South Carolina Baptist Convention messengers on Tuesday (Nov.15) adopted a budget and approved resolutions addressing pastor fatigue, biblical illiteracy, church-school partnerships, and reaching previously unreached people groups at home and around the world.
Messengers lift their ballots in favor of a motion.
Messengers also affirmed a resolution on biblical sexuality and freedom of conscience that was adopted earlier this year at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in St. Louis.
Read the full text of the resolutions.
At $28.6 million, the bottom line for the 2017 SCBC budget is unchanged from the last five years. The new budget allocates 54.5 percent for in-state ministries, 41 percent to the Southern Baptist Convention through the Cooperative Program, and 4.5 percent to be sent directly to the International Mission Board.
Although revenues from South Carolina Baptist churches have fallen short of projections in recent years, the gap between budgeted needs and income has been narrowing, officials noted.
“The potential to reach our budget in 2016 is the highest it’s been since I’ve been in South Carolina,” said Will Browning, pastor of The Journey Church in Summerville and chairman of the Budget, Finance & Audit Committee of the SCBC Executive Board.
In other business, messengers approved a slate of committee members and trustees for the convention’s seven ministry partners, as presented by the Executive Board’s Committee on Committees.
Gary Hollingsworth
Gary Hollingsworth, SCBC executive director-treasurer, reported that South Carolina is one of a few states poised to experience significant population growth over the next five years.
“We have both the opportunity and the obligation to reach people in South Carolina with the gospel,” Hollingsworth said, noting that the Palmetto State is projected to have the third-highest growth rate in ethnic population in the U.S.
“The world is coming here,” he said, “and the vast majority of them will not know Jesus as savior.
“The lost world is not pouring into our buildings to see what we are doing. We need to be out there together for the gospel.”
On Wednesday (Nov. 16), messengers will elect new convention officers and hear a message from Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Father-son parliamentarians Jim and Ryan Goodroe confer on a procedural matter.