BaptistLIFE Online

By Tammi Reed Ledbetter , The TEXAN News Editor

NASHVILLE — When Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt took the stage at the first listening session of the newly appointed Great Commission Resurgence Task Force, no one doubted his desire to see the 22 members put any idea on the table to “discover how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.”

Nor did it take long for critics to emerge, fearing change that would wreak havoc with the Cooperative Program. As recently as 2007, SBC messengers affirmed CP as “Southern Baptists’ unified plan of giving through which cooperating Southern Baptist churches give a percentage of their undesignated receipts in support of their respective state convention and the SBC missions and ministries.”

GCRTF critics predicted that any alteration to the definition of CP would return the convention to a pre-1925 era of societal missions when mission boards, seminaries and other entities competed for funds.

Instead, the fifth component of the progress report released by the task force on Feb. 22 and posted online at pray4gcr.com reaffirms the Cooperative Program as the preferred means of giving, placing it under a new umbrella of Great Commission Giving.

The recommendation as stated in GCRTF Component 5 states:
“We believe in order for us to work together more faithfully and effectively towards the fulfillment of the Great Commission, we will ask Southern Baptists to reaffirm the Cooperative Program as our central means of supporting Great Commission ministries; but in addition, we will ask Southern Baptists to celebrate with our churches in their Great Commission Giving that goes directly through the Cooperative Program, as well as any designated gifts given to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, a state convention or a local association.”

GCRTF member David Dockery, president of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., explained the rationale behind the new category when he spoke last month to faculty, students and area Southern Baptists.

“We are not taking away our commitment to the Cooperative Program. Since 1925 it has been the genius and the glue that has helped hold us together in so many ways,” he said.

Dockery also explained why the task force chose not to redefine CP.

“There is nothing better we can find . . . to work cooperatively in our shared work, our shared mission, our shared funding than the Cooperative Program.” In fact, state conventions would play a greater role in promoting stewardship and CP at a time when the average portion churches give to CP from undesignated receipts has slipped from around 10 percent in the 1980s to 6.08 percent in 2008.

Explaining the proposed addition of a new category for designated funds, Dockery said, “We want to add some icing onto the cake perhaps and that is to celebrate Great Commission Giving.”

By way of illustration, he cited the preference of some churches “to give directly to the North American Mission Board without giving to anyone else” or those that choose to fund the International Mission Board efforts through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. In his state, Dockery said local churches might favor particular Southern Baptist-related causes such as the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Home or Union University and see those gifts counted as “Great Commission Giving.”

GCRTF member Robert White, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention, said the term “Great Commission Giving” is intended to more clearly define the purpose and destination of mission gifts. He rejected criticism that the term “elevates designations and devalues the Cooperative Program.”

Instead, White said, the proposal seeks to “acknowledge, with gratitude, all that our churches are giving to kingdom causes through our convention.”

In Dockery’s words, “We are not asking Great Commission Giving to replace Cooperative Program giving, but asking Cooperative Program giving to be enhanced by, augmented by those who would choose to give differently.”

Numerous Southern Baptist causes not directly benefiting from CP allocations stand to gain more revenue from local churches desiring to see those gifts recognized in Annual Church Profile accounting. ACP reports often become the basis upon which local churches are evaluated in regard to total baptisms, attendance and contributions. It is also the criterion messengers to a state or national conventions often use in deciding between candidates for elected offices.

Messengers to SBC annual meetings repeatedly reject calls for a minimal 10 percent commitment to CP by the churches from which leaders are tapped for convention offices or trustee boards. Two-thirds of SBC presidents in the past 30 years have come from churches with CP contributions well below 10 percent, the exceptions being Jimmy Draper, Morris Chapman, Paige Patterson, Bobby Welch and Frank Page. When mission-related gifts to all causes are factored, the other presidents gain some credibility for the overall missions commitment of the churches they serve.

Currently, local churches record gifts to the Cooperative Program, associations, offerings that benefit the state convention, Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

They use the category “other missions” to account for funding outreach efforts as defined by each local church. Some churches might include expenditures for projects in another state or directly funded international work whether it has a Southern Baptist connection or not.

Local churches first send their CP contributions to state conventions, which keep a portion for in-state ministries, forwarding the remainder to the SBC for distribution to SBC missions and ministries. Currently, CP allocations fund the International Mission Board (50 percent), North American Mission Board (22.79 percent), six seminaries and historical library and archives (22.16 percent), SBC Operations of the Executive Committee (3.4 percent) and Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1.65 percent). Further details on CP accounting are available at cpmissions.net.

The only change to CP allocations recommended by the task force involves taking 1 percent away from the Executive Committee and passing it along to the IMB to strengthen overseas work. With state conventions given primary responsibility for CP promotion and stewardship education in the proposal, the task force assumes the Executive Committee will have money to spare for what CGRTF Chairman Ronnie Floyd sums up as their primary goal — penetrating lostness.

The GCRTF proposal also accomplishes a priority SBC President Johnny Hunt set for it early on. At the first listening session before 300 participants on Aug. 25 in Rogers, Ark., Hunt said, “When we judge a person’s commitment on the Great Commission, we have the potential of elevating the Cooperative Program above the Great Commission.”

He reiterated that concern Feb. 22, telling reporters, “We talk about the difference it would make if everybody would increase [Cooperative Program giving] by 1 percent, but we never celebrate that type of movement.”  Instead, he said, the 10 percent level becomes “the badge of honor,” he said.

He explained that many churches have been focusing their efforts on a variety of causes such as becoming debt free, planting churches or directly funding missionaries, before turning their attention to increasing the portion given to CP. “But we never celebrate that type of movement. It’s almost as if, if you’re not at 10 percent, you’re not a cooperating Southern Baptist church.” That type of appeal has been “more of a turn-off than a help,” Hunt said. “I think we need to celebrate the Great Commission — all of it that we’re doing to bring people into the kingdom.”

Regarding ACP reporting, Hunt said, “It’s fine for them to list that, but if judged on our commitment to the Great Commission it ought to be to the Great Commission and not just the Cooperative Program. We’re committed to both,” he said, referring to an increase in the percentage of undesignated receipts at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., as well as designated giving to SBC causes and other mission efforts.

“Quite frankly, our church could care less about how folks outside count our loyalty,” added GCRTF member Al Gilbert, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, N.C.

“It’s a game the next generation is sick of. They have no desire to have that kind of loyalty pin,” he said, garnering widespread applause at the Feb. 22 GCRTF news conference. “We’d better wake up and listen to that.”

In the same forum, Floyd insisted that churches are best evaluated by their effectiveness in penetrating the lostness of the world, reaching the community that surrounds them as well as the ends of the earth. The two church campuses he pastors in Northwest Arkansas launched 13 churches worldwide in the prior year and 33 since 2001 while increasing the amount given to CP by 44 percent when compared to the previous year.

Through the category of designated Great Commission Giving, churches like those pastored by Hunt, Gilbert and Floyd could report sizeable investments in planting churches in cooperation with the North American Mission Board in areas like Las Vegas, Baltimore and San Diego as well as overseas projects for which churches are recruited by the IMB to undergird.

Some churches also choose to bypass the state convention when contributing undesignated gifts to SBC causes, often as a way of voicing disapproval for the state convention’s priorities or leadership. Under the new plan, funds sent directly to the SBC would be classified as Designated Great Commission Giving, along with support for association, state, national and international offerings. The previously used category of “other missions” will become “Other SBC, State and Association Mission Gifts,” no longer reporting non-SBC-related giving, according to an explanation provided to the Christian Index by White.

The autonomy of the local church is highlighted throughout the GCRTF report and drives some of the thinking behind the recommendation for ACP reporting. When the subject arose at a recent meeting of the Georgia Baptist Convention Executive Committee, White told members, “Some of you are going to have to swallow real hard, but I think it is a godly thing to do. Acknowledge that churches are autonomous and they have a right to decide where their money is going to go. You don’t have to agree with them,” he said, favoring the effort to affirm the value of all missions gifts, whether directed through the Cooperative Program or not.

Southern Baptists who disagree with the priorities of their state conventions are in the best position to change how funds are allocated and how much remains in-state by voting at their annual meetings. The percentage retained for in-state ranges from a high of 87 percent kept by the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention to a low of 45 percent at the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

However, many state conventions have been on a multi-year track of decreasing the portion they retain in order to advance more funds to SBC causes. In an open letter to the GCRTF, the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia wrote that the trend of churches lowering their CP commitment makes the second of a dozen state conventions voting to raise the percentage forwarded to Nashville “all the more remarkable.”

Citing the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Convention for leading the way with a 4.5 percent increase, the SBCV letter added, “It is reminiscent of the churches in Macedonia who, out of their poverty, gave generously.”

The task force acknowledged this approach is visionary.

“When churches give more through the Cooperative Program and state conventions keep less of it within their respective states, and a compelling unified gospel vision is cast for Southern Baptists,” the task force believes “we will see giving through the Cooperative Program increase in a major way,” according to the report.

GCRTF member Tom Biles, executive director for Tampa Bay Baptist Association in Florida, predicted that the new means of recognition of all “Great Commission Giving” will “raise the level of association giving.”

Participants in a March conference call of the Network of Baptist Associations heard Biles and several other task force members explain the impact of the proposals included in the progress report released Feb. 22 in Nashville.

Combined with other proposals that prioritize church planting, evangelism and discipleship, Biles said, “The association is going to be at the heart of a movement for church planting across America.”

Floyd reminded directors of missions that the progress report is not the final document to be released in May for consideration by messengers to the SBC in Orlando. “One of the real positives about a progress report is we’ve been able to receive feedback, hear from our people.”

The final meeting of the task force is set for April 26 in Nashville with an early May release of the report to be recommended in Orlando.

White’s own board instructed him to present their concerns at that meeting, stating, “The wide application of the phrase ‘Great Commission Giving’ for monies given through the Cooperative Program as well as to designated causes may cause some Baptists to surmise wrongly that the Cooperative Program is merely a subset of giving instead of the primary means of missions giving for Southern Baptists.” The committee wants the task force to formally state that designated or special gifts are best provided as a supplement and not a substitute for the Cooperative Program.

Following the meeting of convention officers and staff, SBCV Executive Director Jeff Ginn of Virginia wrote, “It is my personal hope and expectation that there will be revisions that strengthen our convention-wide commitment to a cooperative approach to mission support and practice.”

Floyd wrote in a column last month, “Within our GCR Task Force or in any report to this convention, there has not been nor will there be any desire or movement to reduce the Cooperative Program and its significance in supporting Great Commission Ministries.”

Southern Baptists are being asked “to celebrate with our churches the Great Commission Giving that is given through the Cooperative Program which is our priority, but also to celebrate with our churches those gifts they felt led to designate to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, a state convention, or a local association. When our churches give to offerings like Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, and state-related mission offerings, the gospel is being advanced,” Floyd said.

“When we celebrate with our churches what they are doing for the Great Commission, they will be much more likely to support with greater enthusiasm and commitment our priority in all of our giving, which is the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Tammi Reed Ledbetter, The TEXAN News Editor

NASHVILLE — There’s no denying that Southern Baptists individually, corporately and as a denomination are lagging in their stewardship of God’s resources. While the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommends shifting primary responsibility for Cooperative Program and stewardship promotion to state conventions, task force chairman Ronnie Floyd is counting on local pastors to teach their members to honor God through tithing.

“Remember, the only people who ever get offended with the declaration of biblical stewardship are the ones who give little to nothing at all to your church,” Floyd said in the news conference that followed the release of the task force interim report.

“Christians need to repent of the sin of not honoring God with at least the first-tenth of their income,” Floyd reminded. “Can you imagine the spiritual revival that would consume our churches if God’s people would obey God in giving? Can you imagine the opportunities of advancing the gospel regionally, nationally, and globally if God’s people would obey God in giving?”

Seeking to discover “how Southern Baptists can work more faithfully and effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission,” the task force analyzed the means of funding that effort and reaffirmed the Cooperative Program as the preferred means of giving.

Early proponents of a Great Commission Resurgence called on Southern Baptists to cut a larger piece of the Cooperative Program pie for the International Mission Board in order to see more dollars sent overseas and appealed to state conventions to keep fewer dollars for in-state use. While recommending the IMB’s share increase by 1 percent, a move Floyd called “symbolic,” the task force chose to trust state conventions with more responsibility for stewardship and CP promotion.

Component 4 of the task force progress report states:

“We believe in order for us to work together more faithfully and effectively towards the fulfillment of the Great Commission, we will ask Southern Baptists to move the ministry assignments of Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education from the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention and return them to being the work of each state convention since they are located closer to our churches. Our call is for the state conventions to reassume their primary role in the promotion of the Cooperative Program and stewardship education, while asking the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention to support these efforts with enthusiasm and a convention-wide perspective.”

The SBC’s Executive Committee did not welcome the recommendation. In a March 11 historical review of CP promotion, stewardship education and the SBC, EC Convention Relations Vice President Roger S. Oldham offered a 10-page rebuttal of verbiage he called “potentially misleading.” (Visit baptist2baptist.net/issues/gcr/rso-03-19-10.asp for the complete text of the white paper.)

Concerned that Southern Baptists could infer from the words “return” and “reassume” that CP promotion and stewardship education “were once ministry assignments entrusted to the states,” Oldham said CP promotion has been a joint venture of the SBC and state conventions since its inception in 1925 “with the responsibility for strategy development uniformly assigned to the SBC, and the ‘field’ responsibilities consistently shared with our state convention ministry partners.”

Based on his defense of the SBC’s “right and responsibility” to promote CP and engage in stewardship education (including the decade when LifeWay Christian Resources had the stewardship assignment), Oldham argued the adoption of Component 4 would be the first time in SBC history “that the Convention will have assigned away its rights, role, and responsibility to promote funding and support for its ministries of international missions, North American missions, theological education, and moral advocacy, each of which is rightly under its purview.”

In making the case for giving state conventions primary responsibility for both assignments, Floyd said in his Feb. 22 presentation, “History shows that we have struggled with where to place both of these assignments in order to serve our churches more effectively.”  He expressed appreciation for the work of the Executive Committee, calling state conventions “Great Commission partners” of the SBC that could participate in a consortium involving the EC president.

“Together they can plan and execute an annual strategy that will promote the Cooperative Program to our churches as well as challenge our churches in biblical stewardship,” Floyd said. Calling it a return to the strategy offered in 1929 that gave state conventions responsibility for promoting CP “in the field and gathering funds from the churches,” Floyd said historic precedence permits such a move.

The EC’s Oldham disagreed. While the SBC has recognized state conventions as full ministry partners that promote the work of their respective ministries as well as the “whole” Cooperative Program, he reiterated, “The states are autonomous Baptist general bodies in their own right; they are not sub-sets of the Southern Baptist Convention and cannot be assigned ministries for which the Convention bears legal, moral, and spiritual responsibility.”

History at the state level

State conventions have been working in concert for decades along the line that task force proposes, sharing resources and ideas for stewardship education and CP promotion through the Stewardship Development Association. Begun in the 1960s to provide fellowship and continuing education, SDA assumed a greater role in generating resources that state conventions can share with local churches, often keeping production costs lower than the price of materials from the national entity and sometimes customizing them for specific states.

While complimenting the CP resources generated by the Executive Committee, SDA resource coordinator David Waganer told the TEXAN, “Our organization has worked hard to try to come alongside and not be in competition with the national office.” With most of their material addressing stewardship, Waganer anticipates any reduction in the Executive Committee’s role would prompt SDA to enhance its CP promotion materials.

The peril of competition was on the minds of pastors who crafted the language of the early reports about cooperation, Oldham told Baptist Press, labeling them “very wise” in their effort to formalize “mutual responsibilities among local associations, state and national conventions.”

IMB gains

In another component recommended by the task force, the IMB stands to gain 1 percent of CP budget allocations through the reduction of the Executive Committee’s assignment in these and perhaps other areas.

As a former denominational employee in Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina, Waganer said state conventions have a need to promote the Cooperative Program ministries they fund. “CP is not something to be owned. It’s a channel of mission support. We’re not giving to; we’re giving through. If people don’t understand that, they think we’re holding onto something when really we’re just a channel, a river to allow ministry to go forward.”

Floyd added, “The greatest amount of money that exists for the causes of Christ and the advancement of the gospel is in the pockets and financial portfolios of our church members.” He encouraged pastors and churches to be unashamed in the teaching and preaching of biblical stewardship. “Stand on the authority of the Word of God and call the people of God back to him through the giving of the first tenth and additional offerings to your local church.”

He offered his sharpest tone for the lack of participation in stewardship by many individual Southern Baptists of over 42,000 local churches, citing evidence that the average church member gives away only 2.56 percent of his income.

“From the time I did my doctoral dissertation in the area of biblical stewardship until now, I have been astounded by the selfishness of God’s people,” said Floyd, recommending that every pastor preach a series of messages on biblical stewardship annually and reaffirm such principles in small group studies.

“Even though we are envisioning the stewardship assignment going to state conventions, it is the responsibility of local churches to challenge their people to walk in obedience to God by honoring him weekly with at least the first-tenth of all income as well as additional offerings to our local churches.”

Referring to SDA’s two-year plan for stewardship education that includes CP promotion, Floyd said, “If you don’t have a plan, you’re not going to have any change. It’s a long process that’s not going to happen overnight, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Floyd and Waganer agree pastors must work at maturing the flock in their stewardship.

“It won’t happen just because the task force says, ‘OK, we’re going to put this back on the states,’” Waganer said. “It’s one church at a time, one member at a time.”

By Sharon Mager, Staff Correspondent

COLUMBIA, Md.—In the February “Baptist Digest,” the Leadership News Journal of the Kansas-Nebraska Southern Baptist Convention, Editor Timothy Boyd wrote an intriguing column about the Cooperative Program (CP).

Here is a portion of that article with Boyd’s permission:

“Recently, I was wondering what the Southern Baptist Convention would look like in a post Cooperative Program world. The thought was scary. I could imagine two or three of our seminaries going out of business. I could imagine the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board combining to make the best use of severely decreased resources.

What would a Southern Baptist Convention without the Cooperative Program be? One thing is for sure. It would be much weaker. Some might ask, “How do you know?” I know because that is what the Convention was like before the Cooperative Program. All of our agencies struggled. Churches were constantly harassed by agents seeking funds. All in all, it just did not work well.

There are days when I believe that we are heading toward the end of the Cooperative Program. I hope it doesn’t happen, but I know that the trends show a continuing decrease of support by churches. It may not happen while I am still active in ministry, but those who are just beginning their ministries may have to face that reality.”

Imagine a pastor getting really sleepy at a church business meeting and stepping out for a few minutes to take a walk in the woods behind the church. He falls asleep in a remote area and no one can find him. He does a Rip Van Winkle sleep for 20 years. His congregation has moved on, calling another pastor. When Pastor Rip wakes up, amazingly the church is without a pastor again so he steps back in. The church is amazed and thrilled.

What Rip doesn’t realize is that a lot has happened since he fell asleep. While counseling a youth who feels called to the ministry, Rip enthusiastically encourages him to attend Rip’s alma mater, a Southern Baptist seminary near and dear to his heart. But when he calls, he finds that it closed many years ago. In fact, he finds there is only one seminary operating and the tuition is very high. He makes a call to the North American Mission Board (NAMB) to realize it’s now NAIMB—that NAMB and the International Mission Board (IMB) joined together to send out a fraction of the missionaries they once did. Rip frantically seeks information on Centrifuge, disaster relief, and the RA and GA curriculum—it’s all gone! The state newspaper is gone. He reads Baptist Press and realizes the reason for the sad shrinking of resources is due to a drastic reduction in CP giving. In fact, the reports say CP is dying. Missionaries have had to leave the mission field; baptisms are at an all time low. The energy of new church planting has gone. Rip wants to go back to sleep.
Rip realizes we don’t know what we have until it’s gone.

While looking at all of the incredible resources CP provides, imagine an SBC world without those resources.
The reality is that CP giving is down. Tom Stolle, BCM/D chief financial officer and missionary for ministers’ compensation, church treasurers and stewardship, believes, as Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leaders across the country do, that there are many reasons. The economy is certainly one, he concedes, but there’s more to it. Young pastors and planters aren’t always aware of the benefits of CP giving—not just the benefits to the SBC but to the givers. They may not be seeing the faces of those being changed as a result of CP giving. Often, it’s just a lack of education on what CP does and how it blesses.

Stolle said many churches are taking mission trips and that’s wonderful, but without CP there may not be a steady missionary presence. How much greater is the impact of someone who is staying in the field making an ongoing impact on a people group?

Because of CP there are 5,363 missionaries engaging 1,170 people groups in 184 nations; there are 836,898 worldwide baptisms annually, SBC has the third largest disaster relief program in the country. Children of AIDS victims and kids with the disease are rocked every day and cared for by missionaries, supported by CP money.

While we can’t always go, our CP dollars continue to be used 24 hours a day 365 days a year to reach the lost.

And everyone Southern Baptist can be part of that.

“The great thing about CP is everybody can be on mission, through giving,” Stolle said.