At last week’s meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee in Nashville, two officials of the South Carolina Baptist Convention — executive director-treasurer Jim Austin and convention president Brad Atkins — arrived in Music City with a request.
KirklandThe document for delivery was Recommendation 11 of South Carolina’s approved report of a special task force selected to provide the blueprint for our involvement in the Great Commission Resurgence launched by the SBC in 2010.
It was a concisely worded request asking simply that the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee “consider adjusting the budgets of the seminaries and other SBC entities as a means of increasing funding to the IMB.”
Recommendation 11 followed 10 others in the GCR task force report, some of which spelled out painful budget cuts to South Carolina’s ministry partners, including the state convention’s three Baptist universities.
At the center of this issue are the six Southern Baptist seminaries, which were left untouched financially by the GCR strategy approved at the Orlando convention.
The sacrificial spirit of the ministry partners in South Carolina paved the way for our convention to send an additional $400,000 to the International Mission Board. It was the same amount of money the IMB would have received if the SCBC split its CP money evenly with the SBC. Now our convention is aiming toward achieving a true 50/50 division of CP funds within five years.
Tom Elliff, president of the International Mission Board, was not able to attend the Nashville meeting, but he sent a letter to the committee that did not fail to influence board members.
According to the letter, the IMB leader prefers that additional funds “to reach the nations” come from stepped up contributions through the Cooperative Program, rather than taking the money out of the pockets of what he termed “fellow agencies.”
Elliff is to be commended for his advocacy of the Cooperative Program. And he should be praised for emphasizing that the IMB, which will benefit most from the Great Commission Resurgence, “has no desire to diminish the work of our entities. Ours is indeed a cooperative work, a team effort best reflected through the Cooperative Program.”
The rub is that by “fellow entities,” he meant only the SBC entities, not those affiliated with the South Carolina Baptist Convention or other state bodies nationwide, all of whom are being called upon to sacrifice for the cause of penetrating the world’s spiritual darkness.
His voice of support for the CP was joined by that of Georgia pastor and Executive Committee vice chairman Ernest Easley, who said that we must keep encouraging support for the CP, which he called “the lifeline of all that we do as Southern Baptists.”
He added this: “As goes the Cooperative Program, so goes the SBC.”
The issue of the seminaries is unlikely to go away quickly, if at all. The Cooperative Program subcommittee of the Executive Committee agreed to give consideration to the request brought by Austin and Atkins on behalf of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. But rather than take any action now, it politely laid the request aside.
Austin, who along with Atkins made a strong case for South Carolina’s opinion on this matter, hopes that at least a discussion of this topic has begun and may bear fruit later.
It is true that our six seminaries turn out many of the missionaries who will take the gospel to wide-ranging fields of service, as well as pastors and other ministers who will be holding the rope on the home front.
A problem with the seminaries that is felt in South Carolina and other states with Baptist schools is that the seminaries now offer bachelor’s degrees that place them in competition for students at the undergraduate level. And the playing field is not level. Students attending a Baptist seminary to earn a bachelor’s degree will, because of generous CP support, pay far less than they would at a Baptist college or university.
Two of our Baptist universities, Anderson and North Greenville, have launched graduate programs of their own in the field of ministry to better serve their sponsoring convention and to keep more students stateside for their ministerial educations.
The Southern Baptist Convention must not become a house divided against itself over Christian education. Both the seminaries and Baptist colleges and universities have ministries that are vital in teaching a Christian worldview that will be important for our society, whether their graduates sit in the pew or stand in the pulpit.
But the playing field should be more nearly leveled. A good start would be for the seminaries to accept — or even ask for — a budget cut that would be in line with the financial sacrifices already made by Baptist schools in South Carolina and elsewhere.
South Carolina has set an example worthy of imitation by the six SBC seminaries. They should help our convention carry the burden of paying for the spread of the gospel all over the world by shouldering what ought to be their own load.
Jim Austin and Brad Atkins carried to Nashville a reasonable request from their own denomination. Recommendation 11 is now in the hands of the Executive Committee and should not be ignored. Rather, it should be approved and implemented. It’s not too much to ask.