North Carolina Baptists’ top administrator declared his support for moving the state convention to a 50/50 allocation of Cooperative Program funds with the Southern Baptist Convention “over a protracted period” in his address during the BSCNC annual meeting in Greensboro.
At the same time, Milton Hollifield, executive director of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, said it could not be done without increased giving from local churches.
“It is imperative that we all understand that a move to increase the SBC portion must be accompanied by an increase in CP support by our churches,” Hollifield said.
This will mark the sixth of the past eight years that CP gifts have been lower than the previous year. Messengers adopted a 2011 budget the size of the 1999 budget. Yet in 2011, for the sixth consecutive year, the SBC allocation of CP gifts has been increased by one-half percentage point.
“If our churches do not increase their support of the Cooperative Program,” Hollifield said, “we can’t reach the goal without deep cuts in church planting and partnership ministries that I’m convinced God is calling us to do – ministries that the churches of this state voted to establish and support.”
Hollifield said he is willing continually to examine the budget, but also said the budgeting process is not in his hands alone. He said he “will not recommend that we sacrifice ministries that I am convinced God is calling us to do through this state convention.”
He pointed out that if churches had maintained their CP giving percentage of 1995, $15 million more would have been available for missions throughout the state and world annually.
While Hollifield affirmed each church’s autonomy to determine how to invest its mission dollars, including avenues other than the Cooperative Program, he said, “If a congregation wants to have a strong voice in how a convention uses the dollars, they need to be strong givers.”
– Jameson is editor of the Biblical Recorder, newsjournal of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.