Messengers to the annual meeting of South Carolina Baptist Convention, meeting at Taylors First Baptist Church Nov. 14, adopted a $32.75 million Cooperative Program budget and extended their missions partnership with South Asia for another two years.
This year, 1,444 messengers attended the South Carolina Baptist Convention annual meeting held at Taylors First Baptist Church.The 2007 convention budget represents a $600,000 increase over this year’s budget of $32,150,00. Sixty percent of that budget, or $19,705,000, will go to support the state convention’s ministries and missions endeavors, while 40 percent, or $13,045,000, will be passed along to the Southern Baptist Convention for national and international missions causes.
Mike Moody, pastor of First Baptist Church, Honea Path, and chairman of the SCBC Executive Board’s business, audit and finance committee, noted the convention has met or exceeded budget requirements for nine of the past 10 years, and is again on track for exceeding its 2006 budget goal.
South Carolina Baptist Convention officers Richard Porter and Rodney Hoard, led by Don Wilton, pray for SBC president Frank Page.In 2007, if the convention surpasses its budget goal, the overage will be divided equally between the Southern Baptist Convention and the state convention’s Kingdom Challenge Fund, a newly created fund designated for special international, North American and state missions projects.
The budget also allows for a one-time gift of $99,000 to South Carolina Baptist Ministries for the Aging.
During the Executive Board’s report, messengers also approved extending the state convention’s partnership with South Asia until 2009. They also voted to dedicate the 2006 Convention Annual in honor of Carlisle Driggers, retiring executive director-treasurer of the South Carolina Baptist Convention.
Ted and Tammy Keller, right, who serve as chaplains at the Flying J Truck Stop in Columbia, were recognized as the Mission Service Corps Missionaries of the Year by the North American Mission Board. Presenting the award to the Kellers during the state convention was Carlos Ferrer of the North American Mission Board.Marshall Blalock, pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston, urged South Carolina Baptists during the convention sermon to be “nothing less than disciples” of Jesus, based on Matthew 28:19-20.
“Today, I want to ask you to think about our lives together as followers of Jesus. Are we preaching and living the whole gospel?” Blalock asked. “Jesus invites us to enter the Kingdom as disciples who have abandoned their lives to him,” he said.
Messengers had the opportunity to visit display booths set up by the various institutions of the SCBC.“God has not called us to a comfortable life, He has called us to be Christlike,” he reminded the messengers. “The call of Christ is never to the status quo,” he affirmed, noting instead that discipleship “is a call to living under the kingship” of the Savior.
Blalock asserted, “There is not one issue in our churches that could not be resolved by one question: Are we disciples of Jesus, or not?”
View photo gallery of 2006 SCBC Annual Meeting.
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