The Executive Board of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, at its regular fall meeting Oct. 10-11 at White Oak Conference Center, gave nearly unanimous approval to a “Great Commission Initiative” that would establish a Kingdom Fund for both international and state missions and evangelism projects, as well as increase the percentage of Cooperative Program contributions earmarked for the Southern Baptist Convention to 42 percent beginning in 2007. Currently, 40 percent of CP contributions from the churches go to the SBC, with 60 percent remaining in South Carolina for state ministries.
To provide money for both the Kingdom Fund and the larger share of CP contributions going to the SBC, the percentage of Cooperative Program money allocated to South Carolina Baptist institutions – Anderson, Charleston Southern and North Greenville universities, South Carolina Baptist Ministries for the Aging, Connie Maxwell Children’s Home, The Baptist Foundation and The Baptist Courier – would be reduced over a five-year period from 26 percent to 21 percent, starting in 2007.
The Empowering Kingdom Growth Evaluation and Implementation Task Force, chaired by Marshall Blalock, pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, offered the motion, which said that the reduction in funding to the institutions would make available 1.7 million Cooperative Program dollars for the missions activities of the Kingdom Fund and the Southern Baptist Convention.
The report from the EKG Task Force (printed in full at left) represents two years of work by that panel, their efforts stemming from concern that Empowering Kingdom Growth initiatives for South Carolina are not making as much progress as expected, and that Cooperative Program giving in the state needs to move up from its current average of approximately 8 percent of church budgets. Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church, Taylors, and chairman of the board’s administrative committee, said that the task force’s proposal aims at “ending the status quo,” which he described as “stagnant.”
The convention’s executive director-treasurer, Carlisle Driggers, said that it is necessary at “a critical moment in convention life” to maintain a “clear focus” as a denomination, adding that the task force’s proposal “could set the tone of the convention for years to come.”
The proposal, which must be approved by messengers to the South Carolina Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Columbia, would give the institutions more leverage in the selection of trustees, allowing the presidents to choose 20 percent of their trustees along established guidelines. Those choices would still require approval by the Nominations Committee and the convention in annual session.
In other business, the Executive Board approved a 2006 budget of $32,150,000, which is the same as the 2005 figure.
Driggers reported that South Carolina Baptists have contributed more than $1.5 million to hurricane disaster relief, and that more than 3,000 volunteers had been deployed.
The South Carolina Baptist Convention will hold its annual meeting Nov. 15-16 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. The agenda includes votes on the Great Commission Initiative and the budget, as well as the election of convention officers.