N.C. Baptists retain budget that funds CBF

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A motion to eliminate four spending plans that allow North Carolina Baptist churches to choose what Baptist causes they support outside their state — including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) — failed on a close vote during the annual meeting of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. But money contributed to CBF through the convention’s budget will no longer count as state “Cooperative Program” funds.

This was the second year that Ted Stone of Durham made a motion to delete the four budget options and return to the traditional one budget channel that requires contributions sent outside of North Carolina to go only to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). Many Baptist churches have remained involved in the North Carolina convention because they could support CBF and not support the SBC.

Stone’s motion was expected to pass when he postponed its effective date to 2008 so that conservatives who had promised not to delete the alternative plans immediately could support the motion. It lost, however, on a ballot vote, 56 percent to 44 percent. Stone called the defeat a “temporary setback” and that his motion failed because too many conservatives stayed home, saying, “We cannot allow this tragic mistake to happen again.”