Back in 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention was formed for the purpose of uniting churches for the cause of missions around the world. In those days, people felt the call of God to a foreign land and moved there for life. Travel was slow and the world was vast. Now we live in a day when the globe seems smaller. With little effort, we make our plans and board a plane to fly to Russia for short term mission trips then come back home and return to work or school. Yet we are still in the world mission business as Southern Baptist Christians.

The Cooperative Program was developed in 1925 and adopted by the convention as our unified method to fund mission endeavors. Each church autonomously decides what to give. That money is sent each year to their state convention. In turn, each state convention determines the percentage of the received funds to forward on to the SBC. While Florida forwarded 40% of the monies received from the churches in 2006, each state convention determines its own contribution annually to the SBC.  Then the SBC divides the CP money to fund convention causes. These divisions are set each year during the annual session of the convention.
 
Last year our church supported many mission works. One of the ways we were involved was voting 10% of our undesignated budget funds to the Cooperative Program. That amount was $720,000. Here is how that amount given by Olive was allotted:
 

• $432,000 (60%) remained in Florida to fund state convention causes as voted by the Florida convention
• $144,000 to the International Mission Board of the SBC
• $65,632 to the North American Mission Board of the SBC
• $63,820 to the six SBC seminaries
• $4,292 to the Ethics and Religious Commission of the SBC
• $9,562 to the SBC for operating costs
• $694 to the SBC Historical Library and Archives

It is the conviction of some, including myself, that we must direct more of our funds to foreign fields. Let me state up front I believe in the CP and the good work happening in our state conventions. The home front must maintain a strong gospel witness. Just as we want to keep Olive vibrant and growing, so must our state work remain vital and important. However, when we have vast regions of the world with no gospel witness it seems we are out of balance by keeping more in state conventions than we are sending to the unreached world. Florida is not saturated with the good news by a long shot. Nevertheless, we do have churches in every corner of the state preaching the Gospel.
It is my hope we can begin directing more CP dollars to facilitate planting churches in the larger cities of America and worldwide. These areas lack the impact of the Gospel. While the CP of the SBC is far from perfect, it remains an amazing tool.  As the world changes we must be open to asking some hard questions about our funding processes.

Pastor Ted Traylor

Posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 9:05 am.
You can leave a response, or you can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed.