IF THE COOPERATIVE PROGRAM is to grow and thrive in the future, then leaders elected to national positions within the Southern Baptist Convention must come from churches committed to the Cooperative Program and must be CP “advocates” themselves, a report put together by a task force of SBC entity heads and state executives says.
The report, plainspoken and candid, was released Sept. 17 in Nashville, where more than 30 entity heads and state executives gathered to discuss its content. It has 13 recommendations and is the fruit of more than five years of work by the Task Force on Cooperation, an eight-member group composed of four entity heads and four state executives.
The task force was set up in 2000 by the Great Commission Council and state executives to study ways to boost stagnant Cooperative Program growth as well as ways to improve relations between the national body and state conventions.
According to the report, over the last 40 years the Cooperative Program – Southern Baptists’ mode of funding missions, seminaries and other ministries since 1925 – has “gradually begun to vaporize as a high priority” in the hearts and minds of “many pastors, their people, and even denominational leaders.”
“Now scores of Southern Baptists in the pulpits and the pews virtually ignore the plight of the Cooperative Program,” the report says. “As a result, we all have consciously or unconsciously hurt the real growth of the Cooperative Program.”
The Cooperative Program supports both state and national ministries. The process begins when churches forward a percentage of their offerings to the state (or regional) convention, which then forwards a percentage of the monies it receives to the national body. From there, the funds are distributed among Southern Baptists’ two mission boards, six seminaries and other ministries. The portion retained by state and region conventions supports ministries in their respective areas.
Although giving to the Cooperative Program generally increases each year, it has struggled to keep up with inflation. The results have impacted the entities. For instance, in 2003, the International Mission Board and North American Mission Board – both of which receive CP funds – were forced to cut their respective budgets, preventing new missionaries from being assigned to the field.
Members of the task force were: Jerry Rankin, president, International Mission Board; William Crews, past president, Golden Gate Baptist Seminary; Robert Reccord, president, North American Mission Board; Morris Chapman, president, SBC Executive Committee; Robert White, executive director, Georgia Baptist Convention; Carlisle Driggers, executive director-treasurer, South Carolina Baptist Convention; Wyndell Jones, retired executive director, Baptist Convention of Iowa; and Anthony Jordan, executive director-treasurer, Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.
In 1984, the report says, churches forwarded an average of 10.6 percent of their offerings to the Cooperative Program through their state convention, although today, that number is only 6.64 percent. Leaders must head the effort to reverse the trend, the report asserts.
“Too many top Southern Baptist Convention leaders and officials for too many years gave scant attention or support to the Cooperative Program as they discharged their responsibilities,” the report says. “It is well known that a number of our leaders in the past generation hardly ever spoke about the Cooperative Program or promoted it in one way or another. For the most part, their churches were poor models of Cooperative Program support. As a result, it has been projected that thousands of pastors and churches reduced their Cooperative Program percentage of undesignated monies as they followed the example of those who led them.
The report concluded that while the Cooperative Program has been resilient through the years – surviving economic depressions and wars – its future is murky without a boost in cooperation and funds.
“The truth of the matter is … that when it comes to Southern Baptist cooperation for the sake of the kingdom of God and when it comes to an all-out commitment to the Cooperative Program, we are in a situation that only promises to get worse unless we improve our relationships with each other in the Spirit of Christ,” the report says. “God shall not bless us, and we shall never reach the world one person at a time by doing any less.