Editor: William Thornton is the SBC Plodder and a keen observer of SBC life. This is a repost from his site It follows up on the discussion of the two previous articles he posted here, “SBC Presidents and the Cooperative Program” and “Dropping Like a Rock: The Cooperative Program.“
My humble conjectures about the decline of the once mighty Cooperative Program. Every Southern Baptist is a denominational pundit. Plodder’s punditry, not in order of magnitude or importance:
1. It’s the moderates’ fault. Sure, SBC moderates were generally very strong givers to the cooperative program and were incessant promoters of it, so much so that they were willing to overlook almost anything so long as the CP was revered. Moderates made the CP into an end unto itself, rather than to means to the end. What pastor who wants to see souls saved, churches planted, and believers growing in Christ wants to subsume all this to support of a denominational giving plan?
Two words: Sacred Cow, only once the mods lost control of the cow, it suddenly became profane and they quickly deserted it. The dollars they once gave to the CP went elsewhere. Once it wasn’t their Sacred Cow, they acted like conservatives and eschewed it.
2. It’s the conservatives’ fault. This one is quite simple. Most of the high profile conservative, megachurch pastors gave only token support to the Cooperative Program and were not willing to give their money to SBC moderates who were in control of the convention’s machinery. Well, we fixed the latter but without fixing the former. Over three decades later, the SBC CP average is headed towards the giving pattern of those early Conservative Resurgence mega-pastors. Conservatives never got on board of the CP.
It’s also the conservatives fault in that there is no reward for very high CP givers anymore. Give 15% and get waxed in an election by a pastor of a church who gives less than 4%. Want to be a trustee? Don’t worry about giving 10% or more, just give 5%, maybe less, and you’ll be OK.
3. It’s the megachurch pastors’ fault. Megachurches are a denomination unto themselves, so, they think, ‘Why give much to a state convention, seminaries, and mission boards through the CP when we can do it all alone?’ Too many micro-pastors think the megas walk on water and should be emulated; hence, lower CP percentages. Good enough for Rogers, Stanley, Smith, et al…good enough for Joe Schmoe pastor of Crossroads MicroBaptist Church.
4. It’s the boomers, baby busters, Xers, and millenials fault. Less denominational loyalty, more personal debt. Not impressed with big institutions. More hands-on, etc. General demographic trends…stuff we’ve been fed by the experts for years. I’d speculate that this factor, which has nothing to do with SBC politics, should be heavily weighted in this list.
5. It’s the fault of various parachurches. AWANA, independent mission sending organizations, et al sucked up local church dollars and diluted the SBC brand in a church.
6. It’s the fault of Bold Mission Thrust. Huh? I mean by this that a component BMT was volunteer missions and that was one of the few goals of BMT that was far exceeded. Churches felt like if they had their own people who needed help in going overseas, why give to nameless, faceless missionaries through the CP?
7. It’s the fault of the denominational culture of secrecy and opaqueness. Want to see one of NAMB’s Cooperative Agreements with your state convention? Sorry, you can’t. Want to know how much CP funds were paid in severance to a leader forced to resign? Sorry, it may be your money but you don’t get to see this. If CP spending is hidden, SBCers are less likely to want to keep shoveling money into that dark hole. “Trust the Lord and tell the people” we used to say. Now it is “Take the money and tell the people to shut up.”
8. NAMB’s recent history of magnificent debacles. No further explanation needed for this one.
Almost every Southern Baptist who reads this, pastor or layperson, will be in a church whose CP percentage has dropped over the past 30 years. I would be curious as to which of these (or others that I haven’t thought about) would you say is the cause.
Part Two tomorrow.
I’m not sure what was wrong with this post’s formatting, but I tried to comment and couldn’t, so I deleted it and reposted it. Now things seem fine.
William, I am thinking that the generational thing is a big one. But what we are seeing is likely an amalgamation of a lot of problems.
I think it is the BIers fault, they excluded everyone from the SBC but themselves!
Just kidding, I actually assume they give closer to 10% on average than most churches, I just haven’t blamed them for anything lately…
Actually, I think you may have hit on something, Jim. When we look at a question like this, we tend to look for someone to blame, and tend to look at groups that we disagree with. Blame the mods. Blame the fundies. Blame the Calvinists.
We would do well to look at ourselves.
Jim & Dave,
It’s not the BI-ers, the Mods, the Fundies, or the Calvinists fault at all… It’s the “Young Guns” of the SBC who are to blame… They are taking C.P. funds and buying beer and wine… 🙂
The post itself shows part of the problem .. factionalization .. whereas Jesus commanded unity. SBC’ers have more “Us & Them’s” than the Hatfields & McCoys.
If we believe that God is our source of supply, then SBC leadership should be asking Him what they are doing wrong .. not what the churches are doing wrong .. that He is supplying proportionally less and less money. He’s the One Who knows why, and the only One Who can fix it, anyway.
I think we know that God can and will supply. The question is this: why isn’t he doing it now?
Let’s not overspiritualize this. The SBC is a huge enterprise with quite a few natural, normal groupings: young/old, mega/micro, bluebloods/commoners, lay/clergy, con/mod etc., and that lends itself to different visions, approaches, to cooperative ministry.
As I wrote, almost everyone who will read this is in a church where CP giving has declined as a percent of undesignated giving.
Would anyone here mind giving your opinion on why this is the case in your church?
Think about it. The CP is almost 86 years old. Before radio was, the CP was. Before TV was, the CP was. Before the Great Depression, the CP was. Do we really think a generation who doesn’t remember the Viet Nam War and John F. Kennedy is going to get excited about an 86 year old program? Here was the plan – Local Churches give to their State Convention, the State Convention takes 50% and forwards 50% to the National Convention. Problem historically – State Conventions almost always kept more than 50%. Problem today – We live in the Internet… Read more »
From my observation, it seems that the church’s that have traditionally been strong givers to CP are many of the church’s that are declining. Smaller attendance almost always leads to smaller budget. I think about the church I grew up in. Use to give 20% to CP, yet did not do much else except give every Pastor a hard time. So they have slowly died. Their CP giving went down the toilet with their departing membership So, I think the decreased giving to CP is a result mainly of our churches overall declining. We start reaching more people, we’ll see… Read more »
I would say the CP is dropping like a rock due to well laid plans to that effect which are intended to destroy not only the CP but the USA as well. About 10 years ago I took notes on a book citing a source from 1906, a fictional work written by a son of an Archbishop of Canterbury about how treaties in the 1990s would move jobs out of the US to other countries. Then add to that the knowledge that in NC, for example, Baptists lost their three major sources of income, namely, tobacco, furniture, and textiles. The… Read more »