The SBC Executive Committee is reporting that for the fiscal year 2015-2016 that ended September 30th Cooperative Program receipts have increased by 3.47 percent over last year. Designated receipts, almost all Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong were up 4.95% from the previous fiscal year.
Cooperative Program receipts:
2015-2016 $195,730,508.40
2014-2015 $189,160,231.41
Designated Receipts:
2015-2016 $204,671,725.92
2014-2015 $195,013,412.58
Designated giving surpassed CP giving at the SBC level several years ago and remains greater. SBC churches have shown for some years that they are more inclined to maintain and increase giving directly to the IMB and NAMB than to the Cooperative Program. This past year the record Lottie Moon offering increased the differential by several million dollars.
Frank Page attributes the increased CP receipts to a couple of factors, (a) “sacrifice” by SBC churches in bumping up their CP gifts last year, and (b) “strategic” decisions by many state conventions who have reduced their share of CP revenues and are forwarding slightly more (except in the case of the Florida Baptist Convention which is forwarding significantly more) to the SBC Executive Committee for distribution, mostly to the seminaries and mission boards.
We might lament the state of CP giving (the average church gives about 5.4% of undesignated receipts, far less than the 10%+ of earlier years) except for the fact that it is a mammoth, colossal distribution plan that is once again approaching $200 million to be divided up among denominational entities, and, if you take the entire CP including the majority share kept by state conventions, the total approaches half a billion dollars. Nothing to sniff at.
While the additional $6.57 million is good news for the seminaries and mission boards the increase alone does not contribute significantly to the budgets of any particular entity. IMB will benefit the most with another $3-4 million, between one and two percent of their budget. In contrast, the Lottie Moon increase was about three times that size. The two together have given David Platt and the IMB about another million to spend on international missions every month this year.
We will see where we go from here. The CP Centennial is less than a decade away. What will the amounts be then? Will churches increase from the present 5.4% average to 6%, 8% or more? Will states reduce their share of CP revenues from above 60% on average to 50% or below? My conjecture is that the average church giving will hover around 5% and that the states will never get below 55% on average.
Well, today is National Mad Hatter Day, so someone make a crazy prediction about the CP and the future. A number of my blogging colleagues get into tinfoil hat mode on occasion. Today’s the day for that.
Leave it to the great plodder to seek out the gray clouds amongst the sunshine. 🙂
I think a more celebratory note might be in order…
Praise the Lord that more money is being given by our convention churches to cooperatively fund the great commission – increases in both through the CP and through designated gifts. Praise the Lord.
Yeah, you can be the designated celebrant here. Up slightly is better than flat or down.
I’m holding the tinfoil hat designation for the first person who thinks the SBC will ever revert to the 10% days. No SBC leader does, although they do offer whiffs of wistful nostalgia for the halcyon CP days of the past.
Like I wrote: half a billion is nothing to sniff at.
This is truly a praise. But almost certainly to be short lived. See “The Great Evangelical Recession” book for research based data on current giving context and future generational expected giving, including among Southern Baptists.
10%? I dream of 50% days ahead as was recommended by the late Herschel Hobbs. When I was baptized, I was given a small book by him that advised both a church member and the local church to give 50% of their tithe/offering to support missions. I see fewer building projects, less or no debt, smaller staffs, more bivocational pastors and churches planting more churches, sending out more missionaries and giving more to support missions.
I’m not prepared to offer any predictions, but I will say that historical patterns are often more pendulum-like than linear. It is the assumption of linear movement that gives us every boom and bust in the stock market (“Mortgage-backed securities have been going up for years. Think where they’ll be five years from now!”).
Even pendulums swing for a reason. The stock market has a long linear movement upward, through all the cycles, because the underlying structure of the US economy is sound. The CP has a strong underlying structure, it just makes good sense to have a market basket of ministries supported by a common distribution plan, but we’re into a fourth decade of slow decline and now flat, with almost imperceptible increase. If there are any concrete factors that would motivate pastors and churches to significantly and consistently increase their support, they aren’t obvious.
The easier path, the one that doesn’t require attacking those ministries and entities that have had an entitlement to the majority portion of CP funds (state level) has been for churches to give directly to the mission boards, less to CP; hence, a basic level of CP support around 5% and increasing direct support.
The most troublesome facts about the CP is that pastors say they support it in high percentages. They don’t volunteer that the allocation formula should be changed…but they consistently resist increasing their church giving by any significant percentage.
When the average church percentage is updated (I think this comes out mid year with the SBC statistical report) we will see if most of the CP increase reported now is due to ‘sacrifice’ or ‘strategy.’
William, we do rejoice over the increase in cooperative program giving this year. I like you am not sure that is a trend that will extend past this year.
I am not sure what your goal is in the following statement,” The easier path, the one that doesn’t require attacking those ministries and entities that have had an entitlement to the majority portion of CP funds (state level) has been for churches to give directly to the mission boards, less to CP; hence, a basic level of CP support around 5% and increasing direct support.”
When I began serving with the FMB now IMB we were encouraged to ask churches to support Lottie Moon but not to decrease their giving to the cooperative program. I do not think missionaries are told that today but I am not sure. Our leaders at that time knew that we were a team including churches, associations, state conventions, SBC entities and the IMB. I have served alongside missionaries who worked with boards not supported by a denomination or a fixed group of churches. We were much better supported. You suggest giving money directly to the missions entities and skip the state conventions. I don’t know about other states but in our state convention the money they receive supports missions both in our state and outside our state. I learned about missions at state camp grounds, in our church mission organizations and at our Baptist college. In fact, Ouachita Baptist where I attended has been one of the leaders in missionaries under appointed and missionaries on the field for many years. That is not an accident.
The state conventions are especially important in supporting the midsize and smaller churches. My home church still gives 10% to the cooperative program through our state convention. When other churches give directly to the SBC we have to take up the slack to support or state orphanage, disaster relief work, colleges, church planting ministries, etc. The SBC will never be stronger than the local churches. The state conventions are vital to keeping our local churches strong.
When I was appointed by the FMB churches were still giving 8-10% to the cooperative program. The state conventions were giving about the same percentage they give now to the SBC. It is the churches that have decreased support for SBC causes, not the states. I agree we will never go back to the 10% days but don’t blame the state conventions, look to the SBC.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply, Ron.
I wasn’t clear on the “easier path” statement. I meant that when a pastor and/or church looks at their mission giving and understands that just 30% of their CP dollars go to NAMB and IMB, and the church wants to increase support of the two mission boards, then the easier path for them is to put more dollars in Lottie and Annie rather than try and work to persuade their state convention to adjust their allocations. Churches have been doing this for decades. State conventions have only recognized the value of decreasing their portion of CP dollars recently.
When you say that “state conventions are especially important in supporting the midsize and smaller churches” I agree only in a few specific areas. Most state spending has very limited value to the local church. I could get into budget specifics but it would make this too long. The legacy states have a heavy accumulation of claimants to CP dollars. This makes change difficult.
You wrote: “When other churches give directly to the SBC we have to take up the slack to support or state orphanage, disaster relief work, colleges, church planting ministries, etc.”
States vary, but three in your list consume very little in CP dollars in my state. Colleges get big bucks but only around 10-15% of the CP budget, leaving your “etc.” to take up the great majority of the dollars. If supporters cannot quickly name the valuable ministries worth most of the dollars, that illustrates the problem
You wrote: “The state conventions are vital to keeping our local churches strong.” Yet almost every state has declining membership, baptisms and other measures of church health. Perhaps this shows that state conventions are failing in that job. I love all the people I know who are on the state payroll but I’m not seeing value for the work they do that accrues to local churches.
Still, a threshold % in CP support should be given. I join those who think the days when states deserve 60+% of every CP dollar is long past. 50/50 ought to be the new standard, perhaps 45/55 like SBCT.
I guess all state conventions are different. That has not been the experience I have had in my state but in some it may be as you say.
Ron, what portion of your SC budget is devoted to children’s homes, disaster relief, church planting, and colleges? That would be one way to make comparisons.
William, I am not sure the significance of the percentage these ministries receive is to our discussion. My point is that these ministries are important and are missions ministries. Our convention gives 44% to the SBC and keep 56% in state. We are increasing the per cent to the SBC in this year’s budget and hope to continue. The Children’s Home gets 2.64%, the State Camp gets 1.15%, the Executive Board budget is 30%. The 30% includes disaster relief, church planting, training programs for pastors and others, and many other ministries that benefit the churches. Our two colleges get about 19%
.
I believe all of these are important and support the SBC mission as well as our state mission. I strongly disagree with Danny Akin who once described the state conventions as, “bloated and inefficient bureaucracies with red tape a mile long,” and his SEBTS staff member who accused the state conventions of “skimming” CP dollars that rightfully belong to the SBC. That is not true of my state convention and I hope it is not true of yours. It seems to be the popular thing for many supporters of Akin is to bash state conventions. I wonder what they really know about their states.
Almost always when in discussions about state conventions and the CP split, the value of a SC is touted by using children’s homes, disaster relief, church planting, and schools; hence, it’s relevant in this discussion to know what portion of a SC budget consumes these CP dollars. In your case it is a minority portion.
From the percentages you gave (KY?) you are I one of the more progressive SCs but even there church CP percentages aren’t growing significantly. It’s not a bloated bureaucracy but rather the accumulation over a long period of expensive vested ministries. Churches need not fight this, they can merely adjust their mission giving to the causes they think add the most value to their church.
I still say it would be a disaster for our mission boards, seminaries and our churches if we just did away with state conventions. For 32 years my salary was paid by CP funds sent to the SBC and Lottie Moon funds, not state convention funds. However, I know that my ministry would have been more difficult without the support from state conventions.
No one is talking about doing away with anything. State conventions are struggling to make a positive case for their funding stream continuing at around 60% of every CP dollar. There is a clear trend towards this being reduced, gradually in most cases, to 55 or 50 percent. It is not evident that a 10-20 percent cut in SC funding materially affects local church health.