We should hang a sign on the door as you enter the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board Church Support Center that reads: “Renovation in Progress.”
The renovation is not for the building but for the organization. The TBMB is aligning its staff with the future ministry direction Tennessee Baptists have overwhelmingly decided they want to go. That’s why 2025 will be a year of major transition.
Tennessee Baptists determined change through thoroughly engaging with and participating in the twenty-four-month Acts 2:17 Initiative. TBMB board of directors have affirmed their proposed direction and messengers to the 2023 and 2024 Tennessee Baptist Convention (TBC) have also resolutely affirmed the direction. With a unified voice, Tennessee Baptists recognize we need change if we are to positively impact Tennessee for Christ in the years ahead.
Randy Davis
Let’s look at our reality. Nine thousand children are in Tennessee’s foster care system. The escalating mental health crisis must be confronted. Our educational system needs a direct gospel impact. And look at our church leadership. We face a virtually dry ministry leadership pipeline with approximately 400 TBC churches on any given Sunday having no pastor.
The opportunities to meet these needs became obvious as grassroots Tennessee Baptists prayed and collaborated over these two years. Change is urgent and necessary because any way you slice it Tennessee is a mission field. We need to escalate our missional response, including reorganizing TBMB staff.
One resource TBMB leadership leaned into during the reorganizing process was Leading Major Change in Your Ministry by Jeff Iorg, president and chief executive officer of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. I commend it as a must read for every pastor and ministry leader.
The book chronicles the major change of selling all property owned by Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary near San Francisco while simultaneously relocating the seminary to near Los Angeles.
Iorg describes the monumental endeavor as an amazing journey — ultimately moving one of the 10 largest seminaries in North America 400 miles, while remaining fully operational, without significant enrollment loss or internal division.
Iorg spells out the intensely difficult work of comprehensively transitioning to a major new direction. That’s where we are right now as a convention and mission board, and will be throughout 2025. We have planned and prepared but now comes the tough work of transitioning from the comfort of what has been to aligning human and financial resources to what will be. It means letting go of some good to strive for the great that lies ahead.
And I sincerely believe there are great things ahead. Convention messengers have affirmed the vision that the TBC will be “A collaborative network of spiritually healthy churches reaching Tennessee and beyond for Christ so that …
- Every Pastor is connected and supported for healthy ministry
- Every Member has an active plan for spiritual maturity
- Every Child has a home and gospel foundation
- Every Parent has a biblical vision for their family
- Every Church has growing leaders called to ministry
- Every City has effective, multiplying churches
- Until Every Tennessean hears the gospel!”
The TBMB’s mission will be to “serve churches by multiplying gospel leaders who advance God’s Kingdom.” It is the responsibility of your Tennessee Baptist Mission Board to align TBMB resources to serve these new priorities of “strengthening and multiplying gospel leaders, evangelistic, disciples, and healthy churches.”
To get there calls for deep change in how our staff works and executes ministry. Yes, we are reducing the number of legacy events we host and reducing our staff 10 to 15 percent by the middle of the year. We will then invest the available financial resources in these new priorities. Our overall staff count is already down through staff attrition, unfilled job vacancies and the elimination of some positions not fitting with the new structure.
Our intention is to build and coordinate a localized network of competent, qualified ministers serving in local churches who can serve other Tennessee Baptist churches.
The TBMB being leaner in total full-time personnel headcount does not mean being less effective. Quite the contrary. We believe engaging solid resources closer to local churches will make us more effective.
Major change is messy and difficult. That’s actually the title of Chapter 9 in Iorg’s book.
However, we can’t keep doing the same things and expecting a greater return than we’ve gotten. The urgent spiritual condition of our state demands more. We all need to ask ourselves, are we willing to make the hard, messy, difficult changes to realize the shared vision of healthy churches impacting the state and the world for Christ?
I believe we are. And I believe God, speaking through His people, revealed to us a way forward and it is encapsulated in the Acts 2:17 Initiative.
While 2025 will be a difficult year of transition and repositioning, I believe we’ll see an acceleration in 2026 toward new heights of Great Commission effectiveness in Tennessee.
It’s currently a renovation in progress, but the result will be worth the effort.
It is a joy to be with you on this journey.
