Who says the institutional church cannot change? This statement, at least once, proven otherwise!
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 prophesy.
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.
Indeed, the issue became such a lightning rod for Southern Baptists that it got top billing on the application form.
“If someone said they did pray in tongues, they were automatically disqualified, essentially for being honest,” said Wade Burleson, an Enid, Oklahoma, pastor who opposed the ban.
The policy changes approved this week during an IMB trustee meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, will leave the question of tongues in the application.
And the IMB said it will still end employment for any missionary who places “persistent emphasis on any specific gift of the Spirit as normative for all or to the extent such emphasis becomes disruptive,” an FAQ on the IMB website explained.
Other policy changes this week would allow divorced missionaries to serve in more positions, including long-term missions assignments.
And the IMB will recognize baptisms performed by other Christian denominations so long as they involved full-body immersion. Previously, a Southern Baptist minister must have baptized missionary candidates who transferred from another denomination.
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It’s interesting, I have an Assemblies of God background, and my discipleship was with Youth Challenge, a sister organization to Teen Challenge. Many denominational backgrounds come to these programs to help the recovering addict embrace Christ and give up the addictive and destructive lifestyles. Some of the men and women were incarcerated at different points in their life and others would come in directly from the court system to serve in the program as an alternative to doing time in jail/incarcerated. Anyhow, my wife and I both come from the Pentecostal tradition but attend a Southern Baptist denomination where we live. Our attendance has fallen off since Covid and due to circumstances at home with live in relatives. The point I want to make is that tongues and the baptism in the Holy Spirit is the real deal. Now, I’m not sure about the tongues being the only evidence of the baptism, but I did notice that it does make a difference in a believer’s life, including my own. I applaud this effort to be open to tongues and not label this gift as only for the history books. It is a dynamic, empowering gift and can bring a lift to any believer who wants to experience a deeper walk with the Lord. I have often been grieved in my Spirit that some of the churches in our nation still reject this gift as something to avoid and/or reject. I have felt this rejection personally outside of the Pentecostal churches. And I wonder if the enemy, Satan and his demonic cohorts want to use this to divide and keep believers from appropriating their faith to seek this gift of the Holy Spirit. The dunamis, dynamite that comes from praying in tongues is not a joke, it is real, and I encourage anyone who has not received this gift to ask God themselves and/or receive the gift in an atmosphere of worship with other believers. I, myself, to my own shame have stopped praying in tongues like I used to in my younger days in the faith. But hope to be a catalyst of power to light up my faith and perhaps encourage others to do the same. Christians need to get out of the box of their religious background and open themselves up to different forms of worship and doctrine, as long as they don’t forsake their first love in the process. Take a chance, and go to a different church or read a book that is led by the Holy Spirit. Talk to another believer, encourage them with the same. Don’t be afraid to lose your foundation, remember God is the foundation, He is the potter, we are the clay. I hope this may encourage someone who feels the same and is ready to get back in the game. We are living in volatile times and God wants us to take steps of faith into a closer walk with Him. We, as believers, as weak vessels can get strong in the Spirit, just like Jesus did. We are his mouthpiece in this world. Amen
Praise the Lord! I agree that all the gifts are actually a sign of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but the spiritual prayer language of tongues is the only gift that all Christians have when they are baptized in the spirit. So we will all pray in tongues, but the other tongue gifts and the rest of the gifts may not function in all of us. This is why many Christians make the statement that the prayer gift is the sign or proof of the baptism in the Spirit.