Cooperative Program and the new CEO of the Florida Baptist state convention

The only thing I invest in Florida is an occasional chunk of tourist money. The only thing I bring out of Florida is sunburn and a few fish. But I do think events concerning the Florida Baptist Convention are interesting, since it is one of the largest of the state conventions and one of the heaviest contributors to the Cooperative Program on the national level.

In 2014 FBC churches, through their state convention, sent almost $30 million to the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville to be allocated mainly to the mission boards and seminaries. In 2014 the FBC kept 58.63 percent of every CP dollar it received from FBC churches.

In the way most states present their accounting, they use certain traditional techniques to explain how a CP dollar is divided (often called the "split") between their state convention and the national CP allocation budget. The accounting always makes the split appear not to be as unfavorable to the mission boards and seminaries as it looks. I've always considered this accounting to be confusing if not mildly, though not nefariously, deceptive.

Florida has said that a 50/50 split is in the works. I have doubted it would ever arrive because of the accounting system, not that my doubts have any meaning south of the St. Mary's River.

But now Florida has a new Executive who is about a generation younger that their long-serving one who just retired. The new guy, J. Thomas Green, will present a budget this year to the FBC in session which, in his words, "will have a budget that gives away 51 percent and keeps 49 percent."

Goodbye, 59/50; sayonara, 50/50. So long, funny accounting. Hello, 49/51.

This reminds me of similar action taken by the new CEO in Iowa, a much, much smaller state convention. Their split was moved by a new CEO from 85/15 to a "true" 50/50" in one fell swoop. No more funny accounting there either.

Why the sudden shift? Why not slow and steady?

Green, who is 57, about two decades younger than his predecessor, said that the goal was in part to "get the 30-somethings and 40-something-year-olds back into the mix." He commented that the convention had been working towards a 50/50 split for five years and that "we need to do it immediately." He adds that the change is the right thing to do even if this doesn't accomplish what he expects or desires.

I would like the thinking of my new state CEO were I in Florida.

Here's a new executive who will start by having to cut funding in order to give Cooperative Program money away (not just toss it in the air but see that it gets outside the state and to the mission boards and seminaries) and do so in part because he thinks this will demonstrate serious change in thinking about the CP to younger FBC pastors who are not CP enthusiasts.

My anecdotal reading of attitudes is that younger pastors are general not engaged or enthused by the Cooperative Program and, when they find out how the accounting disguises the actual distribution of the funds, they move from mild apathy to cynicism and conclude that their mission dollars are better spent elsewhere. Perhaps others read the attitudes differently. I doubt that there are many who wouldn't recognize that the attitudes of younger pastors towards the CP do not bode well for its future.

Tommy Green, the new FBC CEO, may not have solved the problem but he has done something that will get the attention of his younger colleagues.

How much difference will it make?

No one knows but if I were a pastor in Florida, I'd like what I see.

____________

Interview of the new CEO in the Florida Baptist Witness: Tommy Green talks about everything...

Baptist21, younger dude Southern Baptist site interview: Beyond Fifty Percent: B21interview with Tommy Green

Best Cooperative Program article in decades

I have followed the Cooperative Program for almost forty years - thirty years as a pastor, a few years on both ends of that as a seminarian and retiree, respectively.

The article below by Roger S. Oldham, SBC Executive Committee Vice President for Convention Communications and Relations, is the best I have seen in all these years in its reporting on and explanation of our venerable Cooperative Program.

National CP Shows Signs of Rebounding

The article is the headline for the most recent SBCLife: Journal of the Southern Baptist Convention that the Executive Committee of the SBC publishes five times each year.

The SBC Executive Committee is one of the most forthright of our SBC entities. There hasn't been much good news in a long time on the CP but the Executive Committee has monthly press releases that accurately tell Southern Baptists what is transpiring in regard to CP receipts from the state conventions.

"Big deal," you say?

It is a big deal to have accurate reporting. Declining metrics are like poison to SBC pastors, churches, state conventions, and entities. All of these commonly and routinely finesse or spin bad news. I once knew of a church that, after years of stellar growth in their Sunday School, saw attendance figures level off and then begin declining. Solution to that? Stop reporting attendance numbers in the church bulletin and newsletter. Problem solved. Other churches in similar situations start rationalizing padding the numbers so that the decline is not readily noticed by members.

One thing every SBC pastor and layperson learns to understand is that at times it has been extremely difficult to get straightforward numbers and straight talk from state convention executives and entity leaders. I am not asserting that any individual is dishonest, but rather that executives regularly and routinely spin their numbers to the point where reality is disguised to the average SBC pastor or layperson.

The reason this piece by Sing Oldham is a great article is that it is honest, straightforward, and educational. In the article one finds,

• The latest encouraging news on CP giving, receipts are slightly but notably up for this fiscal year, is offered with the accurate backdrop of the last five years of declining membership, per capita CP giving, total CP giving, national CP receipts, and national per capita CP gifts.
• More important than the last five years of numbers is the splendid explanation of CP history. Seldom do state conventions take time to explain some of the arcana regarding state/national CP splits much less the history of how the states came to gobble up well beyond half of CP receipts.
• Recent important decisions by the various state conventions are noted, tabulated, and explained. More about this in a subsequent.

I was one ignorant pastor for about the first half of my pastoral ministry. I knew the basics about the CP but I knew little about the intricacies of  the state/national relationships and nothing about how the states handled the accounting. As a result, when I would attend forums where state executives talked about how the CP was such a great shared revenue program, I didn't know enough to recognize when state leaders would deflect or finesse questions by pastors about the state/national division of the monies.  

Ten minutes of reading this is worth ten years of press releases, cheerleading, and the relentless CP spin that pastors usually hear.

Future articles:

• How state conventions managed to avoid the goal of an ideal 50/50 state/national CP split for the entire life of the Cooperative Program
• How many state conventions are dispensing with the fuzzy accounting presentation techniques and moving to the ideal goal with straight up accounting.

The best Cooperative Program giving plan you never heard of

The South Carolina Baptist Convention is fairly typical among SBC state conventions in that it divides a Cooperative Program mostly in favor of in-state expenses. The SCBC keeps 59% of Cooperative Program gifts in-state and forwards 41%. That is a couple of clicks less kept in-state than the SBC average for state conventions.

But they do something that no other state convention does, so far as I am aware. They send a considerable sum directly to the International Mission Board, bypassing the Executive Committee. The 2014 budget calls for $716,813 in Cooperative Program gifts to be sent from Columbia straight to Richmond.

This method multiplies the CP gifts of South Carolina Baptist churches that is used for international missions by a factor of five.

SC Baptists wanted to increase their support for the IMB and their efforts in sharing the Gospel with the billions of souls around the world. To do this they could have taken the traditional route of attempting to decrease by tiny increments the amount of CP funds kept in state thereby increasing by even tinier increments the part of a CP dollar devoted to international missions. Doing this would yield negligible additional sums for the IMB, since 59 cents of a CP dollar is taken for in-state expenses, and then another 20.5 cents is sliced off by the Executive Committee for the seminaries, North American Mission Board, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Executive Committee itself. Thus, the SCBC Cooperative Program dollar that finally arrives at the IMB has shrunk to 20.5 cents.

Instead of the above, SC Baptists take some Cooperative Program gifts and send them directly to the IMB. The IMB gets that full dollar. Thus, the $716,813 to be sent in 2014 is the equivalent of $3,496,649 sent through normal CP channels.

It surprises me that little is said around the convention about this. In a way it undermines the CP which has a rather rigid fixed allocation formula whereby a CP dollar is sliced and diced into tiny chunks. The IMB does get the largest chunk but on average that is less than twenty cents.

The way the SCBC explains their action is that they are sending direct gifts to the IMB in order to quickly arrive at supporting international missions with the same sum of CP gifts that they would if there were a 50/50 split, rather than 59/41. The Baptist Courier reported it in this way:

messengers voted to increase South Carolina’s contribution to IMB by 21.95 percent over the next three years in order to fund IMB at a level equal to the amount IMB would receive if South Carolina were splitting Cooperative Program receipts 50/50 with the Southern Baptist Convention.  

I love the action of South Carolina Baptists here. While I appreciate and support the Cooperative Program, it has a serious flaw in that the allocation formulas are essentially inscribed in stone, as if by the finger of God.

Touch not the portion of that dollar allocated to the six seminaries, or NAMB, or ERLC! Thou mayest touch the state/SBC split...but only just a little!

We are seeing small movements by state conventions to reduce the portion kept in state, often described as "moving to a 50/50 split." This is very slight, quite incremental, and will make little difference in international missions. Although some state conventions have declared an intention to move to a 50/50 split, because of funky CP accounting in some states this only means moving to a 55/45 split or other proportional division, not a true 50/50.

The SBC allocation formula is even less likely to be changed from the present where the IMB gets about 50%, NAMB 23%, the six seminaries 23%, and XComm and ERLC the remaining 4%. The Great Commission Resurgence wasn't so great in doing anything with this, every entity successfully protecting their financial turf. Frank Page did lead the Executive Committee to reduce his allocation by a few tenths of a percent. That's the grand substance and outcome of the GCR effort at the SBC budget level.

None of this nonsense for the South Carolina Baptist Convention. They recognize that if they want to quickly put more of their CP money towards global missions, the most efficient way is to send it directly to the IMB.

Will other state conventions follow this plan? I don't know.

I do know that I like the approach. If because of its rigidity the Cooperative Program is seen as an impediment to reaching the vast numbers of people around the world who need Jesus, then I'm for any reasonable workaround.

South Carolina Baptists are to be commended for their creativity and determination in this matter.  

Do Cooperative Program percentages, divisions, and accountings really matter?

The answer is: YES and NO.

Yes, it absolutely matters...

...to state convention executives because many continually offer various complex calculations of what portion of Cooperation Program revenues are kept in-state and what portion is forwarded to the Executive Committee for distribution to our International Mission Board, North American Mission Board, the six Southern Baptist seminaries, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and the Executive Committee itself.

See last week's post on the Georgia Baptist Convention's Cooperative Program Accounting. I make no hint of an implication of any ill motives or practices but the GBC figures the CP percentage kept in a manner that is not always clear to those who aren't steeped in this stuff. The GBC maintains a 60/40 split but footnotes that 9.82% of CP revenues are "used for the Promotion, Support, Accounting, and Distribution of Cooperative Program Funds" so it is implied that they don't really count as being "kept." This is historically correct, since from the start the state conventions agreed to promote, collect, and distribute the CP funds.

When some state conventions speak of moving towards a 50/50 split of CP revenues, sometimes it means that they are moving to a 55/45 split. They just call it 50/50 because they take 5% of the table because they keep and use it for in-state for CP promotion and collection. I wrote on this over two years ago (CP Math: 50/50 = 55/45 or 60/40). While there have been some changes in this, often this is still the math.

Consider the action of the Missouri Baptist Convention this month. Here's how Baptist Press reported their Cooperative Program budget and explanation:

A $14.5 million CP budget was approved, a decrease from last year's $14.6 million budget. Nevertheless, messengers moved toward the "50-50" cooperative giving plan, approving 60 percent of the CP budget for state causes and 40 percent for SBC causes. Additionally, 5 percent of the 2014 budget was placed in a separate "shared expenses" category, which would not count toward the 50-50 goal. The funds will be allocated for annuity protections and The Pathway state newspaper. In contrast, messengers at the MBC's 2012 annual meeting allocated 62.5 percent for MBC causes and 37.5 percent for SBC causes.

Got it? The MBC is aiming at a 50/50 split that will actually be a 55/45 split. They explain that money budgeted by the MBC for "annuity protections" and, presumably, all of the state paper money is to taken off the table in arriving at a 50/50 split. Exactly how annuity protections are justified as promoting, collecting, and distributing CP revenues by the state convention is not explained. There are no set rules for this stuff. No one dictates to any level of Baptist life how this should be done.

No, it does not matter...

...to the people who drop their tithes and offerings in their local church offering plate each Lord's Day.

I cannot imagine that Bob and Betty Baptist who work hard and happily support their church, their state convention, Lottie and Annie have any level of understanding of this state convention sausage making process. If they did understand, I'd suspect that they would not care.

What they care about is this. Where does my money go?What are you doing with it in this state? How much of it gets to the IMB, NAMB, and the seminaries?

While the state conventions fiddle with accounting, budgets, pie charts and historical precedents, average Baptists want to know how serious we are about reaching North America and the world for Christ.

There is a push within many of the state conventions for a 50/50 split in CP revenues. It is my view that if we call it 50/50 it should divide a dollar into 50 cents for the state convention and 50 cents for the Executive Committee to distribute to SBC causes. No one asked me. No one may care about my opinion. And I certainly haven't been appointed Czar of Baptist CP Percentages. I humbly offer my opinion.

In the end, I would speculate, state conventions will win this insider baseball debate about CP percentages. Rather than fight it or complain about it, churches will just continue to give less to the Cooperative Program and more directly to causes that have higher priorities.

Georgia Baptist Convention Cooperative Program Accounting

The GBC has made a welcome and needed change in their Cooperative Program accounting. This is something that is helpful but rather obscure to any but SBC and GBC geeks and insiders.

As a pastor, I seldom had any laypeople ask me about CP percentages except to ask what part of Cooperative Program gifts went to international or North American missions. If you are trying to explain a state convention CP pie chart it is easy to get lost in the high weeks, and that rather quickly.

Here is my simple summary of how GBC Cooperative Program allocations may be presented, in order of increasing complexity:

The Georgia Baptist Convention divides each church's Cooperative Program gifts in this manner:

60% is kept in-state for Georgia Baptist causes.

40% is forwarded for SBC causes mainly IMB, NAMB, seminaries, ERLC, and Executive Committee.

While our oustanding leader, Robert White, said this verbally. This is seldom if ever presented to the public in this fashion. No GBC/CP pie chart will have just two slices, GBC and SBC. There is always a third, shown in the 2014 version below:

The Georgia Baptist Convention divides each church's Cooperative Program gifts in this manner:

40.00% is forwarded for SBC causes.

48.97% is kept in-state for GBC causes.

11.03% is for Georgia Baptist Mission Extension Ministries

Quickly now, what is the "Georgia Baptist Mission Extension Ministries"? Who knows? It is about as generic as any label could be. This is the $4.6 million spent in-state on our three Georgia Baptist colleges, our retirement communities, and a couple of other tiny allocations. All of these are traditional state convention items - schools and ministries to aging. But why the budget carve-out for them?

I see no reason other than to avoid describing the CP allocation budget as 60/40 with the sixty staying in state.

Wouldn't it be more straightforward to put it to Georgia Baptist churches, ministers, and laypeople in this manner. "We do good work in this state with many ministries. In doing that we use 60% of every Cooperative Program dollar for a broad panoply of the Lord's work here in our state."

Here's the final method of explaining CP allocations:

The Georgia Baptist Convention divides each church's Cooperative Program gifts in this manner:

40.00% is forwarded for SBC causes.

48.97% is kept in-state for GBC causes.

11.03% is for Georgia Baptist Mission Extension Ministries

Note: The Southern Baptist Convention has historically requested that a portion of their Cooperative Program funds remain in Georgia to be used for the Promotion, Support, Accounting, and Distribution of Cooperative Program Funds, which equals 9.82% of the 2014 budget. 

Aha, the dreaded footnote further complicating things. Almost a century ago when the SBC and states adopted the wonderful system of fund allocation we have always called the Cooperative Program, it was understood that the states would do the promoting, collecting, and distribution of the money and that they were entitled to keep a portion for this work. Various state conventions handle this differently. The GBC puts a good bit more under this rubric than most, perhaps all, state conventions.

The dollar total of the footnote is about $4.1 million. So how is the CP promoted, collected, and distributed with this $4.1m? You have to ask. It is not shown.

I asked three years ago but haven't updated the information. In the 2011 budget more than half of the money was for debt service, plus the entire budget for the communications department and some other stuff. I believe that GBC decision makers have shuffled budget items in and out of this. If it were easily understood then why not llist one-by-one the budget items that are "counted" as CP promotion, support, accounting, and distribution? Then we would all know. Guess it is not that simple.

But I do commend the GBC for the change they have made in this regard.

Formerly, the GBC presented the CP as sharing CP monies equally with the SBC. The rationale for this was that about 20% of CP spending, all of which was in the GBC portion of the budget and not forwarded to the SBC Executive Committee, was labeled "shared ministries," or "jointly funded causes." CP promotional materials would have a graphic of a dollar bill sectioned into a 40/20/40 portions. The two '40s' were meant to convey that the GBC and SBC share equally, when in fact the GBC kept 60. Good move to drop that. It was completely misleading.

I like my state convention. I like my state convention leader, Robert White. He is an outstanding leader and administrator who has presided over the GBC in the roaring days of CP increases and in the depressing days of the CP's steep decline. He is a wonderful servant of Christ and our churches. He has shown wisdom and insight in his view of and reaction to some of the convention changes, most notably the steep reduction in North American Mission Board kickback funding to legacy southern state conventions.

The changes in budget presentation techniques are an improvement but my view from the GBC hinterlands is that all the caveats, provisos, and footnotes should be eliminated. Give a budget pie chart that has two slices: GBC causes, SBC causes.

We can all understand that.

But I do understand the historical precedents on all this.

Readers are welcome to inform me what I don't understand, what I am seeing incorrectly, or how I am all mixed up on this. Make a comment or feel free to email me. There may well be things I need to know but I don't.