Messengers to the 185th annual meeting of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, meeting in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center Nov. 15, adopted a $32.15 million budget for 2006.
The CP allocation budget is the same as last year’s budget and reflects a 60-40 split between SCBC missions and ministries and Southern Baptist Convention causes, with $19.095 million remaining in the state and $12.73 million being passed along to the national
convention.
2006 SCBC officers – Elected to serve with convention president Don Wilton, second from left, are, from left, Frankie Lott, recording secretary; Rodney Hord, second vice president; and Jeff Whaley, registration secretary. Unavailable for the photo was Richard Porter, first vice president.Mike Moody, chairman of the budget and audit committee of the Executive Board, reported that Cooperative Program gifts received from churches are “on track” to meet the current budget. Moody expressed the ongoing concern of denominational leaders about the decreasing percentage of CP gifts from churches, noting that the amount has dropped from 9.15 percent to 8.27 percent in the past decade.
As a part of the Executive Board report, Marshall Blalock, chairman of the Empowering Kingdom Growth evaluation and implementation task force, informed messengers that the proposed Great Commission Initiative, which had been approved by the Executive Board during its October meeting, had been rescinded during a special called meeting of the board in Columbia two weeks prior to the annual meeting.
While Blalock reported that the initiative had been rescinded in recognition of reservations expressed by the state convention’s institutional leaders over the proposed drop in allocations, the pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston, said it was the task force’s prayer that the convention would be “restless until we fulfill the vision” set forth when it adopted EKG II in 2001. That vision, he recapped, called for 500 new churches; 100,000 people baptized; and 250,000 missions volunteers, by 2007.
“The reality for us is that we, as a convention, are not making progress,” Blalock said. Observing that while the SCBC adopted these ambitious goals, the convention had not changed its budget or approved the necessary leadership steps, he said, leaving it with “no workable plan to reach the vision that we’ve announced.”
Recognized – At the start of the Tuesday evening session, representatives of the nearly 3,000 disaster relief volunteers from South Carolina Baptist churches, who served on more than 110 teams that worked along the Gulf coast after recent hurricanes, processed into the convention hall and filled the aisles.During the board’s report, Cliff Satterwhite, director of disaster relief for the SCBC, expressed appreciation for the $1.7 million given by South Carolina Baptist churches to support disaster relief work along the Gulf Coast and in Florida following recent hurricanes and in South Asia. Gifts from churches to the Cooperative Program, Satterwhite emphasized, allowed the convention to send money for recovery projects and to staff a disaster relief command center at the Convention building for more than 80 days to coordinate the work of South Carolina Baptist volunteers.