CP support takes center stage in SBC presidential race

Todd Deaton

Todd Deaton is chief operating officer at The Baptist Courier.

Published on May 25, 2006

With a blue-ribbon task force on the Cooperative Program set to present its recommendations at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Greensboro, N.C., in two weeks, the CP giving records of the churches of presidential candidates have taken center stage.

David Hankins

Anthony Jordan

In keeping with the SBC’s Executive Committee report, Anthony Jordan, Carlisle Driggers and David Hankins, three key figures on the CP task force, have all issued statements in recent days encouraging SBC messengers to elect officers who are strong supporters of the denomination’s channel of supporting state, national and international missions and ministries.

Among the task force’s various recommendations is the election of “state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent of their undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program.” The task force report was adopted by the executives of the state Baptist conventions and the SBC Executive Committee in February.

Subsequently, at the heart of the debate is the nomination of Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd, whose church, First Baptist, Springdale, contributed 0.27 percent to the Cooperative Program and 1.58 percent to the SBC’s allocation budget of its nearly $12 million in undesignated receipts – and South Carolina pastor Frank Page, whose church, Taylors First Baptist, contributed 12.4 percent of its $4.3 million in undesignated receipts, according to the 2005 Annual Church Profile.

Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and chairman of the task force, in a May 8 column in the Oklahoma Baptist Messenger, called for Southern Baptists to elect a president who has “demonstrated his wholehearted support” for the Cooperative Program.

Southern Baptists need a statesman and a consensus builder, Jordan wrote, “Our struggle is no longer against liberalism – it is for unity. We need a man who unites us rather than draws tighter lines.”

Jordan allowed, “There was a day in the SBC when the doctrinal position of our president was more important than anything else. – During those days, we compromised our cooperative conviction in favor of conservative theology. Hence, we elected leaders whose percentage given through the Cooperative Program would be hard pressed to fill a thimble.”

While “vigilance against liberalism” will always be needed, Jordan maintained that “our greatest challenge is electing a man who has demonstrated a proven commitment to the Southern Baptist way of supporting missions.”

He added, “Many of the megachurch pastors have turned aside from cooperative missions in favor of direct or societal missions. They do missions, but they choose to do what their church can accomplish, rather than realizing the power of what we can achieve together.”

Instead, Southern Baptists “need men who believe in and model our approach to missions,” Jordan asserted. “We need great ‘cooperators’ if we are to preserve the largest mission-sending denomination in the evangelical world.”

Calling the election of a president at this year’s annual meeting “a defining moment” for Southern Baptists, Driggers, executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, maintains in statements released to The Baptist Courier that the outcome “will help determine how serious we are about our commitment to cooperative missions and evangelism missions and ministries.”

One of the alarming conclusions of the task force is that Southern Baptists have been moving away from the kind of cooperation that God blessed in enabling the SBC to become the most far-reaching evangelistic and missionary force in American Christianity, Driggers said.

“Without question, the committee realized that we have a leadership problem in the Southern Baptist Convention. Far too many of our pastors and elected or appointed officials have been ignoring the proven value of the Cooperative Program, which has helped to hold us together since 1925 as obedient followers of the Lord Jesus,” Driggers asserted.

“How can anyone claim to be a loyal, committed Southern Baptist who loves the Great Commission while being a part of a church that barely supports the Cooperative Program?” he asked, underscoring that a cardinal principle of Southern Baptists is the belief that “we can do so much more together than separately.”

Messengers to the Greensboro meeting will be, in reality, voting on the future strength and influence of the SBC, Driggers emphasized.

“I suspect that historians will look back on 2006 as the convention meeting when the viability of the Cooperative Program was decided by a vote on the Cooperative Program committee’s report and by the election of officers. I pray our decisions in Greensboro will help us become stronger than ever as cooperating Southern Baptists,” Driggers urged.

In a May 22 first-person column for Baptist Press, Hankins, executive director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention, concurred, “We need leaders who understand the importance of the Cooperative Program to the success of our entities’ ministries. We need leaders who will model sacrificial percentage giving from the churches, especially when so many churches are choosing to decrease their level of support.

“There are many great, godly, Christian leaders who are leading wonderful, growing congregations and performing other magnificent Christian ministries, but who do not lead their churches to give through the Cooperative Program,” Hankins continued. “I thank God for them. But I don’t think they ought to be elected to lead Southern Baptists.”

Though the 10 percent recommendation is “not intended to be a legalistic rule,” he asserted, however, that the Cooperative Program is “at the crossroads.”

The theological crisis has been resolved, Hankins affirmed. “Now we must tackle the missions support crisis,” he challenged, calling for the election of leaders who not only demonstrate a commitment to the inerrancy of scripture and soul-winning, but who also are “Cooperative Program champions.”

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