Baptists in Alabama continued to show their support for the Cooperative Program (CP) in 2001, exceeding the base budget of $38,295,000 by $380,161, according to Bobby DuBois, associate executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
While the 1.85 percent increase in gifts in 2001 from 2000 was below that of a 4.3 increase in 2000, DuBois said the current total is still encouraging.
Alabama Baptists also came close to meeting the challenge budget goal, according to DuBois. The total was $87,778 short of the $39,295,000 total set during the 2000 Alabama Baptist State Convention annual meeting.
“It’s a reasonable increase,” he said. “It wasn’t beyond what we’ve done in previous years, but it’s healthy considering the effects of the economy and the events of Sept. 11.”
Dubois said CP giving of $3,453,089 in December helped with the final total for the calendar year but was down from gifts of $3,700,034.88 in December 2000. “But we rejoice in the fact that we passed base budget, which was our objective,” he said.
He said final figures on the number of churches giving to CP in 2001 are still unavailable but were in the range of November’s total of 2,700.
DuBois said receiving an amount beyond the base budget means that each entity of the Alabama Baptist State Convention and the entities of the Southern Baptist Convention received an additional distribution included in their checks for December.
Rick Lance, executive director of the SBOM, said the “realistic” budget provides the opportunity to fulfill the budgeting objective, which is to “anticipate the ranges where total receipts for the year will fall between the base and challenge budgets.”
“This assures all entities that they will receive the base budget amount plus an additional amount beyond base,” he said. “This adds stability to entity planning when they can feel more confident of receiving the base amount,” he said.
Lance added the additional money at year’s end allows the entity to address ministry objectives that might otherwise not be possible.
The 2001 base budget was based on the assumption that 2001 receipts would reflect a 2 percent increase over year 2000 base budget receipts. DuBois said a 1.5 percent increase over 2001 is needed to reach the 2002 base budget goal of $39,250,000, which was approved by messengers to the 2001
Alabama Baptist State Convention in Huntsville. Messengers also approved a record CP challenge budget of $40,425,000 in 2002. The goal represents a 3 percent increase from the current year.
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