These lists are for the year 2014 as calculated by yours truly with LifeWay’s “SBC Statistics By State Convention.
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Top Ten Richest State Conventions, as measured by total receipts (in millions of dollars)
LifeWay footnotes their chart and says, in effect, ‘don’t pay a lot of attention here because of incomplete data’, which means that the states on top will brag and those who aren’t as high as they think they should be will sniff ‘bad data’.
- Baptist General Convention of Texas 1,674
- Southern Baptists of Texas Convention 1,069
- Georgia 1,034
- North Carolina 855
- Florida 766
- Tennessee 757
- Alabama 719
- South Carolina 557
- Mississippi 518
- Oklahoma 420
What to think about these?
My state convention, Georgia, barely made the SBC’s Billion Dollar Club in 2014. I think 2015 will be a better year and we can maintain our membership in the club.
Top Ten Richest State Conventions by giving per church (in dollars)
- Southern Baptists of Texas 457,620
- Baptist General Convention of Texas 401,376
- Southern Baptists of Virginia 341,978
- Georgia 311,452
- Florida 295,332
- Louisiana 279,643
- South Carolina 263,027
- Tennessee 249,406
- Mississippi 246,588
- Oklahoma 243,910
Only state conventions with at least $100 million in total receipts were calculated.
OK, the average SBCT church has about a half-million dollars in total receipts…but then, there are all those megachurches in Texas that skews the averages.
Top Ten Richest State Convention in Per Capita Giving (in dollars)
- SBC Virginia 1,014
- SBC Texas 928
- South Carolina 838
- Mississippi 794
- BGC Texas 780
- BGA Virginia 770
- Louisiana 767
- Florida 753
- Georgia 734
- Alabama 720
Only state conventions with at least $100 million in total receipts were calculated.
I presume that Dave Cline in Virginia is very well paid, seeing his convention on the top of the heap. My poor Alabama cousins might consider relocating to Texas or SC, or just swing next door to Mississippi for a pay raise.
Did the upstart Southern Baptist Convention of Virginia cherry pick the wealthier churches in Virginia (probably not, maybe they just cleaned their church rolls and got the per capita up).
Obviously, the SEC didn’t make the top spot in any of these lists…’cuz our SBC church members in SEC states put most of their money into football tickets, tailgating, RVs, and beverages.
I apologize to my friends in the smaller, newer state conventions like Wyoming and Montana who didn’t make these lists. I would only make the observation that Beth Moore’s ministry has greater assets than the entire income (individually) of eight or ten of the smaller state conventions.
