Great Commission Giving: The metric that can't get any respect in the SBC

One would think that giving by SBC churches to the Cooperative Program, Lottie Moon offering, Annie Armstrong offering, state mission offering, associational offering, their local association, state convention, mission boards, seminaries, children's homes, Baptist colleges, ministries for the aging, hospitals, recovery programs, disaster relief programs, direct partnership projects with our International and North American Mission Boards, and a range of other Southern Baptist national, state convention, or associational causes would be something to be praised and commended. We would all be for such giving, right? No one would object to celebrating such giving, right?

Not quite right. All of the above giving is what makes up Great Commission Giving, the giving metric that just can't seem to get any respect among us.

Here's what the The Great Commission Resurgence Task Force Final Report said about Great Commission Giving:

We will recognize the total of all monies channeled through the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention, the state conventions, and associations as Great Commission Giving.

We call upon all Southern Baptists to celebrate every dollar given by faithful Southern Baptists as part of Great Commission Giving, including designated gifts given to any Baptist association, state convention, and to the causes of the Southern Baptist Convention.

We affirm that designated gifts to special causes are to be given as a supplement to the Cooperative Program and not as a substitute for Cooperative Program giving. 

 ...we will call upon Southern Baptists to give as never before, to support the Cooperative Program as never before, and to celebrate every church’s eager and sacrificial support of Great Commission Giving at every level.

Here are the totals for Great Commission Giving since the giving category's inception, in millions of dollars:

2011        696

2012        744
2013        777
2014        638
2015        613

Aha! GCG has been dropping for the past couple of years, right?

Wrong.

From the get-go, people complained that GCG would divert money from the Cooperative Program; thus, some churches and state conventions have refused to report GCG. In the most recent statistical report for the SBC, five state conventions do not ask for a number for GCG and LifeWay gives an orphan chart for "Other 2015 Items - Not Asked By All State Conventions" that duly footnotes the five state conventions that do not ask their churches for a figure for GCG.

Maybe the thinking is that if I don't like GCG, I can ignore it altogether and maybe it will go away.

Add to state convention recalcitrance the utter confusion among pastors and churches about exactly what is meant by Great Commission Giving and you've got a recipe for a generally worthless statistic. I regularly read pastors talking about GCG who convey an understanding that GCG is one category of giving and CP is another. GCG includes both. 

Well, no one tells Southern Baptist pastors, churches, or state conventions what to do, what to ask, or how to count. 

We don't have the means to determine an accurate, convention-wide figure for Great Commission Giving. Even if every state convention clearly defined what it is and asked for it in their Annual Church Profile report, it's a certainly that pastors and churches would respond with their own definitions of GCG. Some would include CP in the figure, some would not. 

But I doubt that the most strident critic of the statistic would argue that GCG is not growing. We have a record Lottie Moon offering for 2015. The Annie Armstrong offering is close to the record. SBC churches collected $406 million more in 2015 than the previous year. Since GCG is mostly CP + LM + AA, and those three total to more than the $613 million reported as GCG for 2015, GCG is increasing. It looks like many in the SBC just don't want anyone to know it. If that constitutes a Cooperative Program growth strategy it is a pretty pathetic one.

Frankly, it doesn't really matter if LifeWay cannot collect an accurate figure for GCG. Southern Baptist churches are trending towards designated giving while keeping the Cooperative Program about the same, perhaps with a tiny fractional increase. That's the way it is. That's the way it has been for a generation and a half now.

Pity the poor GCG. Although it is growing, it just cannot get any respect. But at least it gets talked about. 

Whatever happened to Great Commission Baptists anyway?

Top SBC Good News Stories of 2014

Bah humbug! Bad news all around...but...here's my list of the top good news stories for SBCers in 2014:

1. Lottie Moon hits record total, $154.1 million.

Southern Baptists may be giving less to the Cooperative Program and less of their disposable income to churches and mission causes, SBC entities may be mired in retrenchment mode because of flat or declining giving, but the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions is at its highest level ever (but I am not allowing anyone to recalculate this in real dollars, adjusted for inflation, so as not to rain on good news).

2. Messengers elect a president who has greatly increased his church's Cooperative Program giving.

OK, so Ronnie Floyd's church is still below the average percentage and Baptist Press didn't report what that percentage was but he did lead his church to give substantially more to the CP than in earlier years. The CP has no chance of any increases if messengers elect leaders who show no interest in supporting it and most megachurches are not heavy CP supporters. This year, the election of a megachurch pastor was a positive move relative to the Cooperative Program.

3. Our housing allowance is safe from federal constitutional challenges.

At least it is safe for now, the previous federal district court's ruling that it was unconstitutional having been overturned on appeal.

4. IMB trustees show a willingness to embrace the 21st century.

With the election of thirty-six year old David Platt as the new IMB leader, replacing his seventy-year-old predecessor, trustees demonstrate that they recognize that some new thinking is in order for our flagship institution. Younger Southern Baptists are encouraged thereby.

5. Southern Baptist leaders and entities recognize mental illness as a grave problem.

The SBC, it's leaders and entities, have been AWOL on the serious business of mental illness among us. While leadership cannot force change at the local church level, at least there has been a steady stream of sensible initiatives from our folks. Regretfully, this has come as a result of the suicides of two children of high profile SBC leaders.

6. At various levels, the SBC is showing engagement on racial issues.

The response to racial turmoil of Ferguson, Missouri and of the death of Michael Brown in New York has generated sensible commentary from our leaders and mostly civil and profitable discussion among us. This is a change and is good news.

7. NAMB's church planting initiative, Send North America, is continuing to thrive.

While some critics snipe about it, SNA is engaging large numbers of younger Southern Baptists who are interested in church planting and large numbers of SBC churches who wish to partner in planting churches in North America. One is hard-pressed to name any other national SBC initiative that shows success.

8. Great Commission Giving is up.

Southern Baptist churches gave $777 million in Great Commission Giving for 2012-2013, an increase of $23 millions from the previous reporting period. GCG is the aggregate of giving to all SBC causes. Although these figures are somewhat soft in that churches self-report as they choose, any increase is good news. Critics of GCG will have to explain why it is not good to give to SBC causes and why such should not be celebrated.

9. The key Cooperative Program percentage increased.

That would be the percentage of undesignated church offering plate dollars given to the CP. We moved up ever so slightly from 5.414% to 5.5%. This makes two years straight there was a tiny, tiny increase. Frank Page concludes that the CP has reached its "nadir". An increase of 0.086% isn't much...but it's something.

10. Average SBC clergy salaries are up.

The 2014 LifeWay Compensation Study revealed that total "package" compensation for senior pastors was up 1.8% from 2012. Not much but up is up and not down...has to be good news. Senior pastors are advised to thank God for this and not to complain that the average pay for non-senior pastor staff positions were up by a good bit more than for senior pastors.

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.

Percentage-philes: Put up or shut up

I'm smiling when I say this, but it's time for those who believe that the percentage of undesignated receipts that a church gives to the Cooperative Program is important to put up or shut up, and in these ways:

• Stop electing those whose churches give low percentages to the CP to high SBC office.
• Stop nominating and putting these people on our entity trustee boards.
• Stop hiring to high denominational office those who as pastor led their churches to give low percentages.
• Ignore Great Commission Giving for elections and appointments 

How hard is it to do all of these things?

Actually, rather difficult, based on past experiences.

Stop electing those whose churches give low percentages to the CP to high SBC office

SBC messengers have almost never rejected high profile megapastors with low CP percentages for SBC president. The last example of this was Bryant Wright whose church gave in the 3% range. If the thinking is that megachurches and high profile leaders should set examples for average SBC pastors and churches to follow relative to the CP, then it is counterproductive to put these men in the highest elective office of the SBC.

But we have been doing this since the 1970s with only a stray occasion or two where a man whose church gave above the average percentage to the CP was elected and a pastor who gave in the low single digits to the CP was rejected. 

One can understand that during the years when the convention was being redirected in a more conservative mode through presidential elections, it was reasonable to set aside consideration of CP percentages to elect folks like Adrian Rogers, Charles Stanley, and others. Now that the theological direction of the convention is more to our liking, there is no reason to elect leaders from low percentage churches, unless we think the CP is not of major importance to our work. 

Stop nominating and putting these people on our entity trustee boards. 

While it stands to reason that a seminary which receives large donations directly from a given church would not be too concerned about that church's CP percentage and would happily choose that church's pastor or layperson as a trustee, such doesn't help the overall thrust of the CP as our chief funding plan. Fred Luter said that he would be checking CP giving records in his nominations. I'm not sure how that came out. Someone who keeps score can check it and let me know.

Stop hiring to high denominational office those who as pastor led their churches to give low percentages.

Sound so simple, right? Two words: Kevin Ezell. He was offered NAMB for reasons other than his CP record and has done well which makes setting an arbitrary percentage threshold for entity heads difficult. 

Ignore Great Commission Giving for elections and appointments 

When the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force recommended and the convention subsequently adopted a new giving metric, Great Commission Giving, the idea was presented as a recognition that it is valuable to acknowledge that churches are giving directly to more SBC causes that in the past. GCG offers a simple way to measure this. Thus far, I haven't seen this figure reported widely. In reporting the giving of each Georgia Baptist church my own state paper ignores this and sticks with three categories: Cooperative Program gifts, Other Mission Gifts, and Total Mission Gifts. The latter two may include whatever an individual church wishes to report, SBC or not SBC.

Periodically, the SBC has had national-level CP study committees. In 2006 there was such a group, called the Ad Hoc Cooperative Program Committee. That committee made a number of recommendations, including these two:

• Challenge every Southern Baptist church to give no less than 10 percent of undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program.
• That we encourage the election of state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program. 

Care to speculate what happened to those specific recommendations?

Some megapastors complained and the Executive Committee overruled the Ad Hoc committee and deep-sixed those two specific parameters, removing mention of "10 percent" and also any mention that election of state and national officers be from churches that give at least the 10 percent. 

While ten percent may be unrealistic, the average church hasn't given that percentage to the CP for decades, some percentage minimum is realistic, unless we wish for the CP to no longer be our chief denominational funding plan.

When surveyed about the CP, SBC pastors overwhelmingly profess their appreciation of and satisfaction with it. When it comes to electing and hiring SBC leaders, we don't seem to be too concerned about CP giving records. 

It may be time for some of the higher profile SBC leaders to toss out a CP percentage threshold, say five percent, and see it they can make it stick in elections, trustee appointments, and hiring.

I'm not optimistic.

Great Commission vs Cooperative Program Giving

When the SBC approved the new giving category, Great Commission Giving, an aggregate category that includes giving to the Cooperative Program, state convention, local association, plus any direct gifts to any SBC entity, great weeping and gnashing of teeth ensued in some quarters. Dire predictions of negative effects on the Cooperative Program were made.

2011 was the first reporting year for GCG but I don't know that much can be learned by it, since nothing can be viewed comparatively; nonetheless, here are some figures for the top giving churches in the Georgia Baptist Convention:

First Woodstock (Johnny Hunt's megachurch):
Total gifts   $1,194,200
Total CP            866,170
Total GCG      3,144,120   

Woodstock is the top Cooperative Program giving church in the GBC. Their CP gifts were 27.5% of their total Great Commission Giving meaning that they gave a lot more directly to SBC causes than to the CP.

Hebron, Dacula (formerly Larry Wynn's megachurch):
Total gifts    $902,640
Total CP         840,905
Total GCG      944,882

Only Woodstock gave more to the CP than Hebron last year. Hebron's CP gifts were 93.1% of their total Great Commission Giving indicating that their main channel for SBC giving was the CP.

Johnson Ferry (Bryant Wright's megachurch):
Total gifts     $566,079
Total CP          566,079
Total GCG       793,315

Johnson Ferry's CP gifts were 71.4% of their total Great Commission Giving.

Clearly, Woodstock and Hebron have different giving philosophies.

Local church autonomy at work.

I haven't asked but it looks like Johnson Ferry chooses to report differently than the other two. Fact is, the Great Commission Giving total for any church would be a voluntarily reported figure supplied by the church that is comprised of components that could not be easily checked. I'm not alleging anything here about JFBC, just saying that a simple comparison of GCG statistics may not be valid.


I first heard Adrian Rogers make the statement that "Dollars pay the bills, not percentages," an assertion made to counter the complaint of megachurches giving smaller percentages to the Cooperative Program than other churches. Of course he was right and that assertion is manifestly true.

Here in Georgia, Woodstock First is the top CP giving church in total gifts - $866,170. That amount is over six times larger than the aggregate Cooperative Program giving of the top five churches in the GBC in percentage Cooperative Program giving (and who average giving 39% of their total undesignated giving to the CP).

All deserve praise for their support of missions through the Cooperative Program. None deserve criticism.

My view has been that the new Great Commission Giving category will merely reflect the reality on the ground rather than generate any new giving trends. While it may be useful for comparison of candidates for SBC offices, it is beginning to look like it may be a fuzzier figure than originally thought.

But, for SBCers who are numbers junkies, here's something to chew on.

Lies, doggone lies, and SBC statistics

 Update: Ed Stetzer, whom I mention below, now has a blog on the statistical report.

SBC 2011 Statistical Realities-- Facts are our friends but these are not very friendly facts
_______________________________________________________


Baptist Press give this headline to the releasing of the SBC 2011 Statistical Summary:

SBC baptisms & churches up in 2011, membership declines

The figures showed insignificant change in every category, less than one percent save for "Church type missions operating" which was down slightly over one percent.

Oh, Great Commission Giving, the new financial category that is supposed to either (a) cause the end of the SBC as we know it, or (b) merely reflect the reality on the ground (I take this view) totaled $695,694,322.

Since this is the first year for GCG, there is nothing with which to compare it. The figures for Total Mission Giving, which would include all of GCG plus non-SBC missions giving that churches chose to report, was up only slightly from $1.30 billion to $1.33 billion so GCG couldn't possibly have been the cause of any changes in mission giving over the past year.

And did you notice the parenthetical remark that said, " four state conventions not reporting" on GCG? The SBC proposes but autonomous state conventions and churches dispose.

It seems to me that it will be difficult to blame GCG for much of anything in the future with more and more churches failing to report their data at all. The Annual Church Profile has always been a chore and the reality is that churches can classify expenses in whatever manner they choose. The SBC doesn't have statistical police.

Here are some things I am expecting down the road:

• The percentage of churches who ignore the ACP will continue to rise. There are no positive incentives for reporting and some churches see negative incentives for doing so.

• Church membership totals will decline. I get the sense that more churches are trying to be more realistic with their membership totals. It is widely held that our figure of "Total Membership" is meaningless. Not quite, year-to-year comparisons likely reflect the general trend. By the way, we are under 16 million in this for the first time in quite a few years.

• Numbers of churches and church missions may be reduced in the short run. The North American Mission Board has done and is doing to things to cause this: (1) Requiring state conventions to document the figures they report, and (2) incentivizing state conventions to report lower numbers of churches by creating three tiers of support based on church/population ratios.

• The real heavy lifting in statistical analysis of SBC trends will have to be done by LifeWay Research. I hope they are fearless in doing so. "Facts are our friends" is what I hear our LifeWay Research statistical guru say.

Lies, doggone lies, and statistics...and doggone SBC statistics. Here they are.

Association calls on churches to cut CP giving by 25-35%

The longstanding general trend of churches giving less to the Cooperative Program is widely known at all levels of the SBC. We've gone from an average of over 11% thirty years or so ago to less than six percent today.

More keenly felt, though is the dramatic loss of CP dollars in state conventions in the past few years. The mortgage meltdown and subsequent recession has reduced individual giving and concomitantly,  the flow of CP dollars from churches to states.

Many state conventions like my own, the Georgia Baptist Convention, have made repeated, drastic cuts in spending, and, since most of the discretionary spending is in staffing, dozens and dozens of jobs have been cut.

Here in Georgia we also have the additional burden of a considerable amount of debt service for a magnificent HQ building that was built just prior to the economic meltdown.

Times are tough in this state convention.

It is not lost on state executives that when CP receipts are down, they are hit the hardest, since (a) they have always kept the great majority of CP gifts (convention wide average is that about two-thirds of CP gifts from churches stay with their state convention and do not leave state borders to go to NAMB, IMB, the seminaries, or other SBC entities), and (b) state conventions have little else in revenue aside from CP gifts (the IMB, in contrast, has other major revenue streams and the CP makes up only 30% of their budget).

One association in our state has passed a "RESOLUTION TO PROVIDE FOR OUR STATE CONVENTIONS" which calls for its churches to "consider" cutting their Cooperative Program giving by 25-35 percent.

Really? Yep. Really, a sort of cut your nose off to spite your face resolution. Undermine the Cooperative Program as a method of helping the state convention which benefits most from the Cooperative Program.

The idea is that churches would take their present CP giving, cut it by  25-35%, and designate that proportion to state convention causes exclusively.

So, here in Georgia, with the Georgia Baptist Convention already retaining over sixty percent of the CP dollar, if churches made this designation it would effectively raise the Georgia percentage of a CP dollar to about 75% if all churches followed this plan.

I have read the resolution and also spoken with the association's director of missions and acknowledge that not everyone is happy with all the changes around the convention. I also believe that this is a well-meaning effort, however misguided. I understand our state convention wants nothing to do with it.

The idea that we would penalize NAMB and the IMB, remove funds from NAMB's church planting efforts or from IMB missionaries serving in places that don't have counties full of churches is rather absurd. Georgia has about 3300 churches, a million resident members, who collected over a billion dollars in 2010, and over $25 million to spend in this state on our own needs. 

Do we really think it proper to undercut that missionary in a place desolate of the Gospel to put back in staff in Georgia to conduct VBS training, or deacon training, or other local needs? 

Surely not.

If the GBC desired they could propose that we increase our percentage of CP receipts from 61% to 75% or 85%. It is up to us. If the churches feel this is best, we may certainly meet and vote these increases. I'm not persuaded that churches will recognize that associations in south Georgia are suffering enough to take money away from NAMB and the IMB to help our poor peach state brethren out.

So, what's the best way to help the Cooperative Program? Give more.

Below is the key part of the association's resolution:

  Therefore, be it resolved, that the administration committee of the  __________ Baptist Association encourages each church to “consider” to contribute a portion of their  cooperative program contributions  (25 – 35%)  to state missions and give the balance to the cooperative program (this is not binding on any church since each one is autonomous, we are only suggesting). The intent of the resolution is not to destroy the cooperative program, though some feel the Great Commission Giving has already accomplished this, but to encourage a means to balance the cooperative program so that state conventions are adequately provided. This will assure that our state conventions will receive enough contributions to provide assistance to our small town and rural churches. The state convention needs us as we need the state convention, and,

Be it finally resolved, that the ________ Baptist Association encourages all sister churches and associations to consider this recommendation.

Ironically, even though the resolution claims that Great Commission Giving has already "destroy[ed]" the Cooperative Program, were churches to adopt these recommendations, this association would be a leader in Georgia in Great Commission Giving. Go figure...

Even though the resolution was passed at a recent spring associational meeting and the document is public, I edited out the name. The DOM said they might want to tweak the document. Tweak? How about deep-sixing it?

But, ah, we are all autonomous. And, maybe this resolution should go to the place where lots of associational resolutions go - a cool, dark, place where it can be quietly forgotten.

I don't know that anyone connected with this reads my humble blog but I would happily provide a place for them to defend the resolution and disagree with your humble blogging semi-retired pastor.

Assault on the good old Cooperative Program about to be launched?

Hear anything much about the SBC name change recommendation lately?

Nope. Not too much.

Apparently, SBCers are pretty much squawked out on that. We will vote next month on the informal, non-mandatory, optional, if-you-wanna-but-we're-not-forcing-you-to-use-it descriptor. It will pass easily with moderate opposition...and then we will eat beignets and forget it.

The SBC issue-of-the-year is the "tension" between our North American Mission Board and the state conventions. That would be some state conventions, mainly those for whom NAMB has cut their entitlements (Jerry Rankin's choice of words).

Baptist Press has a story that explains things a bit. I have a few articles on it.

Hmmm, seems I hear some rumblings about states offering churches a way to designate around NAMB and keep their Cooperative Program money close to home. Perhaps it is just chest thumping and venting rather than a serious discussion. I hope so; however, the CP is already our most seriously declining metric and we absolutely shouldn't be kicking it farther down which is what anything like this would do.

It would be ironic indeed for state conventions to lead the way in undermining the Cooperative Program just to keep some of their personnel on the payroll.

Nah...they wouldn't do that, would they?

It's one thing for individual churches to designate. It's another thing for states assist and encourage churches to do so. In the past the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was powerful enough in some states to do this. I don't think the results have been helpful. We don't need to try that again, and that among our conservative selves.

I would think that a responsible state convention executive would be the first to say, "No fellows. We are not going this route. We've promoted the Cooperative Program all these decades. It is a great cooperative giving plan and we're not going to dismantle it because we have current issues with one SBC entity. We will work it out another way."

One association here in Georgia passed a resolution that suggested that churches take a chunk (25-35 percent) out of their Cooperative Program giving and give it instead to "state missions." This is probably just frustration and venting but I'd hope that our state CEO would respond quickly if the resolution is directed to him. (I will probably take that resolution up in a blog in a few days. It is interesting.) 

"Great Commission Giving" is the culprit, some say? Not really, though I haven't seen data on how churches are reporting in this new giving category yet.

GCG might have been like throwing a teaspoon full of kerosene on a fire. States promoting CP designations would be like tossing a tanker load of jet fuel on it. We might all get burned up in that.

Three outrageous suggestions for the Cooperative Program

Plodder is beholden to no man, woman (save my wonnerful wife), or animal (save my beloved pooch) and feels no compunction to hold back on possibilities for improving the Cooperative Program. Here are three suggestions:

1. Close a seminary. Shut down, shutter, and sell either Midwestern or New Orleans. We do not need regional seminaries and have not for some years. Regional seminaries are a relic of the mid-twentieth century. We could have closed NOBTS after the hurricane. MWBTS lacks the economies of scale that Southwestern, Southeastern, and Southern have, besides Southern Baptists have started and supported from scratch, without the Cooperative Program, a seminary in that area that is thoroughly SBC but independent of the CP – Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.

Golden Gate has made it by selling fabulously expensive real estate but that golden goose may be about dead. The idea of an SBC seminary in California was/is good. How much are we willing to devote to it?

This idea doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in Gehenna of being implemented, since both MWBTS and especially NOBTS have substantial allies. Would the SBC be able to educate ministers for the foreseeable future without either or both of them? Sure.

2. Set an informal standard for elected leaders, trustees, and executive employees. If you want to be elected SBC officer, trustee, or employee you have to have been a member or pastor of a church that gives at least X% to the Cooperative Program and/or X% in Great Commission Giving. If we are serious about the CP and SBC entities, prove it by telling pastors who want a job, or want to be trustees, or their laypeople that if they don’t give a minimum percentage to the CP/GCG then they should not expect to be employed or elected as a trustee of an SBC entity.

The Executive Committee through the new consortium of Cooperative Program specialists could implement this. Even if it is only a suggestion and does not, indeed cannot, force the SBC in annual assembly or the Committee on Committees or the Nominating Committee to nominate or vote for folks who met the threshold standard it could be a powerful factor in future elections.

3. Ask all SBC entities – the mission boards, the Executive Committee, the seminaries – to reduce the number of trustees and trustee expenses. The IMB has 96, count ‘em, trustees. I believe I saw an annual trustee expense figure of about a million dollars for that mob. NAMB doesn’t seem to have prospered the last decade or so with a huge number of trustees. Save the money and maybe get a better result with less, I say. Someone commented that Golden Gate seminary has more trustees than it has faculty. Why? We all know the reasons that there are so many trustee slots – we SBCers love positions, titles, and perks. The savings would be in the millions.

Any other irreverent and outrageous suggestions?