This year is the year of celebration of our flagship giving program: the beloved, touted, often revered Cooperative Program. It has been our common and cooperative pool of funding that for 100 years has been divided among the state conventions, mission boards, seminaries, and smaller denominational entities.
It think someone had a CP cake in Nashville. I paid for part of it but didn’t get a piece.
It’s not like the centennial slipped up on us unawares; denominational leaders have had years to prepare for it. From my view in the SBC heartland the centennial consisted of a resolution, a nice photo op (probably with a crowd mostly paid with our funds while they were smiling), and the usual canned testimonials.
A few figures and notes:
- The CP has been consistently declining for about half of its life. My entire adult life as a member of SBC churches, seminarian, pastor, and retired pastor has been accompanied by a decline in CP giving.
- This fiscal year just ended the national CP declined by over $5 million, 2.69%.
- The past five years the national CP has declined each year but one and has settled, temporarily at $186.1 million. There is nothing in SBC life that leads me to think this trend will be reversed.
- Designated giving, often criticized as being non-cooperative, although we kept designated or societal giving as a part of the overall giving scheme from the start in 1925, has risen rather dramatically to over $200 million.
- In the past five years national CP has dropped by $6.8 million while designated giving has risen by $26.2 million. There is nothing confusing or unclear about this. Southern Baptists would prefer to give most of their national dollars directly to Lottie and Annie rather than dilute those through the SBC Allocation Budget.
The antidote preferred by denominational leaders to this slow but relentless decline of the CP seems to be: (1) Have people on the payroll do a lot of cheerleading (2) file a batch of testimonials which will totally ignore CP realities and issues, and (3) have some high profile SBC leaders lament the unfaithfulness of people in the pews for making mission spending decisions that move away from a cooperative/societal method to a societal/cooperative method. (Make a note here: we have never had a cooperative only system. The CP was part of a hybrid system. Find someone on the CP payroll who will acknowledge that.)
The least I expected on the SBC CP centennial celebration was some word from SBC headquarters (that’s Nashville, not Podunk Crossroads Baptist Church) that would indicate fresh thinking, new ideas, and a recognition of 21st century realities.
Nope.
The Cooperative Program is a great concept with inherent flaws: (1) It is a jobs program in part disconnected from the mission of the churches. (2) Those on the payroll want to stay on the payroll and that drives decisions rather than effectiveness in mission goals. (3) What is offered as sage commentary on the trends of our time as an explanation of the decline is more simply blame shifting to the churches and pews over declining giving. (4) Organizations will surround themselves with a cadre of supporters with the goal of perpetuating themselves. We have six seminaries, 41 state conventions, the ERLC, the Executive Committee and some smaller entities. Not much clamor for change among that bunch.
I took my first church in 1982. The SBC of today is much the same in regard to the Cooperative Program as it was in that year. There are some pastors who have taken their first church this year, 2025. Maybe ten percent of those will still be pastoring in 2065. I have no idea what the SBC will look like then or the Cooperative Program if it still exists.
Happy birthday, CP! I hope in your second century some new thinking, new vision, fresh ideas begin to emerge.
