One of the things I want to move to pretty quickly with this blog is the Cooperative Program funding formula for Kentucky since the amount of money used for various kinds of missions and ministries throughout the Southern Baptist Convention will be one of the major discussion points of the Great Commission Task Force. Before going there though I want to use this post to review a little bit of Kentucky Baptist and CP history in order to provide context.

Baptists have a rich history in Kentucky and the state has long taken a leadership role in Southern Baptists life. Baptists were among some of the first pioneers who conquered the Alleghenies and headed westward with the Gospel of Christ. Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown is the oldest church in the KBC. It was founded in 1781 and was the first evangelical church organized west of the Alleghenies. You might say that Baptists helped bring the Great Commission to Kentucky when the territory was quite literally one of the places we would now call the “ends of the earth.”

The Kentucky Baptist Convention itself is one of the oldest Baptist conventions. It was formed in 1837, eight years before the Southern Baptist Convention was founded in 1845.

Kentucky Baptists trace the origins of the Cooperative Program back to our state as well. On Nov. 16, 1915, the General Association of Baptists in Kentucky (now the Kentucky Baptist Convention) met at Jellico, Tenn., near the Kentucky state line, and adopted a budget plan for the support of all denominational projects throughout the state and convention.

A leader in this plan was Harvey Boyce Taylor who originally developed the idea as “the box plan” at the First Baptist Church of Murray beginning about 1900. Prior to the “box plan,” the Murray congregation operated as did other churches. Committees were appointed to seek gifts for missions and subscriptions for the pastor’s salary and other needs.

Missions work beyond the local level was supported through special appeals. Most of the schools and mission boards sent field workers to the churches for special offerings. This was not only costly and inefficient, but many worthy mission causes were neglected.

With Taylor’s “box plan,” boxes were placed at each door and the church would “walk by faith” — depending upon God to put it in the hearts of the people to contribute the amount needed to meet all of the needs of the church. The funds would then be budgeted to the various needs on a percentage basis. For example, the 1914 budget for the Murray First Baptist Church showed the following percentages: Missions, 50 percent; Pastor’s salary, 25 percent; Assistant Pastor’s salary, 5 percent; Sunday School, 10 percent; Miscellaneous, 5 percent; Poor, 5 percent.

In 1905, Taylor started serving on the Executive Board of the General Association of Baptists in Kentucky — a position he would hold for the next 20 years. This provided him with an opportunity to give wider exposure to the stewardship work of the Murray congregation and he was named chairman of a committee to consider the question of unifying Baptist work across the state in 1913. In 1914-15, he and another member of the committee toured the state to promote the unification plan and the unified offering approach, leading to its adoption at the meeting in Jellico.

Kentucky’s adoption of the unified budget plan directly influenced the 1925 inauguration of the Cooperative Program as the Southern Baptist Convention embraced the idea of a unified budget as an improved way to support its missions and ministries.