Alabama Baptists will consider reducing their Cooperative Program (CP) budget for next year when they meet in November.
Operating under an already-reduced budget for this year, Alabama Baptists will still come up short of receipts needed to meet the $43 million goal for 2012, said Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
So the SBOM approved a proposed $42 million budget for 2013 during its Aug. 17 meeting in Montgomery. Messengers to the state convention in Montgomery will vote on the budget Nov. 13.
“We have to be reasonable and responsible,” Lance said, noting the same percentages put in place for 2012 will exist — 57 percent to Alabama ministries and 43 percent to Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) ministries. All money coming in over the base budget will be split between Alabama and the SBC 50–50.
The $1 million decrease in the budget from the current year will be absorbed by state convention ministries and entities and the SBC “across the board,” said Bobby Dubois, SBOM associate executive director.
Prior to the recent recession, Alabama Baptists’ giving had reached a high of $44.9 million in 2007, but the receipts coming in from churches across the state have diminished since then. In 2011, $40,600,000 came in and around $41 million is anticipated for 2012.
“Still we have to anticipate some recovery at some point, so we think the $42 million goal is reachable in 2013,” Lance said. “It is not the most conservative goal ever but it is reachable.”
In order to get Alabama Baptists back on track to pre-recession days, Lance is challenging all Alabama Baptist churches to take part in the challenge to increase undesignated giving through the CP by 1 percent launched by Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee President Frank Page.
Lance’s version of the challenge is for Alabama Baptist churches to increase CP giving by one-fourth of a percent of undesignated receipts each year for the next four years. This would yield a net increase of $1.4 million per year. “If Alabama Baptists were to do two cycles of that then it would get us back to where we were,” he said. “We could get back on our feet and look beyond this time.”
Along with planning around a stalled economy, state convention leaders also must prepare budgets and strategies without knowing the final outcomes of negotiations with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) over funding of missionary work in the state. The Great Commission Ministries Task Force, created in 2010 to study how the state convention’s future focus will be prioritized, also will likely have some funding implications for upcoming years’ budgets.
More answers should be available by the October SBOM meeting, Lance said, noting the task force, which is the SBOM executive committee, will meet in executive session Oct. 11 and the SBOM will meet in executive session Oct. 12.
The task force report will be part of the upcoming annual meeting.
(TAB)
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