Alabama Baptists continue to defeat the odds when it comes to missions giving.
In October, The Alabama Baptist reported that Alabama Baptists’ giving to the Cooperative Program (CP) beat the national average among Southern Baptists. In fact, from the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) 2001–2002 fiscal year to the 2002–2003 fiscal year, Alabama Baptists’ gifts increased by almost 1 percent, where total SBC CP giving for the same period only increased by one-half percent.
Overall, Alabama’s annual growth rate in giving for 2003 was 2.86 percent or more than five times the growth rate of SBC giving.
Alabama Baptists also ranked fourth in the nation in giving to the 2002 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO), with 10 percent of the top 50 churches being Alabama Baptist congregations.
The state’s 2002 LMCO gifts were also a 1.82 percent increase over gifts in 2001 — an increase that was 50 percent more than the national average.
And now Alabama Baptists are refusing to follow another study’s findings.
Direct contradiction
Researcher Robert Stonebraker said few Protestant churches apply the concept of tithing 10 percent of one’s personal income to a church’s own missions giving.
The study, published in a recent issue of the journal Review of Religious Research, found that when churches lose members giving decreased.
The study also found that smaller churches give less per member than larger churches.
But John MacLaren, director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions’ (SBOM) office of Cooperative Program/stewardship development, said Alabama Baptists depict just the opposite.
Although Alabama Baptists’ giving to the CP has declined, MacLaren said the CP is oftentimes based on proportional giving. “I’ve served in churches who gave 20 percent of their budget to the CP,” he noted.
Jim O’Neal, pastor of Isney Baptist church, said Isney budgeted for 12 percent of its income in 2003 to go to the CP. In fact, Isney recently received the state’s top CP giver in the per capita category, thus negating the finding that smaller churches give less per member.
MacLaren said smaller churches consistently appear in the top 10 churches recognized annually by the SBOM for CP giving. The awards are divided into two categories — the largest amount given and the largest amount given per capita. MacLaren said the per capita awards tend to go to the state’s smaller Baptist churches while the larger ones give the largest total amount.
For CP giving in 2002, “three of the top five in the per capita category had fewer than 150 members,” he said. “Usually as [an Alabama Baptist] church gets larger, they have more staff so there is less money available for discretionary use.”
But Stonebraker found that the larger the church, the less expensive it is to deliver services on a per-person basis, so the larger the percentage of budget made available for discretionary use.
Another difference in the findings and in Alabama Baptist giving is that Stonebraker lumped missions giving in with benevolence giving when he did the study.
MacLaren said, “Benevolence giving is usually kept separate from missions giving” for Alabama Baptists.
“No other denomination has anything close to the Southern Baptist Convention’s CP for missions giving,” he said. Money given to CP also is different from money given to the church’s personal missions initiatives, MacLaren added.
More local missions gifts
Gary Fenton, pastor of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church in Homewood, said, “In our church we give to MPower, send medical missions teams to work with career missionaries, have construction teams and support several local missionary entities.”
Dawson, a Birmingham Baptist Association church, also gives to the CP. In fact, Dawson was recently recognized for giving the largest amount to the CP, an award Dawson has received several times. “If you look at what is actually happening in local churches I think you will find they are doing more missions giving than ever,” Fenton noted.
Jay Wolf, pastor of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, said, “When missions becomes participatory, giving increases. If you put a face on missions, then that’s stimulating to missions giving.”
Noting it is the responsibility of the pastor to equip church members to do missions, Wolf added, “The best thing I can do is give my permission, get out of the way and let God bless [the effort].”
To read the full story about Robert Stonebraker’s study, go to the resources section of www.thealabamabaptist.org. (ABP contributed)
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