For the first time in Southern Baptist Convention history, dating back to 1929 when a unified budget was first proposed, designated receipts topped Cooperative Program gifts.
What was a historical precedent in 2013 was repeated in 2014 and 2015, making it the third time for this phenomenon to occur since the Great Commission Resurgence reforms were approved in 2010.
SBC churches are receiving fewer contributions to the extent that undesignated gifts from our 46,500 churches dropped off from about $163 million. During this same time frame, these same congregations experienced a loss of 520,980 weekly attendees, and this has had a profound impact on giving to state and national causes.
On average, it appears Southern Baptists are giving more than they have before on an individual basis: about $103 more per person. Unfortunately, the extra $586 million given last year by Southern Baptists who worshipped weekly in our churches could not make up for the drastic drop in funding caused by the loss of 520,980 regular worshippers during this time frame (an estimated $803 million lost in potential contributions from 2014).
Moreover, the drop in CP funding for national causes came amid sacrificial cuts in staffing and ministry programs by many state conventions in order to give more to SBC causes. Baptist Press reported in March 2015 that 23 of 42 state conventions have responded to the 2010 GCR initiative by increasing the proportion of CP gifts they forward to national causes with the intention of moving to a 50/50 split with the denomination. But lost in all this discussion about the decline in giving is the point that now there is another dimension: Churches are designating more to national causes than what is being received for SBC missions and ministries through the Cooperative Program.
For instance, since 2000, total undesignated receipts for SBC churches have gone from $5.98 billion to $8.75 billion, rising 46.27 percent, although revenue has declined in recent years. Members of SBC churches, from 2011 to 2014, increased giving from an average of $1,438 to $1,541. But in 2014, the median household income was about $52,000 and the average household income was $72,000. Both metrics reveal Southern Baptists are not even approaching anything close to a tithe of their total income.
In just four years, Southern Baptist congregations, combined, lost 520,980 weekly worshippers, or 8.4 percent of our active membership. If we do not restore evangelism as a priority, we face extinction, not just a loss of cooperative funding.
— Will Hall is editor of the Baptist Message, the newsjournal for Louisiana Baptists. To read the full version of this story, visit baptistmessage.com/19039-2/.