The 77 members of the Executive Board of the South Carolina Baptist Convention will address at least two major items of business at their fall meeting Oct. 11-12 at White Oak Conference Center.
Executive Board members will be asked to approve a budget for SCBC messengers to consider for final adoption in November at the convention’s annual meeting.
Last year, in response to decreased giving from churches, messengers adopted a budget of $32.2 million – a 6 percent reduction from the previous year.
Through August of this year, total budget receipts are down 5.37 percent from a year ago, said Pam Carroll, the SCBC’s interim chief financial officer.
The board will also hear a report from its administrative committee, which was assigned the responsibility of “researching issues [and] developing a plan of action” in response to SCBC employee concerns and feedback from employee “listening sessions.”
D.J. Horton, chairman of the administrative committee, told The Baptist Courier in an e-mail that his committee has met and will “bring forth a recommendation to the board” at the October meeting.
“The details are still being worked out, but our desire is for this recommendation to help our board, our executive director-treasurer, our convention staff, and our state to move forward and begin focusing again on the tremendous task of reaching South Carolina with the gospel,” he said.
The Executive Board met in a called executive session Aug. 17 to review the results of the employee listening sessions, which were approved by the board last April to address apparent “undercurrents” of concern on the part of former SCBC employees.
The Executive Board is comprised of ministers and lay people from churches across the state.