CBF operating with deficit for second year

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For the second consecutive year, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) expenditures will exceed the organization’s revenues, according to a finance committee report delivered to the CBF Coordinating Council June 25. For the 2002/2003 fiscal year, the report said, CBF will operate with a deficit of more than $650,000.

In response to the report, the Coordinating Council adopted a recommendation to lower its monthly contributions to partner organizations to correspond with the decrease in undesignated offerings received each month. Additionally, financial difficulties have forced the CBF to close offices in Raleigh, N.C., and Dallas, Texas; cut missionary budgets; and put a freeze on new missionary appointments except for those missionaries funded by designated gifts, CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal said in his report to the Coordinating Council.

Revenue for the CBF this year totaled more than $14.9 million or 18 percent less than the amount called for in the 2002/2003 budget, the report said. Nearly half of the revenue, however, was generated by a $5 million anonymous gift and a $2 million grant to fund clergy education and leadership development from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, Vestal said.