What a difference a year makes.
In early 2005, South Carolina Baptist Ministries for the Aging was on the ropes, and the talk – often emotional – was of selling Bethea Baptist Retirement Community in Darlington and Martha Franks Baptist Retirement Center in Laurens in order to pay the bills.
SCBMA, the retirement homes’ umbrella organization, struggled under the weight of mounting budget deficits, a burden exacerbated by the crush of $6 million in long-term bond debt.
SCBMA’s board of trustees terminated their contract with the ministry’s president, and board chairman Steve Williams, a pastor, led a statewide campaign exhorting South Carolina Baptists to “vote with their pocketbooks” on the future of the ministry.
The ministry’s comeback was kick-started in early 2005 with a surprise allocation of $440,000 from the South Carolina Baptist Convention, and in May Baptists responded in kind by giving more than $1.2 million through the Mother’s Day Offering.
Now, almost a year later, SCBMA is operating in the black, but still needs a strong Mother’s Day Offering – a minimum of $750,000, according to new ministry president Richard McLawhorn – in order to stay on track toward good fiscal health.
“We’re not out of the woods yet” is McLawhorn’s constant refrain.
“Last year’s offering sent a message in two ways,” he said. “First, it said to everyone in the state that Baptists were standing up for this ministry. Secondly, it allowed us to stay in business.
“Now, we’re asking Baptists to support the Mother’s Day Offering again, and I believe they’ll support it.”
If the ministry is not “out of the woods,” it is at least on more solid financial footing. Strict management measures enacted in 2005 have managed to stem the tide of bleeding budgets. A year after Bethea lost $700,000 in the first half of fiscal 2004-05, the ministry now has a modest budget surplus.
Bethea has seen a 55 percent increase in the number of residents in its skilled-care unit and a 130 percent increase in the number of Medicare residents, due in part to increased confidence in the ministry, McLawhorn said.
Still, SCBMA faces the sobering challenge of paying off a long-term construction bond of nearly $6 million. There is also the ongoing struggle to update older buildings and equipment, particularly at the Bethea campus, which is more than 50 years old.
Nevertheless, McLawhorn expresses confidence.
“When I go places, people tell me they want to support the Mother’s Day Offering again,” he said. “That’s what I hear. Last year was a wake-up call.”