EDITOR’S NOTE — This is part 5 of 5 in a series of stories related to Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee President Ronnie Floyd’s Vision 2025 proposal that will be voted on at the SBC annual meeting in June. To follow the series, visit tabonline.org/vision2025.
Bottom line for how to achieve Action Step 5, according to Floyd: Engage more effectively with churches and better communicate a concise and compelling Great Commission vision that will encourage them to support the Cooperative Program.
As the Cooperative Program celebrates the 100th anniversary of its launch in 2025, Vision 2025 calls for reaching $500 million in annual receipts again, like what was happening with giving 15 years ago.
“The Cooperative Program is the catalyst for our Great Commission vision,” said Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. “Without our work together through the Cooperative Program, none of this happens.”
The CP is Southern Baptists’ unified plan of giving through which cooperating Southern Baptist churches give a percentage of their undesignated receipts in support of their respective state convention and SBC missions and ministries, according to sbc.net.
CP receipts down
The CP surpassed the $500 million goal for five consecutive years, 2005–2008, hitting $541.9 million in 2008. But the Great Recession prefaced a decrease in CP offering receipts in 2009 to $495.2 million — a decrease that continued through 2020, which saw receipts of $467 million, a decline of almost $75 million from the high in 2008 (see “Total Cooperative Program Giving” chart below).
In comparing financial gifts in 2008 to those in 2020, the average inflation rate of 1.55% per year must be considered. In 2008, $1 million would have the purchasing power of $1,221,599 in 2020 by most estimates, thus making the decrease in receipts more costly in terms of funding for Southern Baptist missions and ministries.
Even after the U.S. economy rebounded somewhat after the recession, CP gifts over a 10-year period, 2010–2019, continued to drop, going from $495.2 million in 2010 to $462.3 million in 2019, a decrease of $32.9 million.
During the same time period, giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions increased from $145.7 million in 2010 to $159.5 million in 2019, an increase of $13.8 million. The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions increased from $54.3 million in 2010 to $61.6 million in 2019, an increase of $7.3 million.
Even with the combined $21.1 million in Southern Baptist gifts to the annual missions offerings, the net decrease in CP giving over the 10-year period of $32.9 million was not recovered in missions offering receipts.
One notable trend since the Great Recession of 2008–2009 is that the number of churches not giving through the CP has increased.
Giving trends
In 2019, more than 40% of Southern Baptists’ 48,709 churches did not give, compared to 2008 when those not giving were approximately 27.5% of Southern Baptists’ 45,690 churches.
While the impression for churches considered in “friendly cooperation” with the SBC may indicate that the church gives at least a modest amount through the CP, that is actually not the case.
Giving through the CP is one way to cooperate but not the only way.
For example, if a church chooses not to give through the CP but instead sends a financial contribution of any amount to any Southern Baptist entity, such as one of the missions boards or seminaries, then that church is considered to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC.
According to “SBC FAQs: A Ready Reference” by Keith Harper and Amy Whitfield, a church must meet three standards of cooperation in order to seat messengers at the SBC annual meeting each June:
- Have a faith and practice that closely identifies with the convention’s adopted statement of faith.
- Have formally approved its intention to cooperate with the SBC.
- Have made undesignated financial contribution(s) through the CP, and/or through the convention’s Executive Committee for convention causes, and/or to any convention entity during the fiscal year preceding.
Those churches that do not give through the CP but do give in some other way can report their financial gifts on the Annual Church Profile in a category labeled Great Commission Giving.
Messengers to the 2011 SBC annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, adopted a recommendation to add the category of Great Commission Giving to the ACP to include “contributions to any Baptist association, Baptist state convention and causes and entities of the Southern Baptist Convention,” Harper and Whitfield wrote.
A second notable trend since the Great Recession is that the percentage of CP giving has decreased from an average of 6.08% of the church budget in 2008 to 4.82% in 2019. Counting only the churches giving through the CP, the percentage decreased from 6.79% in 2008 to 5.29% in 2019, a full 1.5% decrease in giving from the churches (see “Status of Churches and Average Percentage of Giving” chart, this page).
In his February message, Floyd reported the 1.5% decline in church giving since 2008 equates to more than $130 million that could have been received from churches in 2019 if their percentage of giving had remained at pre-recession levels and that CP giving would have been just under $600 million in 2019.
Also, messengers to the 2011 SBC annual meeting, in conjunction with approving the Great Commission giving category, approved a recommendation that the “Convention respectfully request all Southern Baptist churches strive to meet a goal of increasing their Cooperative Program gifts by 2.5% of undesignated gifts by the end of the 2013 calendar year.”
In actuality, the percentage of church gifts to the CP increased from 5.41% in 2012 to 5.50% in 2013 but then dropped to 5.47% in 2014. The percentage has decreased every year since then.
To reach or surpass the $500 million goal will require a 2.65% sustained annual growth in CP receipts, said Floyd.
Not keeping up
In reporting CP giving statistics as a part of Vision 2025, Floyd acknowledged CP giving has not recovered to its pre-recession levels as fast as other areas of philanthropy in the secular arena, noting that Southern Baptists typically lag behind the growth of the gross domestic product, philanthropic giving, individual giving and religious giving.
Floyd explained the lag reflects that Southern Baptists are not engaging and communicating with churches effectively, are not “sharing and living a consistent message of who we are with the churches because we keep walking on our own message,” and “are not providing the churches with a concise and compelling Great Commission vision that will move them to support it (the CP).”
But “help is on the way,” he promised.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability reported that donations to some small and mid-sized charitable organizations were up 7.6% in the first nine months of 2020 over 2019, and the number of donors was up by 11.7%.
For Christians, emotions motivate charity, Barna research reported in 2018. People gave, the research noted, because they believed they could make a difference (62%) or they saw or heard a moving story (45%).
Greater cause
Acknowledging the downward trends in CP giving, Floyd challenges Southern Baptists, “For the greater cause, we need to learn from this data. … The growth of the Cooperative Program is the certain way we can participate in funding these strategic actions of Vision 2025. … Southern Baptists cooperate together for the greater cause — the propagation of the gospel to every person in the world.”
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