Preparing for Orlando

 Hello!

It is my fear that many churches and pastors in the ABA are unaware of what takes place in our associated work and often lack the context or information to make wise decisions. To try and help with this, I want to blog through the ABA meeting so that people who are not able to be there can keep up with the motions, the elections, and the future plans. 

Before arriving at the meeting, the most important upcoming matter I am aware of is the proposed amendment to the missions policy. Last year, the messengers provided for the creation of a committee to revise the mission policy, which is not entirely coherent after years of piecemeal amendments. The committees recommendations are mostly superficial improvements in terminology, but there is one substantial change. Several years ago, the messengers added a stipulation to the missions policy that an interstate missionary on salary (who can normally receive 80% of their salary from the association), can receive 75% after the completion of their fifth year on the same field, 70% after the completion of their sixth year on the same field. A one-year "pause" was approved in light of the pandemic, so some churches in their sixth year have not reduced their request. 

The committee recommended changing this policy to be applicable to all missionaries, so that foreign missionaries are treated the same way as interstate missionaries. 

The proposed changes do not try to address national missionaries who make the equivalent of full salary in their countries for very long periods of time. Read literally, the current policy caps salary after completing 5 years on the field whether or not the missionary was on salary for the full period. The policy has been interpreted to apply only to missionaries who have been on salary for 5 years, which may be a better reflection of what the messengers intended but is not what they approved. 

Other minor changes include giving foreign missionaries six months of furlough that no longer need to be taken all at once and clarifying that the ban on salaried missionaries taking other employment doesn't preclude them raising money for this like health care and housing. The exact meaning of this part of the policy is unclear to me, since it is my understanding they missionaries on salary are not allowed to leave the field to do deputation except for their allotted 3 weeks of vacation. 

Editorial:

One hiccup I see in their wording is that it only applies to "full salaried missionaries," so missionary may request 90% of full salary from the beginning of their ministry and stay in compliance with the letter of the policy. It seems that a simple change would solve the problem: "The maximum percentage of salary that a Missionary may receive shall be reduced from 80% of full salary by five percent each year subsequent to the completion of his fifth year serving on the same field." Changing the word to "field" from location just makes the language of the policy more consistent. Making the policy apply to missionaries on salary instead of just full-salaried missionaries means that a missionary on designated funds may receive whatever he can raise but a missionary on salary's support from the association is capped based on his time on the field. If his sending church requests 90% of full salary, he can continue to receive that for 7 years (because his support from the association would still fall below the cap), but would be reduced in the eighth year. I won't personally propose such an amendment because I think the whole idea of a generic policy for winding down missionaries' salaries is ill-advised. 

The complexity of setting a number for "full salary" for every country that has ABA endorsed missionaries is probably prohibitive. If you ever wanted to tackle that monster, I think you would need to approve a section of the policy that set "full salary" at a percentage of US full salary (100% for the EU, 20% for the Philippines, etc.). Whether or not such a policy would be wise is above my pay grade.