.32% of the total expenses while Church Planting was 16.79% of the total expenses. Communication Technology was 2.05%, Mission Education was 3.65%, and Volunteer Ministries, Disaster and Associational Ministries was 8.47% of the total expenses, respectively. What is extremely interesting is that 20.60% of NAMB’s income comes from “Investment and Interest Income.” NAMB’s assets totaled $339,250,906 at the end of 2009 with $30,115,221 cash on hand and $106,159,390 in investments.[15]

What can we conclude from the “First Great Commission Resurgence” under Tichenor? NAMB continually reminds us that there are at least 258 million lost in North America. While not neglecting the rest of the world, it would only make sense to make our homeland the primary focus of our evangelistic endeavors. Cooperation must increase among our churches, associations, state conventions, and national entities in order to accomplish the Great Commission. NAMB, the state conventions, the local associations, and the local churches should be focused on appointing and sending out church planting missionaries who are required to plant more than one church in an area. We should focus on gospel saturation through the multiplication of small churches, desiring a church for every 1,000 people in North America (We would need 258,000 new churches today!). In order to help facilitate the establishment of these churches, NAMB and the state conventions should establish a church building fund that is used to buy properties in strategic areas so that a missionary could establish a church with more efficiency.

Missionaries should also be sent to strengthen key established churches in old work areas. Every town and city in these areas has a segment of the population that is not reached. A missionary being sent to a key established church to help the church reach these unreached peoples would expand the work of the church.

Finally, I believe Tichenor would be ecstatic with the resources the Cooperative Program has given Southern Baptists. However, I believe he would encourage us to be more efficient with our resources. For NAMB, a small staff that initiates cooperation with state conventions, local associations, and local churches, identifies areas for gospel saturation, sends at least 95% of the resources to missionaries and church building assistance, and spends almost everything they have each year would be ideal. Tichenor wrote, “A dollar given is only a dollar when it is expended.”[16] If NAMB cashed in the $106 million it has in investments, it could send out 4,240 missionaries giving $25,000 to each one and still have over $230 million in assets. If these 4,240 missionaries planted four churches of ten new believers each over the next year, there would be an additional 16,960 churches and 169,600 new believers in the SBC in the next year and the next Great Commission Resurgence would have begun. It is my prayer that we learn our lessons from the leader of the First Great Commission Resurgence.

[1]Michael Williams, Isaac Taylor Tichenor: The Creation of the Baptist New South (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2005), 196. Williams quotes HMB corresponding secretary B. D. Gray from his book Home and Foreign Fields.

[2]Joe Burton, Road to Recovery (Nashville: Broadman, 1977), 164. Burton quotes the Kentucky Western Recorder upon Tichenor’s retirement.

[3]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1882, 4.

[4]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1883, IV.

[5]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1899, LXXV. This figure was without Western North Carolina’s report, which Tichenor stated had not come to them by the time of publication.

[6]The author derived these figures from the Annual Reports of the Home Mission Board from 1882 to 1899.

[7]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1882, 55.

[8]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1899, LXXXIV.

[9]I. T. Tichenor, Home Missions (Baltimore: Baptist Missions Rooms, 1898), 11.

[10]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1885, X.

[11]I. T. Tichenor, Our Frontier Missionaries (Baltimore: Women’s Missionary Union, n. d.), 8-9.

[12]I. T. Tichenor, Work Being Done By the Home Mission Board (Baltimore: Maryland Baptist Mission Rooms, 1898), 8.

[13]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1883, X.

[14]“2010 North American Mission Board Ministry Report,” [on-line], accessed 19 March 2010, available from http://www.namb.net/site/c.9qKILUOzEpH/b.245607/k.A9D1/
Annual_Report.htm; Internet. All information in this paragraph.

[15]“Consolidated Financial Statements and Report of Independent Certified Public Accountants.” The North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Inc. (December 31, 2009), 2.

[16]Annual Report of the Home Mission Board, 1885, XV.