In my early days as a Baptist pastor few people, if any, every challenged the assumption that a cooperating Baptist church supported the Cooperative Program (CP). In the church of my youth the congregation voted to give 20 percent of undesignated receipts to missions through the CP. The church I served as youth pastor marked CP as a preferred item meaning missions gifts were paid first along with the water bill and the electric bill.
At Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., I learned that a cooperating church gave at least 10 percent of its receipts to missions beyond itself through the CP. Funds for local missions were supposed to be an entirely different budget item.
Southern Baptists even promoted standards for every Sunday School and every church. One of the marks for a church was giving at least 10 percent to missions through the CP. In the first church I served as pastor I led the church to increase its CP giving to the recommended 10 percent level.
Most of the promotion of CP was because of the cooperative nature of Baptists. Churches joined together to take the gospel message to more places and in different ways than any single church could do by itself. Promotion also stressed the balanced nature of the CP. It was a partnership of the church, the state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to do a variety of programs across local communities, across the nation and around the world.
Professors also offered a theological underpinning for churches tithing (channeling at least 10 percent) of their undesignated receipts through the CP. In Numbers 18:21, the Levites are given all the tithes in Israel as their inheritance in return for the work they do while serving at the Tent of Meeting (later the Temple).
In the same chapter (vv. 25–29) the Levites are instructed that they must give a tenth of all they receive as “the Lord’s offering” and this tenth is to be given to the Aaronic priesthood for their support.
Evidently this principle applied to all three tithes observant Jews were instructed to provide. The first tithe, often called the Lord’s tithe, was ordered in Leviticus 27:30–33. The festival tithe, a second tithe, is outlined in Deuteronomy 14:22–26. The charity tithe, collected once every three years, was commanded in Deuteronomy 14:28–29.
The Levites provided the point of collection for the tithes, the explanation went. But all who labored for the Lord, whether priest or Levite, were entitled to garner support from the tithes of the people. The principle for Levites giving beyond themselves was the tithe, the same guideline given the people. Similarly local churches provide the collection points for tithes and offerings but all who work in the ministries and missions done by cooperating Baptists are entitled to garner support from the tithes and offerings of the people.
No one claimed this was an exact model because of its obvious limitations. Churches are not Levites and those involved in state- and SBC-sponsored ministries and missions are not Aaronic priests. Still the Scripture passages were pointed to as providing guidance about why churches should channel at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts to missions through the CP.
It wasn’t long into my ministry before the assumption about CP giving began to be challenged. Critics called CP a “golden calf” and accused leading pastors of buying seats at the leadership table by their CP giving.
Instead of CP giving, denominational identity shifted to certain theological positions, evangelism activities or support of particular causes.
SBC and some state conventions elected various leaders who openly rejected the idea that churches should give at least 10 percent of undesignated receipts to missions causes through the CP. Eventually Southern Baptists adopted a new term — Kingdom Giving — that included giving to all missions causes and not just missions giving through the CP.
The result was predictable. CP giving declined drastically. Today the average Baptist church barely gives one-half the average of the 1980s. According to the 2012 SBC Annual, in the 1980s, the average percentage of undesignated receipts given by SBC churches through the CP was 10.50 percent. In the 1990s, the average percentage was 8.73 percent. In the 2000s, the average dropped to 6.80 percent. For the last five years, the average percentage of undesignated receipts given by churches to missions causes through CP is 5.78 percent and for the last year of record, 2010–2011, the average percentage was 5.41 percent.
Today national and state leaders promote CP giving with enthusiasm similar to that of leaders in the 1960s and 70s. Bravely they try to stop CP’s downward slide but there is little evidence of success. Instead it is not uncommon to hear pastors talk about abandoning the idea of cooperative missions embodied in the CP. In its place, some advocate funding only those efforts that directly benefit their particular church and its missions efforts. For some that might be an international project; for others, a North American missions undertaking; for still others it might be paying to provide seminary training for its ministers and members. This is how Baptists operated before 1925 when Baptists first adopted the CP.
Undoubtedly the Great Recession of recent years contributed to the downward trend in CP giving but the sad state of the economy is not the cause of the downward slide. The recession simply magnified the pressures already on what former generations of Baptists called a God-given blessing for missions and ministries.
So the debate goes on. For those who see the CP as a “golden calf” before which Baptist worship, CP giving will continue to fall and churches of that persuasion will boldly say that cooperating Baptist churches do not have to/should not give to missions through CP.
But there is another analogy for the CP, which reflects the beliefs of this writer. That analogy was offered in a recent associational meeting when the speaker described the CP as a “sacred donkey on which Southern Baptists have ridden taking the gospel to lost people around the world.”
If one views the CP in that way, then one will join me in giving a resounding “Yes” to the questions about whether or not churches should give to missions through the CP.
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