This week’s podcast held such great promise, as Tim Rogers had undergone a minor medical procedure requiring sedation earlier in the day. He got a good report from the test, and despite being advised by his physician that he should wait at least twelve hours before saying anything for which he could be held responsible, he joined us for the podcast. Needless to say, we were giddy with excitement at the possibility of a drug-induced rant from our brother in North Carolina. His wife, on the other hand, was understandably terrified. Sadly (for us, anyway), he managed to keep his wits about him as the discussion centered around state conventions and the Cooperative Program.
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Thanks for listening to the podcast. Our discussion this week focused on articles by or about state convention executive directors. Here are links to those articles:
I’m pastor of a church where a state convention was birthed in 1834. Our church was 8 years old at the time. We were 19 years old when the SBC was organized. We were 99 years old when the CP was created.
The first permanent pastor of our church was said to have baptized over 3000 souls during his lifetime of ministry.
My question to you about the CP is simple.
How in the world did God work through Baptists prior to 1925 and accomplish the birth of most of our state conventions and our national convention without the CP?
Guys, Adrian Rogers was right. We have made a Sacred Cow out of the CP.
The great mistake in 1925 was not in creating the CP but in effectively writing the local association out of the CP plan. We’ve got the greatest Great Commission Task force in America with feet already on the ground in our local associations – but they simply don’t have the funding to get the task done.
If the Local Churches and Local Associations can’t get the task of evangelizing our Jerusalem and Judeas we are foolish to believe the State Conventions and NAMB can with increased CP giving.
I and many others like me are for streamlining the State Conventions and putting the money back in the local associations for North American Mission Work and sending the rest of it to the IMB for Foreign Missions.
Excellent discussion in this podcast about the Cooperative Program and the work of the Great Commission Task Force. One of the things to keep in mind in thinking about the 50-50 split concept is that there are legitimate differences between the individual situations of the various state conventions. Many of the old line Southern Baptist states have agencies and institutions that Baptists (elected State Mission Board representatives and messengers to the annual meetings) in those states have decided should receive CP funding, i.e. colleges, children’s homes, retirement facilities, camps, etc. This means that the split that many want to think of as being a two-way split is really a three-way split in those states. For some of the newer state conventions, this isn’t an issue because they do not have state agencies and institutions to support. I’m from Kentucky and have discussed this in more detail out on our Great Commission Kentucky blog at http://www.greatcommissionkentucky.com/2009/07/kentucky-cp-giving-part-of-the-story/ if anyone wants to see how CP funds are divided in our state.
Jim,
I hear what you are saying, and would love to bring the local associations into the mix also. My biggest problem in the association with which our church is connected in MO is the extreme diversity (& that’s being nice) of theological perspectives among the churches. Our association has SBC/MBC, CBF/BGCM, and non-identifiable ‘Baptists’ involved. Anytime the SBC, or MBC, is brought up, certain churches simply will not participate, etc. It appears to me that the Conservative Resurgence has, as of yet, not fully impacted our state.
I definitely appreciate your emphasis on the local churches getting the job done in fulfilling our Great Commission calling. I pray that this emphasis will spark a renewed commitment from our churches throughout the SBC.
Robert,
Thanks for stopping by.
While I appreciate your concerns of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, I believe that you have set up an arbitrary justification in your statement of a “three-way” split of CP funds in your state. The bottom line is this, of every CP dollar received from the local churches in Kentucky, 62.68% stays in-state while 37.32% continues on to the national convention. ALL of the 62+% is administered by the Kentucky Baptist Convention and is divided among the various ministry needs within your state. To go beyond this ‘two-way’ split of CP dollars just muddies the water. For instance, why stop at three-way? Why not go to a five-way split and further subdivide along the lines of missions, administration, education, benevolence, facilities?
Indeed state conventions have varying numbers of ministries for which they are responsible. That is why the percentages of the two-way split are somewhat difficult to establish as a single, perfect ideal for everyone. I believe that the 50/50 split should be our goal in all our states, much the same way I believe that 10% is a worthy goal for every local church’s CP giving. Neither of these is biblically mandated but support our shared ministries as Southern Baptists. I believe that we evidence our value placed on these ministries by what we lead our people to give to them…as individuals, local churches, and state conventions.
May we all do more!
Sola Gratia!
Scott,
The old Missouri Associational structure is in dire need of being revamped. We’re not in the horse and buggy era any longer and the idea that every 25-40 square miles needs a Baptist Association is about as quaint as top hats and sideburns.
The beauty of the Associational model is that it is flexible enough to expand beyond geographical boundaries and also reform itself along any guidelines the affiliated churches so desire. The problem in most rural Mo. associations is weak leadership and an emphasis on the wrong priorities. I came to this state back when the local association was a mouthpiece and a lackey for the convention. I am now glad to see some associations reevaluating their mission and coming into the 21st Century.
As far as the conservative resurgence goes I’m hopeful it will be transcended by the GCR. The last couple of MBC conventions have demonstrated that even CR leaders and supporters are divided over just how far to take any CR agenda.
Scott, thanks for your response. Just to clarify, the reason I talk about a three-way split is because the Kentucky Baptist Mission Board only has one piece of a three-way pie to work with in serving churches and doing its work here in Kentucky. In our state, the largest piece (37.32% this year) goes to the SBC, the next largest (36.83%)is used by the KBC Mission Board and the third piece ($25.85 percent) is then divided among 10 different Baptist entities in the state. Those percentage divisions are set by Kentucky Baptists themselves through their elected Mission Board members and by their own votes as messengers to the annual meeting and not by convention executives.
Kentucky Baptists may very well adjust percentages in the future but they try to do so very carefully because every percentage increase for one ministry also results in a corresponding decrease in the funding available for some other important ministry. It can be a challenging balancing act as Baptists seek to set priorities and fulfill our Lord’s commands.
Brother Robert,
Help me understand something and I believe is at the heart of the “bloated bureaucracy” charge.
If we have IMB as a sending agency for our International Missionaries, and we have the NAMB as a sending agency for our church planters and others in North Amaerica, then why would a state convention put together a “Mission Board”? It seems the logic is that state conventions partner with the IMB and the NAMB, but to form their own mission sending board is contrary to the cooperation principle we would hold to as a convention.
Am I missing something?
Blessings,
Tim
Hi Tim, I’m not sure I totally understand your question but let me take a crack at what I think you are asking.
First, let me deal with terminology. The “Mission Board” in Kentucky refers to the people who have been elected from the churches and associations across the state to represent Baptists and make decisions in between annual meetings. Our Mission Board has about 180 members and is one of the most representative in the SBC. It reflects all parts of the state and all church sizes. It used to be called the “Executive Board” but that name was changed several years ago. Then there’s the Mission Board staff, of which I am a part, that carries out the work of the state convention.
Now on to the work of state conventions. This is somewhat of an oversimplification but state conventions do three primary things:
1) State conventions work to help strengthen and support the local church so that it is healthy and strong. This is accomplished through training events, consultation services, resource materials, and more. Without going into extreme detail, team names such as Evangelism Growth Team, Church Development Team, Leadership Development Team and Missions Growth Team give you somewhat of a clue about what our state staff does. (We work in especially close partnership with association directors of mission and the North American Mission Board in many areas such as church planting.) Most churches in Kentucky are quite small with bivocational pastors and these churches especially depend heavily on the state convention for this kind of support. Without strong churches at home, there will be diminishing support for missions work abroad.
2. State conventions help take the lead in ministry areas where it would be less effective for churches to try to go it alone. Disaster Relief is a good example of this. Kentucky Changers, a ministry and missions program in Kentucky similar to World Changers is another. Partnership Missions work is yet another and there are certainly more. The upcoming statewide “Find it Here” evangelistic campaign that we are doing in partnership with local churches, associations and NAMB is heavily dependent upon the coordinating work of the state convention. (By the way, NAMB says that North America is the world’s third largest mission field and, unfortunately, there are still parts of Kentucky that are some of the most unreached places in the nation.)
3. State conventions provide a highly accountable conduit for missions giving to a vast array of Baptist causes. The Cooperative Program was always designed to be a missions channel that allows churches of every size — from the very smallest to the largest — to effectively give to missions causes they believe in from children’s homes, camps, colleges and seminaries and national and international missions. State conventions manage this giving with systems of high integrity that Baptists can have confidence in. Just the amount of accounting work that takes place in state convention offices is pretty astounding.
This really just scratches the surface but I don’t want this response to get too long. You can learn more about the missions and ministries of the Kentucky Baptist Convention at http://www.kybaptist.org and each convention has a similar site. I’m also trying to answer as many questions like this one as possible out on our Great Commission Kentucky blog at http://www.greatcommissionkentucky.com.
Could all of this be done some other way? Sure it could but if you are concerned about bureaucracy now, just imagine what you would have if you took all that the state conventions do now and added that to the work of NAMB or some kind of combined missions board. And the more we centralize in Nashville, Atlanta, Richmond or some other locale, the farther away the decision-making processes get from the local churches.
I hope this answers your question without droning on too long. If not, let me know and I’ll give another try!
Thanks!
Tim,
I think that’s just terminology that some of the older state conventions still employ. It’s probably just a reference to what other conventions might call their executive committee. I don’t think it implies the existence of a “competing” mission board in Kentucky, unless one is ready to call every state convention with it’s own programs, staff, entities, missions, missions offering, etc. a “competing” board.
This discussion really strikes at the heart of the little tete-a-tete that played out in the Florida Witness a few weeks ago.
Brother Robert,
Thanks for the update. You are correct it was the terminology that was throwing me. I applaud you in what the KBC is doing. I believe there is validity to certain “duplicating” of ministries in the SBC/State Conventions–all of them not just Kentucky. But I also believe that is were the charge of “bloated bureaucracy” is coming.
Brother Stuart,
Thanks for your input.
Blessings,
Tim
Thanks Tim. I appreciate the excellent blog and great discussion here. I think we all agree that there are things we can do better and if there’s a better way to structure our work to be more effective as Southern Baptists, I am all for it. The state convention staff members I am familiar with across the country are deeply committed and called workers for the gospel whose only desire is to see God glorified and more people come to Him.
I think some of the terminology that was used early on in the GCR discussion and continues to linger is somewhat unfortunate. I can’t speak for every state convention but I know we certainly do not feel very bloated here in Kentucky. Our staff is smaller now than it was when I came on board 11 years ago and during the time I’ve been here, we’ve never seen an increase in program dollars as the inflation rate has tended to outstrip increases in giving. In fact, we have several positions right now that are vacant and not being filled due to budget restraints.
The use of technology and a constant search for ways to be more efficient have enabled us to maintain most missions and ministry activities so far but this becomes more and more challenging every year. We serve a great God, however, and I am sure He will give us all wisdom and discernment as we seek Him in determining the best way forward both at the national and state convention level.