Amuse yourself with over 28,000 articles on “death of denominations” and then do some sober thinking about the closest thing to a denomination to the average Southern Baptist pastor: his state convention.
Our beloved International Mission Board might be the latest to implement severe cuts in employment levels. Their August bombshell declared that 600-800 personnel would have to leave for the organization to have a viable future, one where the bills could be paid. This is an 11-15 percent cut in staffing.
That level of cutbacks looks pretty attractive to many state conventions. I’ll just mention Georgia and Florida. While it’s tough to get firm numbers on staff, I’ll make a conjecture that 50% cutbacks are closer to the norm for state conventions. None of the SBC level entities have dealt with cutting their staffing in half.
Here in Georgia a “reinvention” is underway in which
- We change our name from the commonly used, “Georgia Baptist Convention” to “Georgia Baptist Mission Board.”
- Our leader declares, “We are a missionary sending agency in Georgia.”
I’m OK with changing the labels, although some may confuse us with NAMB and IMB in our identification as a “sending agency.” The new GBMB has staff that serves GBMB churches and our common support “sends” these people around the state. Give me time to grieve the loss of the old “GBC” which rolls easily off the tongue and keyboard. “GBMB” is rather wooden, though just as toothy. I understand the desire to brand the GBC/GBMB as a missions enterprise.
- We decentralize, sort of.
GBC workers are high-mileage travelers. I have no complaint about any of them. Several have helped me immensely. In the future there will be a centralized staff but one that is supplemented and multiplied by “field based personnel”, clergy and church staff who are on a retainer to do stuff for churches. A suggested stipend of $1,000 per month, paid by the GBC, for a year’s worth of consulting. Resumes from church staff are now inundating the state convention.
The last time I needed guidance from a GBC expert on a specific church project I had to retain the employee on his spare time for a couple of thousand dollars. The GBC paid his salary, trained him, and gave him skills in demand of the churches. My church had to pay him to do the job. Maybe the field based people will do tasks like this for the churches without charging. We will see how this works out.
- We sell the building, maybe.
The last grand hurrah of the showpiece, centralized, first class denominational office building is the Georgia Baptist Missions and Ministry Center in Duluth. No state has a finer one. We’re closing it on Fridays and it “could” be sold for the right price to the right customer. The staff could move to more modest headquarters and excess funds put in trust for use in the state.
- We give the SBC an additional 2%
The GBC had their $25 million building debt paid off, indirectly, through the sale of hospitals we used to own. Half of the savings on debt service will go to SBC ministries. IMB gets about a quarter million additional funds. We use the other half here.
In our sunny neighbor state to the south, Florida, The Florida Baptist State Board of Missions, is downsizing and decentralizing.
- Statewide employees will be reduced from 115 to 61.
This is serious business. The savings from paying staff will raise the…
- SBC share of Cooperative Program revenues will go from 45% to 51%.
I believe this will but the FBSBM ahead of all other legacy state conventions is the CP “split.” I’m shocked at the rapid movement to give away CP revenues to the mission boards and seminaries. This is impressive.
- State staff will no longer take interim pastorates.
The new executive says what should be obvious to every state convention leader: having state staff take interim pastorates keeps them out of other churches. Want to get the average, loyal, supportive SBC pastor riled up? Start a conversation about these interim jobs.
- “Decentralization, regionalization and personalization” is the concept.
Some staff will live in various regions. The idea is a “new delivery system.”
Will changes such as these slow the death of the state convention?
I hope it hastens the death of the centralized state convention. When you can ask pastors what their state convention means to them and immediately get a variety of concrete, positive answers, then perhaps the obituary state conventions can be said to be premature.
The fact that GA is calling itself a “Mission Board” – and the history of tense relationships with current leadership – has led to some fears that this is a move to form a shadow denomination – something like the BGCT tried a few years ago. I hope your more positive take is the real story.
I’m a little confused. Are you saying that GBC is moving to give 2% more or is that your suggestion? (The initial suspicions I heard were that this would lead to them keeping a greater amount to do their own missions efforts – sort of like mega churches do). Can you clarify, O wise one?
Don’t have the link with me but the GBC had about $1.2m in debt service and are giving half of that to the SBC part of the CP.
Our convention is referred to as the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. ALSBOM.com. I don’t think we’re planning on a shadow convention here.
Several state conventions have “mission board” or “board of missions” or similar as their name. i am unaware of the GBC/GBMB doing anything to compete with IMB. Routinely, states do church planting and offer degrees that compete with the seminaries.
I am open to someone telling me something I don’t know.
Thanks
Kudos to Florida!
Decentralization is the way to go. There’s no better way to be beneficial to churches throughout the state then to have state convention employees living in the region for which they are responsible and very accessible to the pastors and churches. Technology allows for communication with the central office regularly without them having to be on site.
I think the biggest thing that state conventions need to always remember is that they exist to help the churches Carry out their ministry – the churches do not exist to sustain them. It seems many state conventions get that all backwards.
One philosiohy that is very well-known around the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia convention – SBCV – is the spoken (and lived out) statement – in one form or another – that state conventions are not Called or designed to carry out the duty of the local church and instead they exist to be a resource and assist local churches carry out the great commission.
Modest building and very few “central office staff” are also good.
The percentage of 51 – 49 in FL is in real money with nothing hidden. It will result in an over $1 million more to go to IMB and over $500,000 more for NAMB.
The downsizing will also result in more money be freed up to do ministry in Florida itself.
This good work is the result of calling Dr. Tommy Green as our new exec.
Here is the video presentation that he gave throughout the state: http://www.flbaptist.org/news/articles/green-shares-conventions-new-direction-florida-baptist-pastors/
Wow! This girl s really good news! Double and triple kudos to Florida!
“The Convention will return to a Biblical approach in church planting, with churches—not the state convention—planting churches. “We are not getting out of the church planting business,” he stressed. “We are just changing the model.”
He believes with the changes in percentages earmarked for the SBC in 2016, churches will increase their CP giving. The decrease in giving was once attributed to the downturn in the economy, he noted, but it is “no longer a financial matter, it’s a philosophical matter.”
“As the Cooperative Program dollars increase we’re going to continue to widen the gap,” he said.
“My heart is to lead the Florida Baptist Convention to be a Convention that sends 60 percent forward and keeps 40 percent here.””
*is really good news….
Tarheel,
You are exactly correct on the SBCV. As a pastor in VA for 10 years I have watched the SBCV evolve for the better. They went to decentralized staffing a few years ago, they sold a bigger executive office and moved into a more modest office, and they incrementally lead the state to a 51-49 percent split with 51 percent going to the CP.
The results have been that churches have better, more frequent contact with SBCV staff, when the SBCV calls for their churches to look for ways to step up CP giving it is more received because they led the way in this, and churches have been well supported by the state convention. I know change can be scary and frustrating for many, but sometimes it is also necessary. That is one thing that I wish many people would realize concerning the changes at IMB. Do I understand everything Dr. Platt is doing? No I don’t, but then again I’m not in the meetings he is in and I don’t have the information he has. What we do know is that for years we have overspent by millions of dollars and it is not sustainable. In my opinion it is bad stewardship and it sets a bad example. How can you ask people to cut their spending and live within a lower means to send you more, when you yourself cannot live within your means? Again, at least for me this is why the SBCV has more credibility with me and with our church, there was a spending problem and so they led the way on cutting their spending, before asking churches to give more. I love my state and I love the SBCV. Praying for better days ahead for leadership and our convention.
If you folks knew your Baptist History, you would find that the big fight between the Primitives and the Missionaries was over societies, boards, and conventions for which the former could find no biblical justification. The forces pushing such developments helped shove the Primitives into their fatalistic attitudes (although not all, as some Primitives had missionaries. I even heard of a Primitive Baptist dental missionary in Haiti back, I think, in the 60s). I have to admit that the arguments against such organizations are much more persuasive, and all the more lacking in the power to offer biblical alternatives than the pro forces. I think what we have lacked is a real scriptural basis for the encouragement and enlistment of people for missionary service. Ownership and/or control has always been an issue, since the days of our Lord when James and John wanted to be on His right hand and His in the Kingdom. I noted concerning the Georgia Board that they were talking in terms of compelling. The only person that I know of with that kind of power, bibilically, is our Lord Himself and He alone. If they meant compel as the Bible means it, that is, with the truth alone, then it is another matter. But as surely as the sun also rises, you can believe that there will be some Board members who will have the idea of making members conform to their ideas of responding and commitment. Man, having tasted of the forbidden fruit, likes to play God and be in control. With our Conventions and Boards that we have had, since the 1840s, that has been a problem.
However, there is an issue in this downsizing and retreat, etc., namely, the lack of political influence. We will no longer be able to have anyone say in the halls of political power, I represent 40,000 churches and many millions of Southern Baptists. Guess who is saying today that they represent a denomination of so many churches and many millions more church members than Southern Baptists? You saw their leader this week speaking to Congress, and he was flanked so to speak by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Vice President of the United States who is the presiding officer of the Senate, both of the same denomination as the leader. In addition, as you all must know, the majority on the Supreme Court are of that denomination. Then there were the tv networks giving great coverage, including at least one of the C-Span new works. The media seem to be in a feeding frenzy to provide friendly coverage.
And then we have a program last night on “The Death of Denominations.” Unfortunately, I only caught part of the program. Who stands to benefit from the death of denominations? Surely, it will be the one that dominates by its power and numbers. Take a close look at the denomination of the leader and consider how, in spite of the money paid out for the sexual crimes of its priesthood, they are still building cathedrals. I think I saw where they built a glass cathedral in California for about $70,000,000, and it seems to me that I heard they purchased the one built by Robert Shuler. I would also call attention to the fact that the multitude of immigrants coming into our nation from the South are usually of that denomination, and the same could be said for many from other countries, with a few atheistic communists thrown in for good measure. I must also mention the Muslims, who, if they follow Sharia Law, are a real threat to our nation. The Supreme Law of our Land is the Constitution, but I have heard of a judge in the Middle Atlantic States I think it was who told a Muslim he could follow Sharia Law and beat his wife. Maybe it is not true. Our mass media has not said much about it, but then they have a habit of not saying anything critical of our new citizens to be, including the criminals from the south who shoot people out in California.
I know I have been all over the landscape with this comment, but I do feel a sense of apprehension about the future of our nation as I view the influx of people whose whole way of life is so contrary to what we have believed and practiced. The price that will be paid by our children and grandchildren and great grands could be horrendous. After all, there are forces as work, seeking to dismember the last free Republic in the world. Europe seems bent on changing its unbelief for another religion, one that could spell the doom to civilization as we know it. All of this I have written is not intended to slam anyone; it is intended to remind the reader of the past history of the interests involved, the practices, the results, the lack of wherewithal to innovate like this nation has had. If the whole earth becomes a United States with freedom and the power of innovation, we might have a hope of a future in the settling the planets out there in distant galaxies where it seems that a breakaway civilization is already going.
In recent days the questions for me have become: (1) how serious is serious (2) what should our priority be as a denomination. If we are in a financial “slump” then disregard everything that follows. We will probably pull out of it as we have in the past. If we are burning the furniture and the denomination is at stake then the following comments become real issues to me.
(1) Do we really need 6 seminaries. With swift travel, on line learning, etc. could we not do as much with less institutions?
(2) Do we really need NAMB? Could not state leadership work with state churches
to start new churches?
(3) Do we really need any money spent from any national entity that does evangelism? Should not churches be the evangelistic entity for their church field? Do we have training events etc. because pastors do not know how? Do we national initiatives from LifeWay or NAMB because pastors and churches are lazy? Why should money be sent on training pastors to do evangelism or their laymen? Should not pastors train their people?
(4) If we do indeed need NAMB why does money go from a state convention to executive committee then to NAMB and then back to the same state with several salaries being paid to accomplish that. How is that efficient?
(5) For years I have heard NAMB say we are not a bank….meaning don’t ask for money unless you want our help. IMO NAMB should BE a bank…state and associational people can strategize and implement strategy on their field.
(5) Does ANY state convention need as many employees as they have had in the past? Do we need a person or team for every age group in Sunday School on a state staff? Do we need a worker for every age level in the WMU.
(6) If we are serious about reaching our world should not the foreign field be a priority for cooperative efforts, and related could not this be a priority if churches are tasked with reaching their fields.
(7) If the foreign field is the priority then should not CP money designated for expenditure in America be radically redistributed to favor IMB.
If we have lots of money then spend on brothers, spend on, regardless of efficiency. But if we are burning the furniture then……just sayin….
Well said.
DL – thou art a wise, wise man. Great thoughts!
1. “Six seminaries”? No, but in my lifetime and yours that’s the number we will have…too much political power.
2-4. “NAMB”? Yes. Among denominational entities, NAMB has the most successful ‘reinvention.’ A good many things have changed there.
5. I think this is where some thinking is changing. SC staffing has been reduced drastically and the idea of a centralized office filled with specialists has lost some favor.
6. State execs will say that IMB gets all of Lottie plus about 1/5 of CP giving, which shows priority. There is a good response to that argument.
7. States are moving incrementally in that direction. I have no optimism that the SBC allocation plan will ever be adjusted so that seminaries receive less. They successfully defended their share back with the GCR.
You know, DL, that good SBCers don’t ask these questions openly. You will never be elected to anything. 😉
To much political power with the seminaries, no doubt true. And great evidence that we have a very long way to go. If cuts basically have to happen everywhere, from the state level to IMB, when it begins to happen in these sacred pillars, maybe we’ll have something.
Several years ago I taught an Intro to Missions class at Southern Seminary. While I taught about the Cooperative Program and funding for SBC missions, a student asked why his church should give to the state convention. A ripple of “yes” went thru the classroom. That surprised me. I listed everything I could remember that the KBC does: mountain missions, migrant missions, church planting, campus ministry, etc. The students left the room shaking their heads. I do not know if I convinced anyone, though I tried. My point is that young pastors are not persuaded that state conventions are necessary or even helpful.
I get the sense from a distance that changes some SCs are making are attempting to position themselves to do more of the things that show value to the pastor and his local church.
MarkTerry, I heard a prominent SB leader in a private conversation recently say young people today are repelled by “programs.” He believes the name Cooperative Program should be changed in order to help engage young pastors. (We know if we could include the word “Gospel” in the name many would swoon and double contributions immediately.) For young people to think such about a name is silly. However, old people are just as silly for I suspect any attempt to change the name of the CP would produce a rising in some.
Mark, Some of us older staff are not convinced either. At best 25% of a CP dollar gets to the IMB. This is a very ineffective way to reach the nations. 75% and more stays in one of the most evangelized country on earth.
I still say that the end of our big state conventions and our national convention will present us with problems like we never dreamed, especially as another denomination is taking our place, one that has a history of associating with tyrannies. We hope and pray that that practice has ceased with them, but let us remember that they have the majority on the Supreme Court, the head of the Senate and the House although that waits for a new individual.
The size and the presence of our structures have been one of the key factors in maintaining our influence in this nation, an influence that certainly has had one very positive factor, namely, religious liberty. But who will be interested in some small groups that petition for redress of grievance? The powers that be will laugh off such efforts. And for those who think persecution is a picnic, it will come as a shock to feel the pain, deprivation, to see not only that you have to suffer, but that your family members suffer.
If some take my remarks above as anti-Catholic, let me say right here that there are many good Catholics, born again, including both members and priests. Something I have known for over 30 years. But there are some who are also rigid in their commitment to that Institution which has a history that is grievous to say the least. Just recently I heard that the pope has finally apologized to the Waldensians for how they were treated by the Inquisition. That is a hope for something better. Unfortunately, the leftist leaning folks seem to dominate in that organization, and I am not all that sold on Socialism. Indeed, I am not sold on it at all, since I believe in the right of private property. However, since about 80% of the wealth of the nation has passed into the hands of about 1-5%, thanks to the Federal Reserve System, the corporations end-run around labor and state laws by going South of the border or overseas, the computerization, automation, and robotics, we face a future in which our poor population is increasing and has no real way out of the mess. And we ourselves are fast approaching such a condition, due to the decline in our membership, the factionalism of our institutions (like in NC, most of the Baptist universities, etc., are in the hands of the Moderates, while the Conservatives now have control of the Convention. There is more.
But the point I wish to make, one that you all had better consider, is that without these big structures like the State Conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention, without the local associations and their leaders, we have no unified political power that will move elected representatives to vote in favor or what our people and/or churches might advocate. Now we need schools which the Federal Government might not allow to exist, to teach our children our principles instead of the constant brainwashing by secularists, atheists, and the off-the-charts immoral groups coupled with a downright enmity to our views. Things are shaping up for a real serious breakdown in our society along with the possibility that we might come to another civil war. You all had better do some thinking about such things, deeper than the comments made thus far indicate.
William T
At my age as long a I am among the elect at the Rapture I am a happy camper 🙂
Seriously, you are correct these things will never happen, at least not for a long time.
The Rapture keeps getting delayed, Brother D.L. After all, what do we do with Mt.13;30: “…, Gather ye together FIRST the tares.”? Also what about the reference in Mt. 24:31 where the angels gather the elect from one end of the starry heaven to the other? Note the THE in Mt.24:31, not rendered by the KJV or even the ESV, a definite article, the heaven, if you please, and the only heaven to fit that would be the starry ones, reminding us of Abraham’s seed being as innumerable as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea. The Bible is lot deeper, more profound, and intellectual demanding than we imagine, but God is going to put us through our paces to start thinking in terms profoundly simple (easy for us to do as do it all the time) and simply profound which we seldom ever do due to a lack of training in the nature of ideas. In the concentration camps which seem to be planned with us in mind, we will be able to discuss these things more cogently as happened in the case of Solzhenitsyn. It was in prison that he wa able, with the help of the Christian man, a converted Jew, Boris Kornfield, that he was able to behold the fact that God is and that, being omniscient, He demands that we think through the situations we face as well as His revelation to us in the Bible. The most intellectual demanding book in the world is the Bible. After all, it is inspired by omniscience, and it, consequently, reflects the wisdom commensurate with such a source.
Dr. JW
Don’t confuse me with the facts my mind is made up 🙂
I never trust a smart aleck. He is too likely to wind up serving you your head on a platter. And DOMS who have pastored big FBCs are dangerous birds to cross.
I don’t think seminaries are the issue. Each gets a very small piece of the pie and combined it’s still a very small piece – I still do like the idea of discussing the need for both state conventions and the North American mission board – their actions seem so very redundant – especially with states sending money to the North American mission board only to see it returned back to them – why shouldn’t they just keep it in the first place?
But on the what I think is quite A bit more feasible then making substantive changes like eliminating seminaries or the North American mission board – If Every church gave 10% at least to the cooperative program and every convention gave at least a 50-50 split – we’d not have any of these problems with IMB. (Except the mentality of overspending income – for missions or any other reason – which has to be dealt with and stopped)
Let me also say that when Ezell took over at the North American mission board – and started implementing substantial and needed changes – there were cries of the end of the world as we know it – and guess what it? That didn’t happen.
Not only did the world not end – but the North American mission board is in much better shape for the risks and changes he implemented – and I’m anticipating Seeing the same positive benefits in the future for the international mission board although The path forward is very painful.
Tarheel, what will happen, when we need the power of a strong organization with plenty of clout to express our concerns in the halls of government, local, state, and national?
1. When have Christians NOT “needed” this? We needed it in the 60’s and 70’s, we need it now, we’ll need it in the future…the early church “needed” it under the roman persecution…but they didn’t get it for several hundred years, and thrived in spite of that.
2. When Christians did get the clout, did they/we use it well?
Dear Andy: 2: Not they did not use it to well until they got to America where they (meaning Baptists) established freedom of religion in precept and practice. 1: Ever study persecution, the history of it, the miseries of it. I have, and it gave me nightmares. One group in particular was the Waldensians. I began the study in 1963. In 2003 the Lord showed his approval, I think, by sending me a Waldensian to hear me preach.
Did they use their Clout well in when it came to their treatment of Africans and Native Americans?
Like them, none of us will ever be perfect in this world. Even so, there were folks among the Baptists who protested slavery and were, I supposed, forced out of the South. They were called The Friends of Humanity. If I remember correctly, they began in Virginia, move to Kentucky, and, finally, probably to Indiana and elsewhere. The Baptists at the North did oppose it. One Calvinist, a Congregationalist, I think, John Brown, used violent methods. You have probably read the hymn to him, often sung by the Yankee troops, “John Brown’s body lies a moldering in the grave.” You also might be interested to know that the Baptists referred to the Africans as Black Brother or Black Sister in the church records. One White Baptist about a 40 minute drive from where I am now sitting was excommunicated from the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church for opposing the treatment of Blacks as equals in the church!!! In one case in Virginia a White church purchased the freedom of an African American and called him as their pastor. He served for ten years. There were free Blacks in every state, who owned property. some even owned slaves. I actually heard from Blacks in South Carolina, when I taught at South Carolina State, that there was one Black married to a White woman who owned 200 slaves!!!! This is not to mitigate the awful and terrible treatment that a vast multitude of Blacks received at the hands of their White owners…even from Baptists.
Question: Why are all the churches that SBC plant overseas not a part of the SBC and contributing to the SBC?
An SBC Church is by definition an American Church. We used to start Baptist Conventions in different countries that related to our SBC but now we don’t. Creating a Baptist Church in a new place is perceived as forcing people to become ‘American’ in order to receive Christ. I can’t imagine what the perception would be if we asked them to send money back to the US… the richest nation that has ever existed.
This was a part of the practice to produce indigenous churches that would become self-sustaining and replicate themselves. The SBC is merely an instrument of messengers and not a supervisory body in control although some have thought of it in that respect. While it does have the right to set its terms of fellowship and association, it has no power to compel except that of dis fellowship.