The Archives steward the official records and correspondence of the IMB. Our collections also contain donated materials such as personal papers and artifacts from missionaries and others. Digitized assets include periodicals, correspondence, board minutes, and annual reports, and are available for viewing on this site. For information about the Archives' non-digitized holdings, please visit the About page.

Periodicals Collections

For over 170 years various entities of the Southern Baptist Convention have published missions-related periodicals comprised of news, commentary, and images from the mission fields.  These collections include most issues of the following publications: 

Southern Baptist Missionary Journal, The Commission, Home and Foreign Journal, Foreign Mission Journal, Home and Foreign Fields, To the Ends of the Earth, and CommissionStories.

African-American Heritage Collection

This collection contains transcribed letters, articles, and reports related to the IMB's early African-American missionaries to Liberia and Sierra Leone (1846-1861), including John Day, Boston J. Drayton, A. P. Davis, B. P. Yates, and others.

Correspondence Collections

Our correspondence collections are derived from multiple sources: the IMB's official mission and missionary correspondence along with donated family papers containing letters, journals, and ephemera.  Additional materials will be digitized for public access in the future.

Annual Reports

This collection contains the annual reports given by the FMB to the Southern Baptist Convention.  More reports will be added as they are digitized.

Board Minutes

The Archives houses the original trustee meeting minutes of the FMB from its inception in 1845.  These minutes are being digitized and will be added here once complete.  At present, non-digitized minutes are available upon request by contacting the Archives at archivesandrecords@imb.org. 

Missionary Albums

This collection contains the FMB's Missionary Albums from throughout the twentieth century. The Missionary Albums contained pictures and short biographies of all FMB missionaries stationed throughout the world and served as a way for Southern Baptists everywhere to be able to know and pray for specific missionaries.