For nearly 45 years, God gave me the awesome privilege of writing stories about how God is using Southern Baptists to share the good news of his son, Jesus Christ, throughout our nation and the world.
Thirty-six of those years were spent as associate editor and then editor of the Baptist and Reflector in Tennessee. During those years I learned of a ministry through GuideStone Financial Resources, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Mission:Dignity.
Mission:Dignity provides financial help to Southern Baptist ministers and their widows who served SBC congregations faithfully over the years. Many of these ministers served small churches that did not have the financial resources to help their pastors prepare for retirement.
Instead, many churches helped their pastors financially by providing housing through church parsonages. At the time, that was a major benefit that was needed.
I witnessed it firsthand as a lifelong Baptist who grew up in a small, rural church in northern Greenville County, South Carolina.
A “good” Sunday morning attendance may have been anywhere between 30-60 people. After I began serving in Southern Baptist entities, I used to say, “I never knew that you could serve in denominational life. My little country church could only pay a pastor and we didn’t pay him much.”
We did provide a parsonage but to my knowledge we never contributed to the pastor’s retirement through the Southern Baptist Annuity Board (now GuideStone).
Hindsight is 20-20. My church and others may have done our pastors a disservice. Many ministers were unable to buy homes for themselves so they could begin to build equity and provide for their own needs when their church employment ended.
Unless they inherited property from family members, many ministers had to buy homes later in life with little or no equity or rent. Unless the pastors worked secular jobs, some of them did not even have social security benefits from the government.
I have written articles about pastors and their widows who have benefited from the generosity of Southern Baptists. I have heard firsthand accounts of people who had to decide whether they spent money for food or medicine because they did not have the money for both.
I have seen the tears of Mission:Dignity recipients who recounted how an extra check each month helped them to have both. This financial assistance does not receive Cooperative Program funds. It is totally funded through generous gifts of individuals or groups such as Sunday School classes.
According to the Mission:Dignity website:
• Mission:Dignity serves almost 2,600 individuals in need.
• 60 percent of Mission:Dignity recipients are ministerial widows.
• The average recipient has served 33 years in ministry.
• Individuals can qualify for $275 each month. Married couples are eligible for $375. For the neediest persons with at least 25 years of ministerial service and much lower (poverty-level) income limits, these amounts may be doubled to $550 and $750, respectively.
• More than $10 million is distributed to these recipients each year.
• 100 percent of every donation goes to those in need.
I believe in the ministry of Mission:Dignity so much that I continue to support it financially, even in retirement.
Southern Baptists will observe June 28 this year as Mission:Dignity Sunday. I encourage every Southern Baptist to help support this ministry financially either individually or perhaps as a Sunday School class.
It truly is a ministry deserving of our support. B&R — Wilkey served as editor of the Baptist and Reflector for 26 years prior to retiring at the end of 2024. He is continuing to contribute to the B&R as a freelance writer. … For more information, visit guidestone.org and click on the Mission:Dignity tab.