William Thornton is the SBC Plodder.
The SBC Executive Committee has closed the books on the fiscal year 2013-2014 and Baptist Press reports that “The Southern Baptist Convention ended its fiscal year 0.76% below last year’s contributions and missed its Cooperative Program allocation budgeted projection of $191.5 million by 2.58%…”
Here are the relevant figures as compared to the last fiscal year. These are for monies received by the SBC Executive Committee for distribution to the SBC entities IMB, NAMB, the seminaries, ERLC, and EC itself. The figures, in millions of dollars, do not include total Cooperative Program gifts as received by all the state conventions.
2013-2014 2012-2013 Change
CP Allocation Budget Gifts
$186.6 $188.0 -0.75%
Designated Gifts
$194.7 $193.1 0.81%
Designated gifts include Lottie Moon receipts, Annie Armstrong, World Hunger, and CP monies sent directly to the Executive Committee designated for the CP allocation budget.
A few observations:
1. Frank Page believes that CP giving may “have reached the nadir, or lowest point, for national Cooperative Program gifts.” While I hope so, I don’t know of anything that allows for such a conclusion.
2. We are not a bad off as others. I’m all for finding a positive spin for negative news. The CP is down but, Page says, “the Atlas of Giving forecasts that giving to religious organizations will decline by 2 percent year-to-year, so the fact that our national CP giving was down by less than 1 percent and overall giving was slightly up shows we are bucking the trend.” Another way to say this is that CP giving is down less that one might have predicted and designated giving is up, against the trends.
3. For the second consecutive year, the Executive Committee received more designated funds (almost all Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, and Global Hunger Relief) than undesignated money for the CP allocation budget. The proportion is now about 51% designated, 49% undesignated. I’m not sure why this particular statistic is not spoken of more often among Southern Baptists. At the SBC level we follow a societal giving system for most of our money.
4. We are dealing in fractions of percentage points here, but churches are showing a preference for funding the two mission boards directly, rather than the Cooperative Program.
5. Frank Page’s one percent increase plan has some success, but not enough to move the needle.
6. As always, it’s easy to be negative but one must not forget that the CP is a mammoth ministry funding plan and on the SBC level still divides over $186 million to our mission boards, the six seminaries, the ERLC, with a little kept by the Executive Committee.
The EC has cut back the budget to the goal of 2012-13, $188 million.
My friend, brother, and fellow Georgian,
Hope you’re well, Wm. I have a question(s). You indicated that the SBC is now prone to societal rather than cooperative giving. How do you account for that? Do you think the tipping of the balance, so to speak, may be cast at the feet of the GCR with its GCG? Or, is/was the GCR only a minor or perhaps a lesser contributor if contributor at all? Finally, even if only “fractions” of percentages reflecting a tendency toward societal giving are recorded, this may mean the ultimate dismantling of the CP. Whether that’s a good thing or bad is not my present concern. Rather my question is, do you know of earlier CP statistics in which we might compare today’s proportions between ‘societal’ preferences you indicate outweighing traditional CP giving with an earlier era of the SBC? My reason for asking is, most SBs (most of our generation at least) seem to *assume* that a visible preference toward a ‘societal’ method exists (I do), but to date I’ve not seen or heard of study however brief which compares and contrasts statistics reflecting SBC commitment one way or another *so far as the tendency toward societal giving* is concerned. Admittedly, my head’s been in the south Georgia clay for a while so I could have missed it. But it seems to me a fair question to pursue. If, in fact, there *is* a tendency among SBs toward societal giving now, how strong is it? When did it move from A to B? And in what specific timeframe did the tendency begin to take a foothold? Might the tendency be traced to the GCR concerning which many GCR critics like myself may like to fantisize? Or, are the roots deeper going further back, even to the very beginning of the CR in 1979, when conservatives turned a blind eye to the poor CP giving records of many of their undeniable theological heroes for what they believed to be a greater good–winning the war on Inerrancy? Or, do the roots even exist at all?
Lord bless you, brother. Hoping you will drive to Macon next month if for nothing else than stopping by BPC booth for a chat. Coffee’s on me.
With that, I am…
Peter
I’ll make a longer answer. You ask good questions. I wrote on GCG a short while ago. It is growing as CP is declining.
http://sbcplodder.blogspot.com/2014/08/great-commission-giving-vs-cooperative.html
Dave didn’t pick that one up for here.
I’ll try and get to Macon to see you and others.
William–I tweaked your post just a bit to get the numbers under the headings. I think our “column width” has gotten narrower, so it wasn’t showing quite right.
Doug
“At the SBC level we follow a societal giving system for most of our money.”
I just want to point out for those like myself who read too quickly the first time….as you say, this only applies AT THE SBC LEVEL.”
Obviously, if 186 million is roughly 40% of all CP funds the states collect…that means that (consulting calculator) 465 million is the total CP collections from the churches…still WAY MORE than designated giving.
So AS A WHOLE, SBC CP giving still dwarfs societal giving.
That’s all.
On target: I wonder about the 1% challenge and moving the needle, and when it would show up.
For example, if a church budgets annually and they have been picking up the “I upped my CP, up yours!” concept all year, when would it actually show? If you started convincing Almyra Baptist to tweak our budget in January, apart from a crisis it would the following January before it actually hit.
So, if a pastor or leadership/budget/missions committee has been working for months to persuade the church to change their giving, it may be better next year.
All in all, though, the designated offerings tell good stories and get clear promotion. I think that helps. CP ends up “part of the budget.” And rarely do we find that middle ground where we “promote the budget” without sounding like self-serving money grubbers worried about our own pockets.
Which comes to this question: does the higher level of designated giving reflect that churches are kicking back on CP, or that the people are? After all, we have a budget line for CP but not for Lottie, Annie, or Dixie (state missions) or Global Hunger. If money goes to those, it is because the people specifically want to give to them.
The result is that I think more people have heard of the designated offerings than really have heard of CP–LMCO is woven into the warp and woof of many a Baptist church’s Christmas life. Is CP woven into anything but the monthly budget report?
For my guess, it is this lack of emotional connection that continues (and will continue) to drive CP giving down. Sitting in a small room with a handful of people, all of whom want the next year’s budget to honor God in what we do, the local food bank and CP both fall under “missions.”
But one helps people we know, and the other? The people in fancy suits who jet in to do impressive conferences tell us that it helps people. They produce slick videos that look like campaign commercials, telling us it helps people.
Yet we’ve seen advertising, and we’re underwhelmed that Baptists have proven their ability to advertise. We want to see the funds that come in, do something. Feed the hungry? 1 in 4 kids in our state are hungry. Care for the unborn? There’s not 1 CP dime being spent to stand for the unborn in our county, though it has the 3rd highest abortion rate in this state. Evangelism? The 3rd generation unchurched around us? State convention folks have (and will) help, but there’s nobody coming to stay and help. It’s up to us–and up to us without NAMB, because we’re too small to matter.
So when the man in the suit, who flew in on a nice flight, who got a fancy hotel room, all to tell us how to “revitalize” our churches while asking for more money? His appeal doesn’t carry much weight in that room.
The people we sweated with refurbishing the food pantry? The folks who have prayed with us, in tears, and helped us connect crisis pregnancies with real help, and we’ve seen life and families renewed?
Those people come to mind in that room, praying over that budget. For years we have called out for churches to make decisions based on more than just “business sense,” and now that’s what’s happening. Because the CP makes “business sense.”
It just does not make the personal connection to the people in the pews. A great deal of this conversation is happening among pastors and “church leaders,” but the ultimate decision falls to the church, operating under the lordship of Christ through democratic principles by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And what the church is seeing is CP commercials that are treated with the same cynicism as this month’s political ads or last month’s “Car Wars! Spectacular!” ads were.
That’s my two cents. Want to know why the CP is slipping? Don’t ask pastors. Go ask your deacons, your finance committee members, and your Sunday school classes. Find out why they think your church shouldn’t increase it…or should decrease.
It’s been enlightening for me.
The 1% Challenge is several years old and 15% or so of churches were reported to have adopted the increase, so the current CP figures already reflect that.
I agree that the CP market basket of ministries might be less compelling than some specific direct appeals. I suppose that is why CP promotion is often heavy on IMB/NAMB as state conventions piggyback funding appeals to that which so best received and understood by churches and members. To be fair, I see a lot of attempts by state conventions to personalize CP appeals.
I see that as well. I think that’s part of the reason why you don’t see the groundswell for states to shift more to Nashville. The state puts the face on the CP–so now when our church thinks of CP they think of the guy from the state who worked with them on a disaster or the lady who helped our missions day, or someone else…
I think my main point is this: we keep talking about efficiencies or percentages, and even points of doctrine –but the root is relational in the local church. They hold on to the CP because of the personal faces, but then couple that with the “less money in-state, more to Nashville!” appeals, and what do they see?
Cutting off the faces that they are used to, the faces of the CP.
I think a major issue is that we (the SBC in total) are sending out conflicting messages on CP. On the one hand, you have “it’s how we work together” while churches are all over the map on whether or not there’s a minimum buy-in. Or this week your state convention personnel help put a face on the CP, and then next week a national personality claims that those same state convention people are being resource hogs, selfishly abandoning the nations to guard their pie. The same person sent to raise money for the national CP is both blessed and cursed by national CP and Baptist individuals.
People in our churches are smarter than this, smarter than what the mixed messages give them credit for. So designated giving rises in the plate, budget percentages slip rather than expand, and then the cycle repeats. Another person in a suit shows up at a meeting, or in a slick video, asking for more money, claiming it will be well-stewarded.
And then he, or his “good friend,” will show up in another video bemoaning how poorly stewarded that same money is.
I liked reading through these points of view. It appears that the people that give the money are no longer comfortable with the ambiguity of the CP. How then can the CP be made less ambiguous? Designated giving seems to give a level of control to the giver that the CP may never have the ability to grant.
This has always been the case but let’s be clear here. Almost all of what is reported as designated by the executive committee is Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, and Global Hunger Relief (formerly World Hunger Fund).
What has happened over a period of years is that the CP has declined while the mission offerings have slightly increased. I expect that in a decade or less the EC will receive more money from Lottie Moon offerings alone than CP.
Chris
Please elaborate on the ambiguity concept…thanks
D.L., what I am think about when I say ambiguity, that term may not be as accurate as the CP is just simply a familiar term, that lacks fresh focus and definition. The advantage of designating a specific gift, is that there is a sense of newness or proximity that is not seen in the CP at this point in time. I think much of that is attributed to the speed at which data is distributed, and the ease of designation. With an information laden society, instant information, and ease of monetary distribution, the CP may be simply thought of as the old fashion way of doing things.
Again, as I’ve said in other posts. The CP itself is an amazing system. But, …the tactics must change to support the strategy. The tactics are still 15-20 years behind the speed of the information curve, which makes the CP increasingly ambiguous to the mind of the giver when compared to other ways.
meant to say …. “D.L., what I think about when I say ambiguity,..is that the term, Cooperative Program, is just simply a familiar term… that lacks fresh focus and definition.”
Chris
Thanks much. I think you make a salient point. familiarity brings complacency at times.
William
Re. direct giving….I would assume that the lion’s share of direct giving is Lottie, Annie, and World hunger. How much was given that was designed to bypass the state convention?
Very little…in the low single digit percentage of total EC CP.