Will state conventions be helped by undermining the Cooperative Program? (by William Thornton)

Editor: I also receive the resolution from Joe McGee that William references, and had thought to respond. William did it first and did it better! I appreciate his perspective. You can (and should) read William at SBC Plodder.

The Consolation Baptist Association here in Georgia has passed a resolution suggesting that churches cut their Cooperative Program giving by 25-35 percent and designate this to “state missions” or, as explained to me, to their state convention.

I learned of the resolution from a comment left on SBC Voices, asked for and received a copy of it, and have had a couple of cordial conversations with Joe McGee, Associational Missionary for the association. A previous blog on the matter may be found here.

I judge this to be a well-intentioned effort by some very dedicated Christian colleagues to help the Georgia Baptist Convention in a time of great budgetary stress; however, any move to do so by encouraging churches to make steep cuts to their Cooperative Program giving is harmful to both the state convention and SBC entities.

The idea that state conventions should be helped by encouraging churches to decrease their giving to the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, the six SBC seminaries, and other SBC entities is far off the mark.

Joe told me that I really needed to read an explanatory article, linkedhere, that explained the resolution. I read it and found it to be a mixture of misapplied data and opinion. Couple of points…

The title: “THE GEORGIA BAPTIST CONVENTION AND THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM: GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION” implies that the GBC is suffering because of negative opinions of churches to SBC entities and actions beyond our state.I don’t think this is the case. A number of state conventions have actually moved to increase the percentage of CP receipts that they send to SBC agencies and institutions, hardly an action they would take if they perceive that their constituent churches disapprove.

Great Commission Giving: Data is cited that say “cooperative program giving was down by 5.86 percent” while contributions to “Southern Baptists institutions” were “up to [sic] 5-6% over last year’s contributions during the same span.”

This is both inaccurate and a mixed up use of data. The source cited for the statement above compared GBC contributions for an entire year (2011) and an Executive Committee report for four months (Oct 2011-Jan 2012), manifestly not the “same span.” Monthly receipts by the SBC Executive Committee are variable. You cannot draw a valid conclusion from the comparison used.

But, flawed data aside, might not Great Commission Giving be the culprit behind state convention budgetary woes?No. The data do not show this.The Executive Committee reports direct gifts from churches that bypass their state convention. These gifts are actually down this year from the same period last year. They also report that designated gifts to the mission boards are down from last year. I don’t know about direct gifts to the seminaries. If churches are diverting funds from state conventions at a substantially higher rate such doesn’t show up in the data reported.

Direct giving by churches to SBC entities is a very small fraction of CP giving. The numbers aren’t sufficient to blame state convention woes on churches pouring funds straight into IMB, NAMB, or the seminaries.The case made for encouraging churches to substantially cut their CP giving in order to help state conventions not only uses flawed data but is unreasonable. Do the people in the churches of this association really believe that cutting funds to our overseas missionaries so that we can have more state convention employees here in heavily churches Georgia is right and proper? Surely not.

Another issue raised in the article is Calvinism. There are already churches in the GBC that have defunded Southern and Southeastern seminaries over the issue. Fair enough. Let individual churches that their CP giving and defund from it whatever they feel is necessary for their collective conscience. If a church concludes that Southern and Southeastern cannot in good conscience be supported then let them cut 3.5% of their CP giving and apply it elsewhere. That is the approximate amount that the two schools receive of a CP dollar.Joe McGee conveys a frustration and dissatisfaction that I hear often on the blogs – the SBC is a megachurch run, top-down organization that ignores the vast majority of churches and pastors. He is concerned that Al Mohler and Danny Akin call the shots in the SBC on major issues. There is some truth in both of these though not to the extent that I would take the action he is taking.

But here my old-school idea for helping our state convention: Ask churches to increase CP giving. The GBC already keeps about 60% of every CP dollar. They will be blessed and appreciative. Suggesting churches defund all of our SBC work to help the GBC is an unwise, unproductive, and uncooperative approach.

So far as I am aware, this resolution is the first by any association or state convention that encourages churches to cut Cooperative Program giving. It is unfortunate but I give allowance for good intentions.

Brethren, let’s rethink this thing. Thanks.
_______________

Addendum: Joe McGee has sent me a brief email stating that although we disagree on some thing, he thought my treatment to be fair. He does add that the resolution is partly aimed at a method by which churches who are already cutting CP giving may be kept partly in the SBC giving fold. I don’t find that to be a compelling reason for the actions suggested but, again, I give credit for good intentions.

Will state conventions be helped by undermining the Cooperative Program? (by William Thornton)

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