In Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this series, I’ve focused on how similar the rhetoric surrounding the Great Commission Resurgence today is to the rhetoric regarding the newly formed Cooperative Program in the mid 1920s. In this final post in this series, I think you’ll see this to an even greater extent in the missions debates of the two eras.

Then, as now, the focus of discussion surrounding the Cooperative Program was on concerns about the best ways to carry out missions and evangelism. Once the Cooperative Program was adopted in 1925, promotion of the plan within the churches began in earnest. State papers and denominational leaders stressed that if church members would simply tithe one-tenth of their income to their churches, the resulting $150 million would establish CP gifts from the churches at a level that would provide for “all of our (Southern Baptist) activities with reasonable adequacy.”

This is certainly a message heard today as state convention executives point out that the declining percentage of church gifts to the Cooperative Program seems to be one of the drivers of the push to reallocate this funding. Here in Kentucky, for instance, the percentage of church undesignated gifts to support missions through the Cooperative Program has dropped from 10.1 percent in 1997 to 6.9 percent last year. The competitive pressure represented by GCR to reallocate may not even exist if churches were increasing or at least maintaining giving levels.

The Foreign Board (today’s International Mission Board) came out as a strong supporter of the Cooperative Program in 1925 as it was seen as a vital tool to help the Board get out of debt. The Foreign Board also continued promoting direct giving, however.

Supporters emphasized that there were missionaries ready to go to the field who were unable to go because of the lack of funds. “Scores of young people, feeling the leading of God, have prepared to go and carry the gospel to all the world” but are “compelled to remain at home,” one author wrote in questioning Baptists’ commitment to the foreign mission field.

Later in 1925, the Foreign Board sent out a request to state conventions to ask for a special offering “over and above” CP giving. The appeals implored “every one who loves the Lord Jesus, loves foreign missionaries and foreign mission work, to remember that the time has come for Southern Baptists to take care of their foreign mission work if they purpose ever to take care of it.”

One missionary wrote, “What in the world is the matter with Southern Baptists? Do they no longer believe in sending the Gospel to the lost souls in heathen lands?…Shame on us that we are spending many times as much for education at home as we are spending on preaching the gospel to millions of perishing lost souls in other lands!”

A writer to the Western Recorder newspaper accused Baptists of having “lost our vision—or perhaps we never had a vision–of a soul-hungering world. We are thinking of our own selves, of our interests; maybe we are thinking of the work at home.”

Here in Kentucky, messengers listened to the special offering request as well as to the argument from some that the Cooperative Program should be the primary support mechanism so that all Baptist causes could be helped equally. In the end, the Kentucky state convention opted, as did all the other state conventions, to support both the Cooperative Program and the special offering. The special offering was seen as an “emergency” measure to deal with the Foreign Board’s debt problem.

Echos of this debate were heard this summer as some advocated for a special “Christmas in August” offering for IMB. Supporters pointed to the need to help the IMB recover from its budget shortfall while others expressed concern that a special offering in August could both hurt receipts for state missions offerings and dilute the regular Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.

The intensity of the rhetoric in 1926 and 27 grew as pressure from the debt of the SBC mission boards mounted. Some were firm in saying that everyone needed to stick to and support the Cooperative Program whether they agreed with every funding decision within the unified budget or not. One even said that the SBC needed “folks who are willing to support a plan in which they themselves may not believe, just because brethren in whom they have confidence believe in the plan.”

Others, however, were calling for another special “debt-paying” campaign and bristling over suggestions that they should be hemmed in by the Cooperative Program. This seems strikingly similar to current SBC President Johnny Hunt’s statement earlier this summer that “if states are not willing to release greater percentages and greater dollars to the nations, they are going to find people like Johnny Hunt designating their dollars where they want it themselves instead to sending it to them when they’re not listening to us.”

Another important comparison in the rhetoric of past and present concerns the division of resources between state and national bodies. The original hope of the Future Program Commission was that there would be a 50-50 division of CP funds between state and national causes. Originally this meant a 50-50 split of all gifts — including special offerings — minus the expenses the states incurred in promoting and handling the offering funds.

Some in Baptist life even went as far as to say that it should be a 50-50-50 split. The Union Association’s vision, for instance, was that “out of every dollar the local church gets, it keeps fifty cents and gives fifty cents to our general causes; out of every dollar our general cause gets, the state keeps fifty cents and fifty cents goes to the whole South; and out of every dollar the whole South gets, it keeps fifty cents and sends fifty cents to the world beyond.” All seemed to recognize and accept the fact that each church and denominational body was autonomous in making the funding decisions, however.

Of course, that recognition of autonomy didn’t eliminate intense discussion on the matter. Some Baptists felt strongly that the states were retaining too much and thereby hurting missions efforts — especially international missions efforts.

“Can the denomination justify in the eyes of God and to a lost world the scale of our home expenditures in the face of such retrenchment as the denomination is forcing the Foreign Board to make?,” said a statement from the Foreign Board’s October 1926 meeting.

State leaders countered, however, that funds were also needed for the important work of state missions. They pointed out as well that state missions work  had sacrificed funding in order to implement the unified giving plan of the Cooperative Program.

The Western Recorder became particularly offended at statements that are remarkably similar to some made this past summer. In a 1927 editorial headlined “Extreme Statements Do Not Help,” the editor had the following to say:

Now to seek further [Foreign Missions funding] by exaggerated or even untrue statements is so foolish that no one but a tyro should be guilty of it. Yet we ran across this statement blazoned prominently on a printed placard the other day: ‘Southern Baptist churches spent in 1925 $36,700,000 at home and $2,200,000 for Foreign Missions — $18 each for self and $1 for the world.” … Foreign Missions is tremendously great beyond all cavil. To the end of helping Baptists more quickly to realize its greatness, it is to be hoped that the kind of advocacy we have here illustrated may not embarrass it in the house of its friends. We equally object to this method when it is used in appeals for Home Missions, State Missions, Education, Hospitals, or other causes.

We’ve seen a similar rhetorical flourish in 2009 through a report by David Palmer, a May master of divinity graduate and director of financial development at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, that concluded “Southern Baptists spend $1.31 per person for missions in North America” while only spending “$0.04 per person for missions to reach the world.” In both 1927 and 2009, the dramatic rhetoric seemed more designed to fan emotions than it was to truly enlighten.

One final interesting similarity between the  1920s and current discussion is the decision to use the term “Great Commission” in framing the conversation. In 1925, authors promoting the priority of international work tended to cite Matthew 28:19 — especially the phrase “all nations.” Those who emphasized the importance of all Baptist work tended to focus on Acts 1:8 and its attention to local, regional and national evangelism in addition to the international mandate. A 1926 Kentucky state convention advertisement promoting CP even said this explicitly in proclaiming “Kentucky Is Our Judea!”

We see the same choices in the use of scripture today. Those who are advocating a greater commitment to international missions causes have chosen “Great Commission Resurgence” as the brand name for their efforts. Meanwhile, even before GCR became public, the North American Mission Board and state convention publications were consistently using Acts 1:8 as a rallying verse. For instance, NAMB has an effort called the Acts 1:8 Challenge and the Kentucky Baptist Convention has a summer leadership program for college students called the “1:8 Leadership Experience.”

So what’s the takeaway from all this comparison of the past and the present? I think there are at least three that are instructive for us today:

1. Baptists absolutely love missions — especially international missions — and are very committed to fulfilling Jesus’ command as articulated in both the Matthew 28:19 and Acts 1:8. There has been a consistency to this for as long as we have existed as a denomination. This is good and healthy. It also means that we will probably always be questioning ourselves and striving to find the best way to implement this desire to obey our Lord.
2. Baptists tend to direct their passion for evangelism in multiple directions. For some, international missions must always be the greatest calling. Others see an overwhelming number of lost people close to home and feel strongly that efforts to strengthen the home base is vital in order to assure a steady stream of funds for international efforts. These passions create a tension that is generally healthy and is not likely to go away no matter what the current study committee ends up recommending.
3. Baptists value their autonomy but desire to cooperate. Since every church and denominational body is autonomous there is no mandate to cooperate. We could all just choose to operate independently and go on our merry way. But most of us value the synergy and appreciate the leverage that cooperation gives us. We Baptists can sometimes get intense and passionate in pressing our positions but in the end tend to choose to work together even if we don’t get everything we desire. That’s an encouragement for this current discussion because while everyone can pretty much get on board with the general statements that have been made so far about being better stewards and fulfilling the Great Commission, it is quite possible that there will be many opinions and little consensus when the Great Commission Task Force’s recommendations are initially released.

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Special Note: I want to offer a special word of thanks to my son, Mark Reeves, for conducting most of the research and developing many of the themes expressed in this series of posts. Mark, a History major at Western Kentucky University, spent several weeks this summer digging through the dusty archives of the Kentucky Baptist Convention to find relevant material from the Western Recorder, the annuals of the state and Southern Baptist conventions and the works of various Baptist historians to help me get up to speed on Kentucky’s Cooperative Program history. Click here to see Mark’s original paper and the citations for the material used in this series of posts.