This post continues the GCR Myth Buster series I introduced earlier. Find links to the other posts released so far at the bottom of this one.
One of the statements I sometimes read within the Great Commission Resurgence discussion is that Southern Baptists do not understand how their Cooperative Program funds are being used. This usually shows up in a tweet or within a blog post with the implication that if Southern Baptists did understand how their money is being spent, they would somehow be disappointed. I disagree with this sentiment, however, and feel that in general most Baptists do understand that they have put into place an extremely accountable and transparent system for managing their missions giving through CP.
It’s true that many Baptists in the pews do not know as much about their church budgets or the workings of their association, state convention or national convention entities as they could. Most churches have only a small fraction of their members show up for business meetings and fewer still attend association, state convention and Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings. I also think it is safe to say that most Baptists have little specific knowledge about the budget and staffing of an organization like a seminary which may not even be located in their home state. My impression from talking to pastors and being in churches during the past year is that awareness of even this GCR discussion, while of much interest to those of us who are engaged in it, has not penetrated very far in most churches.
There are number of reasons for this. First, it’s only natural for people to focus most on the local. Most of us live very busy lives and have enough going on in our own local church that it’s easy to hit information overload. As I think back to the days before I served with a Baptist organization, I know that I didn’t pay nearly as close attention to all that was going on in Baptist life as I do now.
Second, many churches have moved away from discipleship training on Sunday nights and missions education programs for children, which is where Southern Baptists of past generations largely learned about the Cooperative Program and their Southern Baptist entities. I’m not advocating trying to recapture the past from a programming standpoint but I think it’s important to realize that many churches have never found another way or time to effectively focus on this kind of important information.
Finally, I think that the folks in our pews generally have confidence in their pastors and the elected leadership throughout the SBC and, therefore, don’t necessarily feel a need to keep up with all of the details. In a sense, this is a good thing. When the sanctuary is full for a business meeting, it usually means something has gone wrong. But, of course, it’s never a good thing to become lackadaisical about God’s work so we want people to be engaged.
I think that those Baptists in leadership positions and/or those lay people who do pay attention find that information and ways to be involved in directing CP giving are readily available. As usual, I can only speak with authority about the process in Kentucky but I think this is generally true across all of our state conventions and national entities as well.
Here in Kentucky, we work to help people understand how their Cooperative Program gifts are being used. In addition to Web pages and blogs such as this one, we put out a variety of printed and video-based materials. We also regularly send Mission Board staff members to speak to churches and finance committees and answer any questions they may have.
Each year, we also put out a brochure that has all of the numbers for the current budget as well pie charts showing the allocations of funds between the state mission board, our Baptist entities and the SBC. This piece is sized to fit as an insert into a standard church bulletin and we offer to send churches as many as they need free of charge. The print order for these well-received brochures usually starts at about 80,000 and it is not unusual for us to have to reorder during the year to ensure we have enough to distribute. For churches that want more detailed information, we even run reports that show how that specific church’s gifts were divided and distributed.
Beyond just putting the information out there, however, Kentucky Baptists also have the opportunity to be engaged in the process of allocating the Cooperative Program in several key places. Our Kentucky Baptist Mission Board is one of the most representative of any in the SBC in that we have about 170 members who represent the associations and regions of our state. The members are pastors and lay people and come from small, medium and large churches. Most of these individuals are elected on the association level by the churches’ messengers to their association meetings. (For those who want to be hands-on in this process, associations are usually looking for good individuals who would like to serve.)
It is from this Mission Board that the Business and Finance Committee, which reviews the budget proposal each year, is selected. Messengers from the churches themselves approve the CP budget goals during the annual meeting.
In terms of oversight on a state level, the Mission Board and each KBC entity is audited annually by an outside firm. The Mission Board’s Audit Workgroup of the Business and Finance Committee also reviews the audits of each entity and reports its findings each year. All of the audit reports are included in the Convention annual and sent to all churches each year. The KBC’s Agencies and Institutions Committee also meets regularly with the heads of Kentucky Baptist entities to hear reports and serve as a sounding board on behalf of the Mission Board and the Convention.
The KBC is committed to being good stewards of the gifts that Kentucky Baptists provide so generously. To this end, the funding formula for the way CP gifts are distributed to the various causes that Kentucky Baptists have said are important to them is reviewed regularly. For the past several years, the Convention has been making incremental adjustments to increase the amount sent to support missions causes on the SBC level. And, Kentucky Baptists have indicated that they approve of the CP allocations. Messengers have approved budget goals overwhelmingly in annual meetings and Mission Board members have overwhelmingly approved the detailed budgets.
A survey of pastors and laity in Kentucky Baptist churches in 2006 conducted by J. David Schmidt and Associates also showed strong support for the Cooperative Program allocations. In that survey, 84 percent of the pastors said their church was committed to participating in CP the way it is structured. Only 7 percent said the way the CP is structured was not a good fit for their congregation. (This included both pastors who wished to see more funds directed toward the SBC as well as some who wished to see less.)
As we all know, clear communication can be difficult and I know we will have to continually be looking for new and better ways to make sure Southern Baptists are informed and engaged in their churches, associations, state and national conventions. I strongly encourage everyone who reads this to do what you can to inform your congregations about the Cooperative Program, the way it works and about how the gifts are allocated. Please let me know as well if you have ideas about how we can better share from both an informational and inspirational perspective about how God is at work through Southern Baptists. The word “cooperative” is the operative word in Baptist life and we need to all be well informed and deep in prayer if we are to make the best decisions about moving forward to fulfill the Great Commission!
Previous Posts in this Series:
There is not a question among Southern Baptists about the transparency or accuracy of the accounting. There is however a question among younger and many middle-aged Southern Baptists a question of why so few of our CP dollars make it out of our state – why the allocation does not shift more favorably in the direction of funding initiatives of the SBC as the state succeeds in establishing thriving local churches in their geographically delimited territory – i.e. the state. (To be sure, this question is also resonating among some elder Southern Baptists as well as they think through the necessity of planting thriving churches where none or few exist in order to make disciples of all nations. It is a paradigm shift that sometimes takes a bit longer to see/accept, but mary are equally concerned about the status quo in allocations. )
These are two separate questions. Transparency and allocation. I have found by direct experience that the average, busy Southern Baptist is not aware that, on average, 62 percent of their CP $ stay in their state. I have also found (by direct personal interaction over the past 10 months) that they believe this should change dramatically – particularly in states which already have thousands of good churches in which the gospel is being faithfully proclaimed while many people grousps wait in darkness for even one such church.
Thanks for the excellent comment. You do a good job of articulating the concerns that some do have about the allocations. In talking about transparency, I was just trying to share that KBC makes every effort to make all of the information about allocations available to Kentucky Baptists and that Kentucky Baptists themselves — both through their elected Mission Board members and through their participation in the annual meeting — are the ones who make the decisions about setting the allocations.
For more about the CP budget allocations in Kentucky, check out the posts in my series on Kentucky CP giving at: http://www.greatcommissionkentucky.com/category/series-kentucky-cp-giving/
Based on what I’ve heard and read, I don’t think the transparency of the accounting or of the process are in question or dispute.
I do believe that, until recently, many people did not realize how few of their dollars actually made it to the international mission field. This is largely a result of the separate accounting between state and SBC. The casual observer sees the SBC chart and think, “wow, 50 percent to the IMB, I guess that’s good.” It doesn’t occur to the average guy or gal in the pew that that is 50 percent of 3.5 percent of 6 percent of what they give to their local church.
While accounting and process are not in question, there is a growing concern with the seeming lack of desire to reassess and recalibrate our allocation/strategy. Our allocations are a reflection of our theology. Disciples are made in thriving local churches – we should invest accordingly.
It is not 1925; yet we are not even meeting the allocation goals that were stated nearly a century ago (50/50). We need to embark upon a deeply introspective reassessment of our CP allocations on theologically-grounded, Great Commission grounds. No one is disputing there is great lostness in KY or the south. What is in question is why so much $ is spent in the south and, comparatively, so little is spent to reach the nations. On a per capita basis, we, Southern Baptists, spend 37 times more to reach an American or Canadian than we do to reach an African. That number is even greater when you just look at the south.
Because state conventions in the south have been doing good Great Commission work in their geographic territories since 1925, there are now thriving theological churches among lost people where none used to exist. Sadly, this is not the case in many places around the globe. Our Great Commission investments should reflect this reality. Currently, we invest most heavily where there is the greatest access to the gospel. It is right and good to ask if this should be the case. One ought to be able to ask this without being accused of being non-cooperative or seeking to dismiss the value of state conventions altogether.
Because state conventions in the south have been so successful in establishing thriving churches in their state, there should be a decreasing need to retain as much of the CP $ given in the state. As the thriving local churches they have nurtured take ownership of their Jerusalem and Judea, more funds may be confidently sent along to the SBC for churches to be planted among those who have little or no gospel access.
We have a great opportunity at present to think about the gospel and reflect the heart of Christ in our CP allocations. This is more than an allocation issue. Every preacher who has ever urged a congregant to examine his checkbook to see where his heart lies recognizes this is the case.
Daniel,
Good point about people looking at a chart from SBC or a chart from KBC and maybe not getting the whole picture. That’s definitely something we need to work on doing better. I’m not sure if you’re from here in Kentucky but one of the things we make available for churches is a little report that can be used as a bulletin insert that shows specifically in dollar amounts how that church’s gifts are divided and distributed. Maybe there are other things that we, the SBC and individual local churches can do to better inform members as well.
In regard to your point about being willing to recalibrate as needed, Kentucky Baptists do this pretty regularly. We had a Mission Study Committee whose work in 2003 led to the setting of specific goals and objectives in a plan we call Kentucky Baptists Connect. (The first five years of that plan have just ended and it has been renewed for three more years with additional and adjusted goals.)
Kentucky has also been incrementally increasing the amount it sends for SBC missions and ministries for the past several years. I expect this to continue at an even greater pace as Kentucky Baptists hear the cries of the lost people of our world.
Right now, in fact, our state has its own Great Commission Task Force which is looking at everything we do in light of Jesus’ command to reach those both across the street and across the world. Our task force will bring a set of recommendations to convention messengers at our next annual meeting.
I think one of the things you are rightly hitting at is the differences in understanding about the purpose of the Cooperative Program. I’ll be spending more time on this in an upcoming post but part of the disconnect seems to be with realizing that CP was created to provide funding for a wide variety of Baptist causes and not only international missions. That’s why CP gets used to support Christian higher education, children’s homes, work to strengthen churches, seminaries, etc. in addition to direct mission work here in the United States and around the world. This doesn’t diminish our responsibility for state, national and world missions though which is why the special offerings — Annie, Lottie and state missions — are layered on top of CP. Because CP is there providing foundational support, 100 percent of those dollars can go to their appropriate missions causes.
Just because this is the way the system has been set up to work certainly doesn’t mean it can’t be changed, though, if that’s what Southern and Kentucky Baptists feel God is leading them to do. It’s why I feel the current GCR discussion is helpful to all of us.