The Southern Baptist Convention will partner with a network of state Baptist convention stewardship directors to produce Cooperative Program and stewardship materials, according to Frank Page, president of the SBC Executive Committee.
Stan Smith, president of the Stewardship Development Association, opened a Feb. 23 meeting in Nashville which signaled a new partnership between the Southern Baptist Convention and state conventions in the production of Cooperative Program and stewardship materials.Page’s announcement came at a day-long meeting of the Stewardship Development Association (SDA), a consortium of state stewardship specialists, at the SBC Building Feb. 23.
“SDA will be our preferred provider for production of stewardship and Cooperative Program materials,” Page told the gathering in Nashville, Tenn. “You are much better at some things than we are. We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing.”
Last November, as a cost-cutting measure, Page eliminated the EC’s Cooperative Program and stewardship division and moved responsibility for CP promotion into his office. Several staff positions were deleted in the move, including those with primary responsibility for production of CP materials.
SDA president Stan Smith said the partnership signals “a new day in the Executive Committee’s commitment to partnering with state conventions.”
On its website, StewardshipDirect.com, the SDA describes itself as “a national organization of denominational stewardship leaders (that) has for 40 years equipped churches to address Biblical stewardship by investing in resource development and leader training in areas such as tithing, Cooperative Program promotion, and church budgeting.”
The partnership between the SBC and SDA also is in keeping with the Great Commission Resurgence report adopted by the SBC last June. Component Six of that report encouraged the EC “to work with state conventions, charged with responsibility for CP and stewardship education, in developing a strategy for encouraging our churches to greater participation and investment in the Cooperative Program.”
Page asked the SDA to help develop a 10-year CP promotion strategy around “a single, nationwide CP theme” that all state conventions and SBC entities can promote. He said both the state executive directors and leaders of the SBC’s entities agreed the previous week to the concept of a long-term strategy that would be customizable but unified. “Not 42 voices, but one voice,” Page said.
The group also discussed rebranding the image and identity of the Cooperative Program with Kerry Bural, principle of The Resonate Group, a communication consulting agency based in Nashville. Bural and Page agreed that rebranding needs to be more than a slick marketing campaign. “It’s not just about getting CP better known, but showing that it works,” Page said.
Ashley Clayton, the EC’s associate to the president for CP and stewardship, said, “We are at the beginning of this relationship, so there are a lot of things we don’t know. But what we do know is that what we have been doing to promote CP hasn’t been working.”
“We exist to help you promote CP and do stewardship education,” Clayton said.
– King is editor of The Illinois Baptist, newsjournal of the Illinois Baptist State Association.