A special seminary offering being proposed by the president and trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, runs counter to a report adopted unanimously by the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee in September from its funding study committee.
Southwestern Seminary President Paige Patterson recommended during his report to the board of trustees Oct. 21 that the convention implement a special yearly offering to support the six Southern Baptist seminaries.
His proposal, backed by a trustee resolution, noted that seminaries are being forced to raise tuition rates, resulting in rising student indeptedness.
But the SBC Funding Study Committee- while expressing concern over student debt- recommended that the entire convention would be better served by educating Southern Baptists about the Cooperative Program (CP) and challenging them to follow the biblical model of tithing.
The report pointed to a steady decline in recent years in both individual giving and in the percentage of a church’s offerings passed on through the CP.
Recommendations
It listed seven recommendations, one of which was that “creating any additional special annual offering be discouraged in favor of making Christian stewardship and the Cooperative Program a top priority in Southern Baptist life over the next several years.”
“ The SBC Funding Study Committee believes the proliferation of special offerings weakens our unified approach to missions funding, detracts from the Cooperative Program and the existing missions offerings, and would be ineffective and cumbersome for the churches,” the report stated.
(BP)
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