The Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) recently approved three separate actions designed to assist Baptists of Venezuela and Baptists living in the Northeastern section of the United States. The actions came during the Jan. 29 meeting of the SBOM held at First Baptist Church, Huntsville.
Also approved were a series of motions ranging from a Cooperative Program budget goal for 2003 to financial assistance to several new churches in Alabama.
A total of $60,000 was approved for Venezuela. More than half the funds, $32,000, will be used to construct a wall around the national Baptist camp there, Camp Carabobo.
Alabama Baptist executive director Rick Lance explained that the land is located adjacent to the site of a major battlefield in the nation’s struggle for independence. If no wall is constructed by the property owners — Baptists of Venezuela — then the government can claim the land as a national memorial.
A second threat to the site is Venezuela’s laws concerning “squatters,” Lance said. In that country, an individual can move onto land not bounded by a fence or wall and claim it as one’s own.
The second largest portion, $16,500, will go for New Testaments and tracts to be used in efforts planned for later in the year. Alabama Baptists will also underwrite the Venezuelan Baptist Pastors Conference, training for volunteer missionaries and audiovisual needs of the Venezuelan Baptist Convention.
Impact Northeast — a multi- state convention partnership — will receive $40,000. The funds will go to the Pennsylvania-South Jersey Baptist Convention for church starts and to help revitalize and refocus existing churches.
Members of the SBOM also approved additional financing for partnership missions efforts through 2003. Of the $400,000 expected through investment and interest income, $150,000 will go to partnership missions. This is in addition to the ongoing Cooperative Program support for these efforts.
Other appropriations from the anticipated investment and interest income include $125,000 to be paid toward the indebtedness on the SBOM office building in Montgomery, $100,000 toward construction and renovations indebtedness for Baptist campus ministry centers and $25,000 toward the cost of the Church and Law Center housed at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law.
The current indebtedness on the SBOM office is about $5 million. Indebtedness for campus ministry centers is about $700,000.
In a third action related to partnership missions, board members voted to change their meeting dates from Aug. 15–16, 2002, to Sept. 5–6, 2002. The change will allow interested members to participate in Venezuelan missions projects scheduled for Aug. 12–19. An evangelism project is planned for Valencia and a discipleship training event for Maracaibo.
Board members also received a report from their New Work Committee that 19 churches had been approved for pastoral salary assistance. In addition grants to assist with the purchase of property were approved for five churches.
Also approved were Cooperative Program goals for 2003. The base budget goal will be $40,425,000, a 3 percent increase over the 2002 goal of $39,250,000.
The Cooperative Program State Causes goal for 2003 will be $400,000, the same as 2002. In 2001, $532,061 was contributed through this channel.
(TAB)
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