The Periodicals Collections
From 1846 to 2015, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) published various missions-related periodicals, sometimes concurrently.
The six collections below contain most numbers of these periodicals, which included news, commentary, and images from multiple boards of the SBC, primarily the Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board).
These publications span nearly 170 years of communications strategies, from text-only journals and newspapers to full-color glossy magazines.
The following two collections will be published in the coming months:
The Commission (TC) was a 4-page broadsheet newspaper published by the Foreign Mission Board from 1849-51 and 1856-61. In 1938 it was relaunched as a magazine, in which form it ran until 2008. A shortened version, Commission Stories, took its place from 2009-15.
CommissionStories (CS) was a quarterly newspaper produced by the IMB from 2009-15. Along with its associated website, it bridged IMB’s transition to the digital era.
In 2022, the IMB began publishing the online Great Commission Baptist Journal of Missions (GCBJM). The GCBJM, released biannually, “provides a platform for missionaries on the field, missionaries-in-training, missiologists, and churches to engage in conversations about a variety of topics related to the missionary task.”