Florida Baptists are assessing their future budgeting after being warned by auditors that their convention could face liquidity challenges as it moves toward a 50/50 split of Cooperative Program receipts.
Auditors said the Florida Baptist Convention either must increase receipts by $2 million each year or decrease expenditures by $2 million to remain solvent, according to an article by the convention’s communications division published in the Florida Baptist Witness.
Last fall, messengers to the annual meeting of the Florida Baptist State Convention approved a seven-year Cooperative Program budget plan that would forward 50 percent of CP receipts from Florida churches to national and international missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention by 2018. An amendment clarified that the 50/50 split was not contingent on increased CP giving by the churches. Florida currently forwards 40.5 percent of its CP receipts.
In its report and recommendations to the convention in 2010, the Imagine If task force acknowledged that achieving a 50/50 split within four years “could create organizational and financial stress on the Florida Baptist Convention, and these stresses should not eliminate the necessity for reaching the desired goal within the four-year window.”
The task force did mention a need for increased giving by Florida Baptist churches, but the overall objective was to achieve the 50/50 despite financial stress.
During the May 25 State Board of Missions meeting at which the auditors’ warning was issued, the board decided to contact 661 Florida Baptist churches that have not contributed through the Cooperative Program for the past three years.
Tommy Green, a board member from Brandon, said 78 percent of non-contributing churches in Florida have fewer than 100 members, according to the report in the Witness. Even if those churches stepped up their giving, it would not make the needed difference in the state convention’s budget, Green said.
“We have churches that have tremendous budgets that are not on board with the Cooperative Program,” Green, pastor of First Baptist Church in Brandon, said, according to the report. “I don’t want to see the Florida Baptist Convention come to a point where we can no longer do viable ministry here in Florida for the sake of sending monies somewhere else.”
Green’s assessment was that the convention already has made drastic cuts and cannot realistically cut another $2 million per year. – BP