The percentage of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) missions dollars going to overseas work will increase if a key recommendation from the SBC’s Executive Committee (EC) is adopted during the June 14–15 SBC annual meeting in Phoenix.
The $186 million Cooperative Program (CP) Allocation Budget to be proposed during the SBC annual meeting would increase the International Mission Board’s (IMB) percentage of budget receipts from 50 percent to 50.2 percent and decrease the EC’s percentage by the same amount, to 3.2 percent. The EC also voted to recommend directing 51 percent of any missions receipts exceeding the budget to the overseas missions entity.
The Great Commission Resurgence (GCR) Task Force report, which was adopted during the convention’s 2010 annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., had asked the EC to consider a 1 percent increase to the IMB. EC President Frank Page told the assembly he wanted to move toward that goal as quickly as possible.
Page said that in his five months at the helm of the EC he had already had to make “gut-wrenching” decisions, including a 19 percent staff cut, to be fiscally responsible and bring spending in line with reduced income.
“I want to send out a message that what some call ‘bureaucracy’ … we’re reducing it,” Page said, noting he was proposing a seven-year move toward reducing the EC’s portion of the budget to 2.4 percent. “We’re going to make sure we’re doing everything we can to say to our world, ‘We care about you.’”
The proposed $186 million CP Allocation Budget reflected the economic realities by taking a more conservative approach to the SBC’s fiscal strategy. For several years, new budgets have been based on actual receipts from the previous year, a process that works well in growing economies when missions receipts are rising. That process, however, is counterproductive in down economic times — keeping budgets higher when receipts actually are declining.
The previous budgeting process would have proposed a 2011–12 budget of $191.7 million, but budget planners recommended the $186 million budget, believing that is a more realistic projection of actual receipts, based on recent and current patterns in the U.S. economy and receipts by churches and other charitable organizations. The lower figure allows Southern Baptist mission boards and seminaries to plan their spending for the coming fiscal year without as much concern for whether the income projections actually will hold true. Should CP receipts exceed the budgeted goal, the IMB would receive 51 percent of any overage. The other SBC entities would receive the same percentage as in the allocation budget, with the exception of the EC, which would receive 2.4 percent.
In other business:
• EC members also voted to recommend adding a category of “Great Commission Giving” to annual statistical reports, in response to another GCR Task Force recommendation.
The task force had suggested adding that category as a way of celebrating what Southern Baptist churches are doing in missions beyond the core strategy of giving through the convention’s CP. However, rather than replacing the existing “Total Missions Giving” category, the EC recommendation proposes adding the “Great Commission Giving” category, providing a clearer picture of the overall missions endeavors of SBC churches.
The EC statement recommends messengers to the annual meeting “respectfully request” that Southern Baptist churches “make or retain the Cooperative Program as the principal component of their missions-giving strategy” and “strive to meet a goal” of increasing their CP gifts by 2.5 percentage points in 2013.
• The EC decided that membership in a group that welcomes and affirms gays does not automatically disqualify a church from participation in the SBC.
Two years ago, the convention expelled a Texas church for violating a membership requirement banning churches that “act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior.”
At the SBC annual meeting last June, Wes Kenney, a messenger from Oklahoma, made a motion asking the EC “to consider any church’s affiliation with the Alliance of Baptists to constitute an action, which affirms, approves or endorses homosexual behavior.” By rule the motion was referred to the EC, which after study recommended against the idea.
Convention leaders said it would be unwise to disqualify a church simply because the Alliance claims it as a member. Should questions arise about a particular church’s qualifications, they said, they will continue to be handled on a case-by-case basis.
The EC recommendation, which will come in the form of a motion at this year’s SBC annual meeting June 14–15 in Phoenix, reports that the group “already is authorized to make recommendations to the convention between annual meetings in regard to such matters which would call into question the friendly cooperation of any local church on any grounds.” (BP, ABP)
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