The two highest-ranking representatives of the South Carolina Baptist Convention say they are disappointed that a key provision in the state’s Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report won’t be embraced by the SBC in the immediate future.

SCBC president Brad Atkins and executive director-treasurer Jim Austin were in Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 20-21 to attend the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee meeting and to request that Cooperative Program allocations to the six Southern Baptist seminaries be reduced to provide more funding for international missions.

They made the request on behalf of South Carolina Baptists, who approved the following statement as part of a slate of recommendations contained in the GCR report adopted last November: “The SBC requests that the Executive Committee of the SBC consider adjusting the budgets of the seminaries & other SBC entities as a means of increasing funding to the IMB.”

Last fall, South Carolina Baptists approved sweeping reductions in funding to their member institutions (three universities, a children’s home, two retirement communities, a denominational newspaper and a foundation) as well as to South Carolina WMU and the convention’s in-state ministries, all in order to free up $400,000 in additional support for the International Mission Board. The state GCR report also calls for moving toward a 50/50 split of state Cooperative Program revenues with the SBC within five years.

“Recommendation 11,” as it was referenced in the South Carolina GCR report, was included in an effort to correct an oversight in the national GCR report, adopted in 2010 in Orlando, which excluded seminaries from the restructuring process, Austin told The Christian Index, the newspaper of the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Austin said the proposed recommendation would level the playing field for the state’s Baptist universities, which find themselves in direct competition with the undergraduate schools operated by the seminaries. He told The Christian Index he felt it was unfair for those state educational institutions to be penalized while the similar institutions operated by the seminaries did not feel the sacrificial strain.

SCBC president Atkins, pastor of Powdersville First Baptist Church, told The Baptist Courier he feels it is fair to ask the seminaries to “help with penetrating the lostness.”

“Everyone else is taking part in it,” he said. “It seems the seminaries are the only ones that have not been a part of that process.”

Atkins acknowledged the role of seminaries in “equipping missionaries and pastors, ” but added, “at the same time, we know that it takes dollars to get those missionaries on the field. [We are] just asking the seminaries to see if there’s any way they can take reductions to help the promotion of the gospel.”

South Carolina’s request was received and considered by the SBC Executive Committee, which responded by stating that it will “exercise due diligence in weighing the request of the SCBC to alter the SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget against the budgetary needs of the SBC entities in its budget recommendations to the Southern Baptist Convention over the next several years.”

The Executive Committee also noted its responsibility “to maintain the level of funding necessary for each entity to provide the ministries assigned it by the SBC through its ministry assignments.”

A statement by Tom Elliff, president of the International Mission Board, was read to the Executive Committee’s Cooperative Program subcommittee Feb. 20 in regard to the SCBC recommendation.

“IMB would humbly appeal that [the South Carolina] request not be pursued,” Elliff wrote, saying, “IMB has no desire to diminish the work of our entities and the strength they bring to Southern Baptist work around the world. Ours is indeed a cooperative work, a team effort best reflected through the Cooperative Program.”

At the Feb. 20 subcommittee meeting, in addition to remarks from Austin and Atkins, a statement was provided from the chairman of the South Carolina GCR task force, Ralph Carter, pastor of Brushy Creek Baptist Church in Taylors.

South Carolina Baptists, through a combination of state convention CP adjustments and the addition of a new line item in the state convention budget that funds IMB directly, will be contributing within three years “25 cents out of every dollar we receive to the IMB,” Carter wrote. “The money needed to make this gift possible is made possible through sacrifices we are making within our state convention. Every agency and institution, including our WMU, agreed to at least a 10% reduction in the gifts it will be receiving in the next 5 years.”

Elliff, in the two-page statement provided to the subcommittee, wrote: “Should IMB receive a greater and greater percent of CP funds, this would directly impact the effectiveness of our other entities. As productive training and spiritual vitality would subsequently wane, so would the kind of sacrificial giving absolutely essential for fulfilling the Great Commission.

“On the convention level, seminaries would have fewer students, NAMB would plant fewer churches, ERLC would have less impact as ‘salt and light’ in our perverse society,” Elliff wrote. “Churches might quickly lose their grasp of the power and effectiveness that comes from trusted and faithful cooperation with others. State conventions might turn their gaze inward with a focus on doing all that seemed necessary financially in an attempt merely to maintain ministry functions within their states.

“IMB believes that we are part of a team called Southern Baptist Convention. What is good for each of us must be good for all of us.”

Austin and Atkins said some of the SBC Executive Committee members privately expressed support for the the South Carolina recommendation.

“While I’m disappointed that the [Executive Committee] chose not to act in this meeting regarding our recommendation,” Austin told the Courier, “I am hopeful that we have at least started a discussion. They did not close the door on it at all.

“When you have a denomination as large as we do and as old as we are, things don’t happen quickly. I think South Carolina is really showing some leadership in this regard, and I am optimistic that changes will occur in the future based on our recommendation.”

 

– With reporting by Art Toalston, editor of Baptist Press, and Joe Westbury, managing editor of The (Georgia) Christian Index.