A small group of us sat around a table talking about Baptist life in a particular Baptist association. We talked about the annual meeting, about associational training events, about keeping churches informed about associational activities and business, about all the things preachers talk about when they stop long enough for an informal visit.
One of the topics was giving — specifically, Cooperative Program giving. April 18 was Cooperative Program Sunday on the Southern Baptist Convention calendar. Thousands of churches across the nation took time to acknowledge the principles of shared giving that make the Cooperative Program the most successful missions funding approach yet developed.
Cooperative Program is the name of the giving channel most Southern Baptists use to fund missions programs at home and around the world. It is a cooperative partnership between the local church, the state convention and the national convention.
In this particular association, not a single church observed Cooperative Program Sunday. In fact, a sizable portion of the churches did not contribute anything during the last calendar year through the Cooperative Program or through Alabama Cooperative Causes, a giving channel used by a handful of churches to support Alabama Baptist causes only.
As we talked and checked the records, it became obvious that many of these churches had not contributed to missions through the Cooperative Program for a number of years. Basically they were Baptist churches whose visions for the Lord’s work seemed bordered by the boundaries of their local area.
Later I checked the subscriptions to The Alabama Baptist for the association and for the individual churches. I was not surprised to find that all but one of the churches which did not give to missions through the Cooperative Program did not subscribe to the state Baptist paper for their active resident families.
To see that the majority of churches that did contribute through the Cooperative Program also provided The Alabama Baptist to their resident families was not surprising either. Earlier, in a conversation with Alabama Baptist Executive Director Rick Lance, we had commented on the fact that the number of Alabama Baptist churches which contribute annually through the Cooperative Program closely parallels the number of churches which have budget accounts with The Alabama Baptist.
The parallel is not surprising. Baptists only give to things they care about. They can care about only those things they know about. In Alabama, the state Baptist paper is the primary source of missions information about what God is doing through Baptists in our state, our nation and our world.
In other words, The Alabama Baptist provides the information that allows Baptists to work together in a cooperative manner to do the programs of missions and ministry. The state Baptist paper and missions — missions giving, missions praying and missions going — are inseparable.
Political theorists have long taught the important relationship between common actions and common information. It is impossible, political science teaches, for volunteer groups to have common actions without common information.
If that teaching is true in Baptist life, one would expect that churches which provide the state Baptist paper to their active resident families would be more supportive of missions than those churches which do not provide the paper. That is exactly what a number of studies found.
Churches which furnished the paper to active resident families gave about one percent more to missions through the Cooperative Program than churches which provided the paper only if someone asked for it. Such churches also gave more to missions through special missions offerings.
The difference between churches which furnished the paper to their families and those which did not provide the paper at all was much more pronounced.
A similar pattern was found when missions participation was measured.
Why? Because the state Baptist paper helps enlarge the missions vision of readers through stories about state, national and international missions. Because the state paper helps readers know they are a part of something great, something that reaches around the world with the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Because the state paper helps readers understand how Baptists work together cooperatively to do the missions program.
The result? More missions giving. More missions going. More missions praying. More missions awareness by members and by the church as a whole.
The Cooperative Program and the state Baptist paper go together. If you want to know about missions programs funded through the Cooperative Program, read The Alabama Baptist. If you want your church to give more to missions through the Cooperative Program, begin by making sure your members receive The Alabama Baptist.
Week after week, issue after issue, your state Baptist paper helps support missions giving through the Cooperative Program.
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