State Board adopts record budget, elects Corbitt to missions team

Members of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) approved a record Cooperative Program (CP) budget for 2006 during its Aug. 19 meeting in Montgomery. Board members also learned that Otis Corbitt, director of missions for Salem-Troy Baptist Association, had been elected to a position on the board’s missions mobilization team and approved financial assistance for several directors of missions, pastors and churches. 
   
The 2006 base budget anticipates CP receipts of $42.6 million. That is 2.75 percent above the 2005 budget. The challenge budget, including receipts for Alabama Cooperative Program Causes, totals $43.65 million.  
   
SBOM Executive Director Rick Lance told board members the new goal is conservative, making it reachable. Lance emphasized his priority of being able to reach the base budget so departments of work, as well as related entities, could do realistic budget planning. 
   
He also emphasized that Alabama Baptists use a “definitive understanding of the Cooperative Program. We do not have a cafeteria approach to CP giving,” he declared. “Only undesignated dollars that support all of our work are considered Cooperative Program dollars.” 
   
Lance praised Alabama Baptists for their giving to Southern Baptist related causes.  He pointed out that in 2004, 55.44 percent, or $35,085,116, of all funds distributed by the SBOM went to Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) causes. Those numbers include special missions offerings. 
   
The proposed budget continues the division of CP dollars between Alabama and SBC causes with 57.7 percent for state causes and 42.3 percent for SBC causes.  
   
“We are hopeful that our churches will continue to show healthy increases in undesignated giving,” Lance told members of the SBOM. “We are thankful our churches continue to see the wisdom of giving through the Cooperative Program as the God-blessed means of supporting and doing missions.” 
   
The proposed budget provides $12,769,475 for programs of the SBOM. Convention-related entities and auxiliaries will share $11,834,525 of which $8,971,608 goes to higher education. SBC causes will receive $18,041,000. 
   
The budget will now be presented to messengers attending the Nov. 15–16 state convention meeting in Huntsville for final approval. 
   
In other actions, members learned that the board’s executive committee had elected Corbitt as a staff associate “responsible for planting churches primarily directed toward reaching Anglos.” He also will work directly with the state’s directors of missions. 
   
Corbitt is a former missionary serving under the SBC International Mission Board as a church planter. He also served as pastor of churches in Alabama and Georgia and is a veteran, reaching the rank of captain in the U.S. Army, and later served as a National Guard chaplain. Corbitt holds a master’s of divinity degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. 
   
Board members also approved financial assistance for the new directors of missions in Etowah, Lookout Mountain and Tallapoosa Baptist associations. 
   
Members also received a report from the board’s church-planting subcommittee that financial assistance for pastors’ salaries had been approved for five new church starts, five churches had received grants to assist with the purchase of property and four churches had been granted building loans.