State conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) have embarked on a partnership like never before, said Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
Delivering his report to SBOM members meeting at Gardendale First Baptist Church on Feb. 28, Lance said, “We are engaging on a national campaign for the Cooperative Program (CP) … that will unify both the SBC and state conventions.
“This has never before happened the way it is happening,” he said, noting the partnership is vital and one he is excited about. “This is needed now more than ever, to be unified around the message of Jesus Christ and the methodology of the CP.”
Frank Page, president of the SBC Executive Committee, announced Feb. 23 that the SBC will partner with a network of state convention stewardship directors to produce CP and stewardship materials.
Page’s announcement came at a daylong meeting of the Stewardship Development Association (SDA), a consortium of state stewardship specialists. Alabama’s SDA representatives are Jim Swedenburg, director of the SBOM’s office of CP and stewardship development, and Randy Driggers, vice president for development for The Baptist Foundation of Alabama.
“SDA will be our preferred provider for production of stewardship and Cooperative Program materials,” Page told the gathering in Nashville. “You are much better at some things than we are. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
Last November, as a cost-cutting measure, he eliminated the Executive Committee’s CP and stewardship division and moved responsibility for CP promotion into his office.
C. Ashley Clayton, the Executive Committee’s associate to the president for CP and stewardship, said, “We are at the beginning of this relationship, so there are a lot of things we don’t know. But what we do know is what we have been doing to promote the CP hasn’t been working.”
Clayton said the Executive Committee is getting rid of its inventory of CP promotion material including videos and brochures.
“We are getting out of the resource business, although we will continue to produce the printed Missionary Moments prayer guide. We exist to help [state SDA representatives] promote the CP and do stewardship education,” he said.
Lance said he wasn’t sure how everything “would flesh out in Alabama,” but he noted during the SBOM meeting that he and all other state convention executive directors affirmed the 1925 historic relationship of the 50–50 split for CP dollars (between state conventions and the SBC) including shared ministries.
“Every state convention is different, and each one will come to its own determination about how that will be fleshed out,” Lance said.
Part of how the CP percentages will be dispersed will depend on what role the North American Mission Board (NAMB) plays in Alabama Baptist life.
“We are working out the details of what used to be called cooperative agreements, basically a strategic partnership agreement,” Lance said. “It will not be as generous as it was in the past, but it is a good effort to work together.”
Another aspect in figuring out the new CP percentage formula for Alabama Baptists will come from the Great Commission Ministries Study Committee.
This committee, which is the existing SBOM executive committee, was created in November by outgoing Alabama Baptist State Convention (ABSC) President Jimmy Jackson.
“As we begin a new decade … we want to have thoughtful and deliberate planning, to help Alabama Baptists focus our resources and conduct Great Commission ministries through the coming decade,” Jackson said to messengers attending the state convention annual meeting in Birmingham.
Noting the economic pressure a new committee would put on the convention budget, Jackson said he decided to appoint the existing executive committee as the committee.
“It is made up of ministers and laymen from every district of Alabama who have a close proximity to grass-roots Alabama Baptists,” he said. “It is the most efficient choice in time management and conserving CP dollars.”
Charged to study ways to better focus convention resources, committee members will serve for at least two years and bring a preliminary report to the 2011 convention and any appropriate recommendations to the 2012 convention.
John Killian, first vice president of the ABSC, reported to SBOM members that the committee is on track to deliver the preliminary report.
The committee met in January with Robert “Bob” White, executive director of the Georgia Baptist Convention and member of the SBC Great Commission Resurgence Task Force.
“Right now, we are in the fact-gathering stage,” Killian said. “We will meet with Frank Page and Kevin Ezell (president of NAMB) later this year.”
To give the committee enough time to do its job, a motion was passed during the SBOM meeting to change the Aug. 12 SBOM meeting to Oct. 14. This is the meeting in which the convention budget is submitted to SBOM members.
• the properties subcommittee reported on potential property for the disaster relief site and the Taylor Road property.
Negotiations are ongoing for the disaster relief property, said Mitch Gavin, chairman of the properties subcommittee. And the SBOM “is back to the beginning as far as prospective purchasers of the Taylor Road property,” he said.
The original developer withdrew his offer following the recent litigation concerning the property.
• Lance is encouraging Alabama Baptists to set aside March 27 as a Day of Prayer for the Middle East.
“While the Middle East has always been a hot spot, we have never seen this type of overall impact and unrest,” he said.
“Pray for those areas and the people in general and particularly for Christians as they try to be salt and light in a very extreme, difficult time.”
One blog that has already been set up by one Alabama Baptist is mepray.net.
• Lance also encouraged churches observing Sunday, Sept. 11, as I Will Remember Day to remember not only the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks but also what Jesus Christ has done for us. (BP contributed)
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