Three Missions Questions

I’m occasionally asked three separate questions about Dawson and missions:
1. How does Dawson support missions?
2. How much does Dawson give to missions?
3. Is Dawson a Southern Baptist Church (SBC) or a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Church (CBF)?

Allow me to answer all three at one time because the answers to these questions are interrelated.

Dawson is an autonomous Baptist church which stresses a doctrine called “the priesthood of the believer.” As a result, we allow our members and donors to choose which one of the two Baptist mission-sending organizations, the Southern Baptist Convention or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, they wish to support with their missions money. Our members indicate on their pledge cards which mission-sending organization they desire to support. We send 8% of their gifts to the mission-sending organization they choose.

We do this because we do not necessarily see these as mutually exclusive organizations competing against each other, but as two different approaches to reaching our world for Christ. If a member or donor does not indicate on his or her pledge card either of the two organizations, currently we send the money to the Southern Baptist Convention because several of our Dawson members serve through the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

We are committed to missions, and we believe that both of these organizations will use the money wisely. Since we are autonomous, we do not necessarily agree with everything either of the organizations does, but our commitment to reaching the world for Christ is more important than minor differences with each organization and more important than denominational politics. In 2008, we will give nearly $640,000 to these organizations in addition to giving over $150,000 to the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board special offerings.

We also send direct financial support to several missionaries, as well as provide the medical supplies, building supplies, Christian printed materials, and video material for 10 to 15 teams of Dawson volunteers. In 2008, we will have volunteer teams on four continents. While the church provides the materials they use, almost all of these volunteers pay their own way.

Along with these mission efforts, we strongly support mission ministries here in Birmingham, giving nearly $80,000 to local mission causes, as well as $80,000 to M-Power, a very effective inner city ministry. We have a growing Hispanic ministry with a full-time Hispanic language pastor on staff. We also provide worship space for an Arabic Christian congregation.

Several Sunday School classes in the church directly support mission projects. We are not always aware of the amount of materials and money Sunday School classes provide, but a very conservative estimate for 2008 is $120,000. When all is said and done, Dawson provides over $25,000 a week to mission endeavors.

In answer to the question, “Are we a Southern Baptist Church or Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Church,” my first answer is, “Yes.” Many of our members would consider themselves Southern Baptist, and others consider themselves Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. But my second answer is we are a missionary baptist church with a small “m” and small “b.” We are “missionary” in that we are committed to use every biblical method of taking the good news of Jesus to the world. We are “baptist” in that we are an autonomous congregation whose faith statements and practices are based on Scripture and our means of church governance is founded on the biblical principle of the priesthood of the believer. We respectfully expect all members of the Dawson Family of Faith, as believers in and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, to faithfully live out the Great Commission, both as individuals and corporately as members of the church.

You may be thinking that the SBC/CBF information is really not about missions but about denominational issues. That may be the case in some places, but at Dawson, it is a missions question. In the early 1990’s, rather than forming a Denominational Relations Committee to help us determine which side to take, Dawson deliberately chose to form a Missions Support Committee whose primary assignment was to help us find the way we could do the most for missions. Rather than use the sparks that were flying from the denominational friction to burn bridges, we chose to pull the sparks together to bring light to a dark and lost world. By allowing people to give to more than one mission-sending organization, we believed we would not only increase mission giving but also increase mission participation. While taking stands for mission causes is good, we believe God has called us to take steps: steps to help us individually and as a church to be faithful to God, and steps to help us fulfill the Great Commission of going into all the world and making disciples.