Statement of Provision

The North American Mission Board is able to facilitate financial support for church plants in cooperation with churches, associations and conventions as a result of the generous, sacrificial gifts of Southern Baptists through the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Offering for North American missions.

We acknowledge, along with our strategic partners, that many times the support we are able to provide with our partners is not adequate to meet all of the needs of most church plants. NAMB does not ask church planters to solicit funds directly from churches with which the planter has no relationship. However, NAMB does encourage churches to become Sending Churches and adopt church plants. Through “Send Me” NAMB is able to help connect churches desiring to give additional resources to missionaries and church plants, who have specific needs.

A Sending Church takes primary responsibility for the success of a new church plant. The Sending Church serves in a coordinating capacity (with possibly other Supporting Churches) to ensure that the needs of the church plant and strategy are being adequately met. The time frame for this commitment should be until the new church plant is solidly established and mature enough to function autonomously.

In addition, we recognize that there are times when church planters seek additional support on their own. NAMB offers training and instruction to ensure that planters appropriately seek additional support within the SBC family context. Sometimes that support is financial; other times it may be in people or practical gifts to meet specific needs, such as chairs, tables, sound equipment, etc.

NAMB also provides an online asset – the Church Planting Growth Projector Tool – which assists a church planter and his partners (Sending Churches, associations and conventions) in determining the financial needs for successfully planting a new church. It is a tool that enables a church planter to list all partners and their financial support, as well as registering the commitment of the church plant in giving through the Cooperative Program and other SBC Great Commission causes.

Church plants are often started without any assistance from NAMB, a convention or an association. A church planter’s home church may choose to help support his church plant. When church planters and other Mission Service Corps-type, self-funded missionaries seek a relationship with NAMB, we provide training for them in how they can raise support without violating the preferred method of funding by Southern Baptists through the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.