Uh-oh — somebody has hacked the International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Biblical Recorder is reporting on a data breach at the IMB. Few details are available.
This is no small matter since many of our missionaries serve in high-security areas and their identities are kept secret.
Please read the BRNow.org article. If you aren’t subscribing to them, you should be. They are just about the best source for news in the SBC.
Certainly, I hope no ill comes to anyone as a consequence of this hack … but am I alone in noticing the irony of missionaries living a lie in deep cover?
Recall, too, then IMB head David Platt’s recommendation a few years ago that missionaries break the law to proselytize:
Business is international. Men and women cruise the globe at 35,000 feet, going places missionaries cannot. What could you do?
Transport sensitive Christian materials that cannot be mailed or sent electronically. Firewalls run by local governments block access to training materials, Bible translations, and other forms of support. This could be as simple as meeting someone for supper and passing the information along.
In other words, smuggle-in contraband literature.
Allow your temporary housing to serve as a meeting site for Bible study groups and churches.
Use your locally-registered business to provide legitimate visas for missionaries who cannot acquire them otherwise.
In other words, use your business as a front for illegal activities.
Learn the language through multiple visits and help teach in areas where the IMB has not placed anyone.
Could this casual, unquestioned, and routine underhandedness be the reason that Godly folk are increasingly unwelcome everywhere they go?