Southern Baptist Convention Opens International Mission Board to Allow Missionaries Who Speak In Tongues

After decade-long resistance, the Southern
Baptist Convention will admit missionary
candidates who speak in tongues, a practice
associated
with Pentecostal and charismatic
churches.

The new policy, approved by the denomination’s
International Mission Board on Wednesday (May 13), reverses a policy that was put in place 10 years ago.
Speaking in tongues is an ancient Christian
practice recorded in the New Testament in which people pray in a language they do not know, understand or control.

The practice died out until
Pentecostalism emerged around the turn of the 20th century. In Pentecostal churches it is considered one of many “gifts” of the Holy Spirit, including healing and the ability to prophesize.

Allowing Southern Baptist missionaries to speak in tongues, or have what some SBC leaders call
a “private prayer language,” speaks to the
growing strength of Pentecostal churches in
Africa, Asia and South America, where Southern Baptists are competing for converts and where energized new Christians are enthusiastically
embracing the practice.

“In so many parts of the world, these charismatic experiences are normative,” said Bill Leonard,
professor of church history at Wake Forest
Divinity School. “Religious groups that oppose them get left behind evangelistically.”

The change does not mean that Southern
Baptists will commission missionaries who speak in tongues. But Wendy Norvelle, a spokeswoman
for the IMB, said an affirmative answer regarding the practice would no longer lead to automatic disqualification.

Southern Baptists have long prided themselves as among the world’s most ambitious missionaries — reaching countries and regions
few dared to go — but they are increasingly
finding competition from fast-growing
Pentecostal Christianity, which now has an
estimated 300 million followers worldwide.

In 2005, the International Mission Board created guidelines that specifically disqualified all
missionary candidates who spoke in tongues. For Southern Baptists, the practice, also known as glossolalia, ended after the death of Jesus’
apostles. The ban on speaking in tongues
became a way to distinguish the denomination from others.

These days, it can no longer afford that
distinction.“Southern Baptists are experiencing such
demographic trauma of membership and baptism they need new constituencies among nonwhite population,” Leonard said.

Greg Horton and Yonat Shimron