UPDATED: Great Commission Giving vs Cooperative Program Giving, how's that working out?

We now have three years of the reporting of our new SBC giving metric, Great Commission Giving. GCG is an aggregate figure that is intended to report on our beloved Annual Church Profile (my state calls it the Annual Church Report, not sure if this is SBC-wide change or not) all giving to SBC and state convention causes including Cooperative Program, Lottie Moon, Annie Armstrong, any direct gifts to one's local association, to the seminaries or other SBC entities, and any direct gifts to any state convention entities such as children's homes, etc. All giving to Southern Baptist causes should be included in a church's GCG figure.

(I note here that there are a couple of caveats to whatever GCG statistics one uses, (a) it is a self-reported figure by churches not independently verified by a state convention or other entity. If a church chooses to toss into their GCG money given to Samaritan's Purse, the Gideons or whatever, no one can ferret that out, and (b) some states don't ask the same questions on their ACP. Generally though, figures reported as GCG are valid for comparison purposes.)

So, how's our mission giving looking in the SBC with our new measure?

Depends on ones point of view. Those who have a higher reverence for the Cooperative Program will not be happy Baptist campers these days because they believe that the very fact that churches are asked to report GCG undermines the CP. I think this is mixed up thinking. Those who think that all money given by a Southern Baptist church that goes to any SBC, associational, or state convention entity is good, healthy, and should be celebrated will be pleased.

Cooperative Program Giving

2010-2011    $488m
2011-2012      481m
2012-2013      482m

Great Commission Giving

2010-2011     $696m
2011-2012       744m
2012-2013       777m

Notice any trends?

Cooperative Program giving has declined by 1.2% over this period while Great Commission Giving has increased by 11.6%.

Since GCG includes CP gifts the trend is even more marked if one extracts out CP and just measures the non-CP Great Commission Giving. In the above period the increase was an astounding 41.8%

But let's not get too excited. Southern Baptist churches are just beginning to report these numbers. Throw a curve ball at pastors and church secretarys and many will likely swing and miss a couple of times before they hit it. I don't think that GCG has grown nearly as aggressively as these figures show but rather churches are beginning to report more accurately their actual giving. One should probably throw out the 2011 figures for GCG altogether.

With all these caveats, provisos, and addenda can we begin to draw any conclusions about Southern Baptist giving trends?

I think so. There's not a lot new here. For some time it has been crystal clear that these trends are present:

1. Churches are giving less to the Cooperative Program. Duh. Plodder states the obvious. The tiny increase in giving of 2013 over 2012 is in my view just a temporary tick upward in the decades long trend of decline. The Executive Committee's fiscal year ends in a few weeks. I predict that the CP will show another decrease.

2. Churches are giving slightly more to the two major mission offerings - Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong. Our churches have always held strong commitments to international missions and the LMCO has had some modest increases the past few years. After some years of turmoil and dysfunction, our North American Mission Board has stable leadership and a program, Send North America, that is appealing to many Southern Baptist pastors and churches. The AAEO has seen some very healthy inreases as a result.

3. Churches are showing a slight increase in other designated, direct funding of SBC, state convention, and, associational causes. The portion of GCG that is not Cooperative Program or the two mission offerings makes up only about 10% of the total GCG but it is a growing component.

So what do we make of all this?

Some Cooperative Program supporters believe that the very act of reporting GCG motivates churches to give less to the CP. I think not.

My conclusion is that GCG merely reflects the same trends shown by the choices of churches in their mission giving - less to the Cooperative Program, more to Annie and Lottie, more directly to some SBC entities and causes.

Can anything be done to change the trends?

I think not much. No one is putting forth a compelling plan for any Cooperative Program increase. Since most CP dollars stay with the states, do you see anyone raising the battle cry that state conventions need more funding? I don't. The best we can expect is that the CP will reach a floor as a percentage of church receipts. It's a bit above 5% now.

Some major SBC leaders are talking of finding ways to do more with less from the CP and at the same time find a way to get even more funding to missions. One can translate this to conclude that the CP is seen as a valuable asset but more of a legacy brand whose limitations are known, whose consistent downward trajectory should be managed and minimized. Correspondingly, those core mission entities such as the seminaries, IMB, and NAMB are casting about for alternative funding sources that might yield more revenues. The end result is that the CP, while still a giving powerhouse for our ministries, simply isn't what it used to be nor will it ever ascend to earlier heights.

It seems that it is a fait accompli that the CP will decrease and other giving methods will increase.

I would be happy to be persuaded otherwise. Someone put forth a workable plan.

Update: David Platt, our new IMB leader, is a good example of the trends above. His church gave a little to the CP, direct gifts to the SBC Executive Committee, large Lottie Moon offerings, and large direct gifts to the IMB for particular partnership projects. He is one who clearly has concluded that the Cooperative Program as currently structured, while valuable to us, is insufficient for the needs of our time in regard to The Great Commission.

The Cooperative Program we have...not the one we had or dream about.

The SBC as we know it would not exist without our venerable and beloved Cooperative Program. Without it, there would certainly be a Southern Baptist Convention. It just wouldn't look like what we see today.

Alas, our flagship denominational giving program is in this slow, steady, relentless decline. As a percentage of offering plate dollars, it has declined from over ten percent 35 years ago to about 5.4%. There is no SBC statistic that is as consistent as this one. Even annual baptisms show an uptick occasionally but not the Cooperative Program percentage.

Frank Page is hopeful for a Cooperative Program uptick.

A couple of things about our Executive Committee leader. First, he is brutally honest, a virtue not found in all SBC leaders most of whom know how to finesse or ignore unpleasant news in hopes that no one will notice or that it will go away. Page noted candidly that charitable giving has increased, most of our churches report increased revenues; however, the Cooperative Program continues to decline. I would add that the stock market is at a record level as well. There is more money around to be given. It's just not being put in the CP.

Second, Frank Page is relentlessly and unashamedly aspirational about the CP. The one percent increase plan shows some success. He promises to continue to work at it saying, "I supported [the CP] before I was paid to support this. As a pastor, I strongly supported over 10 percent of our church's undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program." God bless him.

I am venturing here some rank conjecture about the future of the Cooperative Program. Take it for what it is worth.

Forget the ten percent days. They are gone forever and are not going to return. 

I hear state convention folks and denominational leaders and staff speak with wistful nostalgia about those days. "Ah, they say, what could we do if churches gave 10 percent rather than 5 percent. Brethren, wait until you are safely settled in a retirement home to let yourself get carried on by such memories. They are gone. Kaput. Life has changed. Churches have changed. We have changed. Better to work at maintaining a threshold percentage, say five percent.

Aspirational SBC leaders like Frank Page and SBC Voices contributor Rick Patrick (whose "Pick a Number" article advocates adopting a 10% CP figure to suggest to churches) are the kinds of people I want to cooperate with in the SBC. We always do a little better when challenged. I just don't see the least chance of rolling back the clock and rolling up the percentages to double digits.

The Cooperative Program will not be revived by any attempt to cajole churches or shame churches into giving larger percentages.

We have demonstrated over the past 35 years that we seldom find a mega church pastor whose congregation gives in the low single digits whom we are unwilling to elevate to our highest denominational elective office. Check the percentages of SBC presidents over this period.

I get it, brethren. Smaller church pastors resent the fact that their church gives CP percentages that are double or triple the SBC average and often many multiples of some megachurches. Some speak of the "fair share" that should be expected of churches. There is no such thing and if I know Southern Baptist churches and pastors, there aren't many who will sit still and be lectured on what they owe the convention.

Wise convention leaders express appreciation for whatever level of support the CP gets from churches. This is right and proper, since the convention serves the churches and not vice versa. There is no reason, however, that we cannot find some threshold figure of CP support before we elect officers and trustees. This has to be done informally in a grassroots fashion. No one can pick the number and dictate it.

There is nothing present, nor anything on the SBC radar that promises to increase CP percentages.

We should elect leaders whose percentages are exemplary but I would not be optimistic that the giving example of any leader shows itself in any overall increase. There are too many factors working against it.

State conventions, many of them, have heard their churches call for a greater proportion of CP revenues to be forwarded to the Executive Committee and then to the mission boards and seminaries. We're talking about fractions of percents annually on this. We're looking at five and ten year plans that, if implemented, will move state conventions from 60 or 65 percent to 55 percent or so. This is good. It is positive. But it isn't a substantial enough change to translate into changing church behavior. This will not stop state executives from saying, "We did our part. How about you churches doing yours" but it doesn't matter. They work for the churches, not the churches for the various levels of convention life.

The pressures in the convention work against the Cooperative Program.

Calvinism/Traditionalism or any of the assorted other issues that swirl around the convention all have a price. At the moment we have some prominent pastors who designate around certain seminaries who are seen to be too Calvinistic. We have others who are displeased with NAMB for their church planting policies which are also seen as too Calvinistic. We have state Baptist colleges who are plainly not comfortable places for Calvinistic students and faculty. All this mitigates against any unity in expanding and increasing the CP.

Think of it on a local church level. All that has to happen for a church to decrease their CP giving is for one of any number of gripes to bubble up in the pastor's or church leadership's thinking. Perhaps my fellow pastors would tell me if I am wrong, generally, that decreasing the CP percentage in a local church budget meets with much less resistance that it did thirty years ago. Contrast that to what might happen for a church to increase their CP giving. While possible and while many churches have responded positively to Frank Page's One Percent CP increase plan, churches will make opportunity cost decisions with their funds and many will conclude that there are other, better uses for their missions giving. The CP simply isn't presenting an attractive enough appeal to score high on that comparison for most churches. 

More churches, and even state conventions, are taking a more direct funding route.

Check the figures. The Executive Committee received more last fiscal year in designated funds from the states than they did in Cooperative Program funds. That old, archaic term societal giving, well it are us these days. We never left it and now it looks more popular than ever. At the SBC level we are a mostly societally funded orgainzation.

Not much has been said about it but one state convention (South Carolina, perhaps others also) is sending some funding directly to the IMB. Their thinking is that they can get to the level of support they wish to give international missions by taking a portion of CP gifts from the churches and bypassing Nashville than they can by submitting their national portion of CP revenues to the SBC Executive Committee's allocation plan. The math works for them by this method; whereas, it works against them through the traditional route. 

The two major mission offerings, Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, have fared much better than the Cooperative Program recently. In fact, unless trends change, within a decade the Lottie Moon offering will be greater than the portion of the CP received by the Executive Committee. 

The Cooperative Program desperately needs a makeover.

Oh, we tried that with the Great Commission Resurgence, one of those grand eruptions where we clamor for change and recommitment to our main purposes of missions and ministry. Here's the result of that: NAMB came out better, IMB got a tiny increase, the seminaries successfully protected their slice of the CP pie, and state conventions were expected to shoulder all the costs. 

Nothing much about that makes the CP look better than it did before.

We might keep doing the same things and just manage the CP as a declining but still substantial funding mechanism, a legacy brand that has seen its best days. Not a bad idea. Be positive about it, recognizing the realities, adjust to leaner state conventions, try and consolidate some seminary expenses, while keeping NAMB and IMB our main entities robust and vigorous in their work.

Anyone have a better idea?

There are days where I do pessimism quite well. And there are days where I do realism extremely well. You choose which you prefer. I'm thinking there is a convergence on this subject.

Scintillating predictions for 2014

 2014

What will Southern Baptists do in 2014...besides serve the Lord, share the Gospel, minister in Jesus' name and perhaps fuss and fight a bit? Here are a few predictions:

1. SBC Presidential Election; When the SBC meets in annual session in Baltimore June 10 & 11, your humble hacker and plodder blogger plans to attend. I have no idea who will run for president but allow me to make the safe prediction that there will be a megachurch pastor, perhaps an ethnic candidate, and maybe someone involved in the Calvinist/Traditionalist business. If I am able to vote, I will not vote for any candidate whose church does not give a minimum percentage to the Cooperative Program. That threshold percentage will be the subject of a later blog article. To be candid, I'm a bit tired of the megachurch superstar candidates (though I admit I happily voted for Bryant Wright a few years ago).

2. Calvinist/Traditionalist Stuff; Frank Page's informal, ad hoc Calvinist study group is history, pretty much forgotten history at this point. Peering down the months of 2014, I see a renewal of conflict on the macro level and continuing church acrimony on the micro level in regard to Calvinist doctrine and Calvinistic pastors. The best we can hope for is for the year to be quiet in this regard. If there are any major SBC entities who change leadership this year, expect for them to receive keen scrutiny on their Calvinism as well as their connections to Southern Seminary and Al Mohler. Sorry, it's just where we are.

3. Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings; The Lottie Moon offering goal is the same $175 million that we have had since 2009. We haven't been close to reaching the goal but will do better this year than last and will end up above $150 million. Kevin Ezell and the North American Mission Board have actually presented a vision that has registered with Southern Baptists and the Annie Armstrong offering is increasing. I predict another increase for 2014.

4. State conventions; No level of SBC life has suffered as much as state conventions. I predict continued financial shortfalls. One might take the macro view that state conventions have been caught in a major technology and attitude shift that leaves them having to do the very hard work of convincing churches of the value of their mission and vision.

5. Cooperative Program; The CP showed yet another decline last year and that after the tiniest of increases the previous year. I see no shift in long term trends and predict another small CP decline. It is becoming increasingly apparrent that SBC pastors and churches are placing more emphasis and energy in specific, dedicated spending than in our grand market basket cooperative pool. I remind my astute readers that at the SBC level we are now mostly a societal giving denomination with more revenues going directly to SBC entities than to the Cooperative Program.

6. Housing Allowance; Rank speculation here, but I predict that the federal court decision that struck down the laws allowing cash housing allowances to ministers will be appealed and there will be no further decision this year.

7. Plagiarism; My sense is that plagiarism - bold, shameless stealing of other pastor's entire sermons and illustrations and preaching them as if they are one's own - is rampant among pastors. People widely known among Southern Baptists will be confronted with their sins in this regard.

8. Personal predictions; Plodder will once again replenish his pathetic looking wood pile. Although I was rather lazy about it in 2013, I jumped all over it yesterday. I will preach more in 2014 than I did in 2013 and will preach exactly zero sermons with silly alliterative outlines. With no effort at all from me, my total of grandchildren will increase by 50%.

I admit to a paucity of predictions for this year. Sorry.

It's official: Southern Baptists prefer societal giving to cooperative giving.

The SBC Executive Committee closed their fiscal year books the other day and has reported the results:

• Cooperative Program gifts: Down   $3,677,719
• Designated gifts:                   Up        $2,361,345

Note that these are the Cooperative Program and designated gifts that are received and channeled through the Executive Committee, not total CP gifts (most of which stay with the various state conventions), nor gifts given directly to our entities. Most of the designated giving would be the Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon offerings. 

The figure are self-explanatory. 

• Southern Baptist churches are giving less to the Cooperative Program, a decrease of 1.92% from the previous year.
• Southern Baptist churches are giving more in designated funds, an increase of 1.24% from the previous year.

Here's something to chew on: Southern Baptists gave more through the Executive Committee in designated giving than they did in Cooperative Program giving and thereby demonstrated that in support of our SBC entities, we prefer societal giving. I didn't check if this is a historic first or not. I suspect it is a first in our lifetime.

Cooperative Program         $188,001,275
Designated Giving              $193,106,285

Commentary?

While the Cooperative Program languishes, Lottie Moon flourishes

Various Southern Baptist Convention entities make announcements and reports just prior to the annual meeting and it was good to hear our International Mission Board announce that the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions totaled almost $150,000,000 for 2012.

The final total, $149,276,303, was the third highest ever received and was the second consecutive year the offering showed an increase. The 1.7% increase over 2011 might not seem impressive but the additional $2.45 million will pay a lot of mission personnel costs. Dollars still pay the bills, not percentages.

Contrast the increase for international missions with Cooperative Program's continued languishing. CP receipts are accurately reported by the Executive Committee who have generally found it positive to state CP giving as keeping up with budgeted goals. The CP was down about 4% compared to the same period for last year but slightly above budget. I have no problem with positive spin, which is what that is.

In my state, Georgia, there is a marked contrast between what is happening with the Cooperative Program and with the two major mission offerings, Lottie Moon and the North American Mission Board's Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.

The CP was up in Georgia for 2012 by 1.67%, very good news here in light of the fact that it has dropped by millions over the past few years. However, offerings to NAMB were up 6.88% and offerings to the IMB were up a lusty 9.22% over the previous year.

Plodder's conclusions, a statement of the painfully obvious: Southern Baptists have far more enthusiasm for North American and International missions than they do for the catch-all Cooperative Program.

While each has great value among us, when pastors and churches look at where they wish to spend their mission dollars they are eschewing some CP giving in favor of direct giving to the two mission boards.

The math likely reveals why: a dollar to the CP yields one dime to NAMB and about two dimes to IMB. A dollar to Lottie or Annie yields a dollar to that mission cause without dilution.

I do not think this trend is unhealthy. Quite the opposite. Neither do I think that there is anything much Frank Page or any other SBC or state convention executive can do to make the CP more appealing to the churches.

Good work Southern Baptists. Lottie would be pleased.

Annie Armstrong - 1933

Among some things found after my mother's death was this Royal Service magazine from March, 1933, the issue that featured the Week of Prayer for Home Missions of eighty years past. The graphic is the offering's promotional poster for that year.

The Annie Armstrong goal that year was $80,000, a tidy sum equivalent to about $1.4 million today. This year's Annie Armstrong goal  is $70 million.

This idea was among the suggestions for achieving the offering goal:

On the prayer calendar for that month was Martha Franks, legendary missionary to Tsining, China and now namesake of a retirement home in South Carolina. She and Bertha Smith were the nextgen Lottie Moons. 

Sure, we are far better with graphics and much more ambitious and sophisticated with our offering promotion but after perusing this issue of Royal Service I don't see that we are any more zealous about reaching America for Christ that we were 80 years ago.
 

What Mission Offering Do SBCers Value More?

Southern Baptists value Annie and Lottie more than the Cooperative Program, a fact shown by their behavior over the last few years since the economic meltdown.

While revenues for our two major mission offerings, Annie Armstrong for our North American Mission Board and Lottie Moon for our International Mission Board, have declined significantly since 2007, their losses have been markedly less than that of the Cooperative Program.

The graph above shows Annie, Lottie, and the Cooperative Program receipts of the SBC Executive Committee for the years 2007-2011. The reporting for these offerings is on different schedules so the time periods represented are slightly different. Of the three offerings, only the Cooperative Program has shown no material increase in any of the past five years.

One can make their own judgments as to the reasons why, but it seems to be a statement of the obvious to conclude that Southern Baptists and Southern Baptist churches see more value in putting their mission dollars into the giving channels which focus on North American and international missions.

Sure, the CP does contribute significantly to the budgets of the two mission boards but when churches and individuals have to choose, they have chosen to maintain giving levels of Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong as best they can in difficult times rather than the Cooperative Program.

Whenever there is a discussion of the Cooperative Program, some contributors will comment on their displeasure with the proportional division of the CP which puts less than twenty cents on the CP dollar in the IMB and less than a dime for NAMB. The understanding that Lottie and Annie bypass this reduction is an incentive for churches to put relatively more emphasis on the mission offerings than on the Cooperative Program.

Regardless, it will be good when we can go back to black ink on all three of them.

NAMB, State Conventions back on the same page

The big news back in February coming out of the Fellowship of State Executive Directors annual meeting was the naming of a state executives' special committee, "A Study Committee on Implementation of NAMB Initiatives with State Conventions."

The concern was over how the North American Mission Board was redirecting its budget to reflect new priorities. The changes at NAMB meant that some state conventions were to get less money and sacred cows were mooing mightily all across the SBC landscape; hence, this highly visible study committee, sort of a shot across NAMB's bow.

The study committee thereupon went into the deep freeze, since not a syllable has been heard about it since...until now.

Sensibly, the state convention leaders have decided to go along and get along with NAMB. Baptist Press reports this today in their story,

State, NAMB leaders to move forward 'in unity'.

All that was said publicly on this is in the quote below:

On September 13, 2012, state executive directors met with North American Mission Board president Kevin Ezell. David Hankins, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention and chairman of the special study committee, presented a report that was enthusiastically received by the Execs. The result is that the Conventions and the North American Mission Board have determined to move forward together in unity to impact the lostness of North America.

"'It is our desire that all of us can join ranks around the task of evangelizing and congregationalizing North America,' said Hankins. 'Southern Baptists can have confidence in our united effort.'

"Ezell added, 'We are excited to be moving forward together in unity for the sake of the kingdom.'"

There was some kind of internal report. Guess we will never see that. Regardless, this is good news, although one might be curious as to the process and discussion.

State convention leaders may have been given pause by one or more of the following factors:

• Kevin Ezell, NAMB's leader, has NAMB doing quite well in the eyes of many SBCers and had made efforts to mollify some of the state exec's complaints.
• No less than retired IMB president Jerry Rankin labeled NAMB's kickback funding for state conventions, the trigger for the study committee, as "entitlements," hardly helpful to the states in shaping SBC opinion.
• While NAMB received criticism for some of their changes, it's tough to argue against NAMB's putting a laser focus on church planting.
• Early high profile critics of  NAMB's changes did not gain much traction in the SBC. 
• It  has been tough to argue against NAMB's policy redirecting mission money from heavily churched states like Arkansas and putting it in less churched areas. 
• The Annie Armstrong offering was up over one million dollars this year, indicating SBC support of the new NAMB.
• NAMB's signature Grand Program, Send North America, is off to a promising start with thousands of SBCers and SBC churches on board.

Slice this any way you want. It is good news for Southern Baptists to stop complaining and lock arms in reaching the lost in North America.

Annie Armstrong did well in 2011

Baptist Press reports that the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions is up for 2011, receiving over $56 million.

That's good news.

Actually, that's rather surprising and pretty substantial good news, seeing that the economy is still staggering and NAMB is on the receiving end of some harsh criticism in some quarters.

May I remind my gentle readers of my 2012 prediction that the AAEO would be up and that by over a million dollars? The offering was up by well over a million, about three percent.

This is good news and is one signal that NAMB is moving away from the dysfunctional messes of the past that soured many Southern Baptists on the organization.

It might add perspective to note that the $56m was still far under the record AAEO total in 2007 of $59.3 million and far, far under the $70 million goal.

But its a bit of good news in a time when there is dearth of ths same in SBC circles.

Lottie Moon or Global Mission Offering?

No. Plodder has not gone moderate.

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Lottie Moon knockoff is called "Offering for Global Missions" although I've often seen it promoted as "Global Mission Offering." I don't know if any of the phrases are trademarked as are Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong.

The blog title comes from the church I attended Sunday which was in the midst of promoting what they labeled "Global Missions Offering," a composite (and they explain this in their promotional materials) of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, and Southern Baptists' World Hunger Fund. The church divides the total roughly 75%, 20%, and 5% respectively.

One offering. One time a year. Divided three ways. From what the pastor said, some give monthly to the offering.

The church is one of the larger IMB supporters and had a missionary speaker from the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention. He is in the states for a few months before returning to his place of service, Japan.

I am told that (a) this is a trend in the SBC, and (b) for this church, it yields a larger offering. I admit that this is the first occasion that I recall seeing this practice in an SBC church (this one would be a mid-mega church, about 1,000 in primary weekly worship).

I'm wondering how widespread this method is and what the rationale might be for it? I could see that it clears the church calendar of one major (Annie Armstrong) and one minor (World Hunger) promotional period. Sometimes Lottie and Annie are almost back-to-back, making for a long stretch of offering promotion.

I don't have any issue with this, just haven't seen it done this way.

SBC life used to be so simple; Lottie, Annie, a state missions offering, Cooperative Program. Not so much anymore: Great Commission Giving, composite offerings, direct offerings.

Feel better about NAMB?

Our North American Mission Board has been the closest thing to a completely dysfunctional agency that Southern Baptists have ever had. Well, let's go ahead and say that NAMB has absolutely been dysfunctional for most of the 21st century. Informed SBCers, even those who love to argue anything and everything, will likely not argue that point.

Along came the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force and report and, more than any other SBC entity, NAMB was singled out for change. Soon thereafter NAMB trustees plucked Kevin Ezell, megachurch pastor whose disengagement with NAMB and non-support of the same was easily the most notable and puzzling part of his resume, to be the CEO of the dysfunctional half of our two mission boards.

After little over one year, Ezell has successfully made just about every constituency in SBC life mad at him for the changes he has made at NAMB - except of course those who have an interest, passion, and skills in the area of church planting.

Good for him.

Someone in the SBC ought to be mad about the way things have been going at NAMB. Even NAMB trustees expected us to just move on from one debacle to the next and keep on giving our money.

Very quickly, Ezell cut NAMB HQ staff drastically, saving millions. He found NAMB staffers flying all around the country to do events and cut the travel budget by half, saving more millions.

NAMB has re-engineered the complicated system of kickbacks to state conventions whereby churches give to Annie Armstrong and Cooperative Program, which money travels to state conventions, then the Executive Committee in Nashville, then to NAMB in Alpharetta, GA, then back to state conventions. The change was intended to put less money in low priority areas and ministries and more in church planting. Made perfect sense to me.

NAMB funded missionaries who fulfilled various jobs like ministry at ski resorts have been either eliminated or reassigned to focus on church planting.

I like the changes.

Baptist Press quotes Ezell as saying recently that,

In 2009, NAMB spent 28 percent of its budget on church planting. In 2011, we are spending 37 percent and, in 2012, we will spend at least 42 percent of our budget on church planting," Ezell said. "So we are progressing rapidly toward our minimal goal of 50 percent."

Amen.

I like the direction of NAMB these days.

Some people don't. I like the focus on church planting. Some people may like NAMB doing a thousand things and making tens of thousands of people happy they get a slice of NAMB's budget. I don't think that concept was working well for us and am glad it is changing.

I feel better about giving to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.

Some don't like the new NAMB. My working hypothesis is that if you look closely behind what is not liked about the new NAMB, you will find a funding cut. There is no better way to make an SBCer scream than to cut his funding stream.

The jury is still out as far as results go but I feel better about NAMB.

How about you?

What will make the Cooperative Program more attractive?

If the CP has some flawed DNA that makes it virtually impossible to ever change substantially, is there anything that will make it more attractive to SBC pastors and churches?

Asked another way, since churches have consistently, relentlessly chosen to support the CP less and less, and that for decades, what might arrest that trend?

I think that there are three possibilities for making the CP more attractive:

1. State Conventions keep less of the funds. As I said yesterday, I am not optimistic about anything significant here. Suppose the states keep, say, 57 cents of a dollar instead of 62 cents. Who is enthused about that? Not me.

There is elasticity in the "pricing" (the amount kept by state conventions) of the CP to churches but we will not see a demand change without substantial lowering of the "price." Bryant Wright talked about the states cutting their share by half, an unlikely event.

My favorite candy bar is a Baby Ruth. I love them. I buy them occasionally. Would a price drop from 62 cents for a bar to 57 drive me to go out an buy more? Unlikely. It's just a nickel but if the price went to 35 cents I might stock up.

As a factor in increasing CP revenues, I don't see any change that state conventions will be willing to make to cause it.

2. The Executive Committee significantly changes the allocation formula for the mission boards to receive more. Nothing will happen here. IMB, NAMB, and the seminaries will continue to get their historic percentages, with a tweak here or there.

3. Internal changes at our major SBC entities: IMB, NAMB, seminaries. Kevin Ezell, in the short span of a single year, has substantially changed NAMB. It is much more attractive to me and much more likely to see an increase in my support. IMB has a leader change but I don't see much institution change. I support it and will continue. The seminaries keep rocking along. I don't see anything much that pushes my button among them.

But even if our two main entities, IMB and NAMB, are made to be much more attractive, efficient, and functional in carrying out their mission, will I be motivated to express my increased support by increasing CP giving, or by increasing Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings?

This is simple. The most efficient and effective way to express support of the two mission agencies is to increase Lottie and Annie, not to increase CP support. Who is not aware that another dollar to the CP yields only about 20 cents to IMB and 10 to NAMB. It's a no brainer.

One might find support for this in the CP figures just released. Designated causes, mainly Lottie and Annie, increased several times that of the CP. The increased revenues are all small dollar numbers but I think my reading of them is accurate.

There will be a day when the economy is booming again, when church revenues are increasing and when CP revenues will increase. There will come a day when the percentage of church offering plate dollars given through the CP will stop declining and even bump up a point or so. But I don't see a day when the SBC will ever move back to anywhere near double digit percentages.

We have a new CP normal and will have to live with it.

How much should we fund specialty ministries and missionaries?

The Southern Baptist Convention through both mission boards, through many if not all of the state conventions have a penchant for funding specialty mission endeavors. We will take Cooperative Program or other money from the churches and pay for salaries, travel expenses, and other associated costs so that we can have a presence at major events and locations.

Here’s a partial list: The Olympics, winter and summer, the World Cup, Super Bowl, beach resorts, ski resorts, the United Nations. There are many, many more.

I doubt that I am the only one who wonders about the efficacy of such things, and I doubt that I, alone, have had the thought that attending the 2014 World Cup in Brasil (Rio! Copacabana, Ipanema, Maracana stadium!) as an SBC/BP/IMB rep would be a good way to suffer for Jesus.

There are lost people in all of these places. There are Christian athletes in all of these sports. There is ministry, good ministry, to be done.

But, is this an effective way to use mission dollars?

The North American Mission Board, as a part of their refocus on church planting rather than a wide variety of other causes is redirecting their funds away from such ministries and into church planting.

Take the case of the Baptist Convention of New York.

I wrote earlier (see the Christian Index article) about how the BCNY has seven associational missionaries who are fully or partly funded by NAMB and that these people have been reassigned as church planting catalysts who have a goal of starting four churches per year in their associations. Their ministry will be evaluated on the basis of planting churches.

The same article reported that NAMB also has had a resort minister at Lake Placid, NY who related to Olympic hopefuls and was established as liason to the U. S. Olympic Committee. NAMB dropped this funding. The ministry will have to be picked up and funded locally.

NAMB has had a missionary, a chaplain, to the United Nations for years. No more NAMB funding for this. The chaplain will secure his own funding. As an aside, it seems to me that this is a location where building relationships with people, political leaders, from all over the world would be helpful to the International Mission Board. I am unaware if the IMB has people who already do this.

NAMB funds a campus minister at West Point. He will continue to receive funding, but not his counterparts at Princeton or NYU/Columbia. These will have to find alternative funding sources.

The handwriting is clearly on the wall here: Specialty ministry funding is out. Boutique, showcase missions are out. Church planting is in.

This is probably a change that needed to happen at NAMB.

With both mission boards and the state conventions having shrinking pools of funds, one might look for ministries like these to receive a closer look. Do we really want to put Cooperative Program, Lottie and Annie money into resort ministry? Is this the most effective way to spend those dollars? Would we rather have something permanent rather than temporary publicity for the folks back home?

Someone is asking these questions. Good.

NAMB and restoring lost trust

Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong have always been one-two in special offerings for the churches I have pastored over the last three decades. We didn't have to pray about it, think about it, decide about it; come December and March it was Lottie and Annie and that was that.

Then NAMB's head took a private jet to a movie in London, at our expense, and Spending God's Money came along, more revelations about wasting money, a hasty resignation followed by SBC heavyweights putting out a statement about how wonderful the leader was. We get to pay an estimated two year severance for him, along with tens of thousands of dollars for executive placement services. NAMB trustees eventually get us a new CEO, tell us he's doing a great job and then force him to resign. NAMB seemed to be as good at creating disasters as with disaster relief.

What a mess. An expensive mess. Our mess.

My confidence in NAMB was deep-sixed. We still did the Annie Armstrong Offering but with little enthusiasm.

"Don't hurt the people in the field," we were admonished.

Sorry, that effort at emotional blackmail won't work this time. How about we get our house in order before going back to the status quo ante?

Eventually we get another CEO, Kevin Ezell, who arrived about a year ago. I like stuff about him. I had some questions about him.

I'm liking what I see with Kevin Ezell. He comes to preach in my church (I invited him) and I appreciate a few moments with him before the service. He connected well with our church. I mean, the guy brought several different Bibles so he could use the one our church preferred. Any old Bible suits us just fine.

I introduce him to my church as the man with the SBC's hardest job and I think he is doing well. I get the impression that here's a leader who might find more satisfaction in pastoring a congregation (or several of them) than in administering a $140m outfit with a truckload of critics snapping at him over every decision; but, administer he does.

He wastes no time downsizing NAMB HQ, as if it was written in stone that we need hundreds of people in Alpharetta to reach North America for Christ. It wasn't. Good move.

After decades of routing money from churches to NAMB, back to states who put it in a bunch of different stuff and have ordinary people scratching their heads over the byzantine process, he tries to add some sensibility to all that. Good move. Time will tell how good.

He moves the organization from doing a million things with mediocrity to a focus on church planting and doing that well. Sounds like a better plan to me.

I'm feeling better about NAMB.

It's in our interest that he succeed, not fail, and NAMB hasn't seen much of that lately - success, that is.

Every SBCer has an opinion about everyone and everything SBC.

Here's mine.

Asking the church for money: How much is too much?

How many offerings does your church take up?

Secondary question: How many is too many?

Here’s a list of offerings we do or have done in my church:

1. Regular budget offerings, every Sunday, without fail. It's part of worship, of course.
2. Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions; runs roughly for the entire months of December and January. Our largest and most important 'special' offering.
3. Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions; I promote it for a single Sunday in March or April but people give over a period of 3-4 Sundays. NAMB just about lost my trust with the recent debacles but is doing much better now.
4. World Hunger Offering; usually in October and usually not just a ‘give us a check or cash’ offering but some kind of promotion.
5. Local crisis pregnancy center; February, usually like the WHO.
6. Gideons; not annually but occasionally when we host a Gideon speaker we will receive an offering for the group.
7. Local drug/alcohol rehab facility; similar to the pregnancy center.
8. Golf tournament for local rehab unit; church members receive letters asking for donations from our golfers but not a direct offering.
9. Church mission trip; usually not a cash offering.
10. Local benevolence need; as needed love offering for someone or some family need
11. Disaster relief; as needed, Alabama tornadoes this year
12. Children’s Home; usually a food pantry type, although this year they asked for Wal-Mart gift cards.
13. Love offering for pastor and staff. I'm all for this one. I did insist that 'Pastor Appreiciation Sunday' be changed to 'Staff Appreciation' when we called another full time staff member.
14. Associational Special Mission Offering. We don't do this one annually but our association started a mission offering, complete with special envelopes and named for a former long term Associational Missionary.

We don't participate in the state mission offering, any hospital, seminary, or Baptist senior ministry.

I'm thinking that it is soooo easy to go to the well too often and that budgeting for some of these ministries is easier but then our church doesn't object to occasional promotions for the causes they are familiar with.

What I haven't been able to do is have a perspective from the pew. Are folks thinking, 'Not another one,' or 'Enough is enough.' Looking at my list, it just looks like too many, too often. Everyone wants to pass the plate one more time for their pet cause.

Enough is enough.