Missions Do Not Receive SBC Reorganizational Savings
by Lynn P. Clayton
Editor, Baptist Message

Article previously printed in Baptist Message

There are winners and losers in the 1999-2000 Southern Baptists Convention Cooperative Program Budget the Executive committee will propose to messengers at this year’s Annual Meeting.

The winners are some seminaries, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the Executive Committee itself.

The losers, because they did not receive larger budget percentages for “frontline missions” Southern Baptists were told they would, are the two mission boards.

Since messengers approved a massive reorganization of the national convention, the two budgets presented to messengers were carefully marked, “Transitional.” The implications were that the promised increases to mission organizations used to sell the reorganization would eventually develop.

The transition is over and the percentages of the “transitional” budget will remain the same for at least the next two years, and perhaps indefinitely. There are few things more addictive than money for organizations, and for which organizations will struggle vigorously to keep.

Since 1925, the organization responsible for carrying out mission work in foreign countries—first named the Foreign Mission Board and now the International Mission Board—has received 50 percent of the Cooperative Program dollar. One of the selling points of the reorganization was that money freed by going from nineteen organizations to twelve would go to missions.

That has not happened, as far as percentages are concerned.

Whatever increases the International Mission Board receives will come as gifts to the Cooperative Program increase. Fifty-percent of more money equals more money. Also, it will receive an “honest” 50 percent of all money received from state conventions through the Cooperative Program. A denomination-wide capital needs budget that divided money received over and above the national budget among various SBC agencies and institutions, including paying for the Southern Baptist Convention Building in Nashville, will be fulfilled and eliminated during the 1999-2000 year.

The former Home Mission Board, now renamed the North American Mission Board, has received 22.79 percent of Cooperative Program gifts under the new budget. NAMB is a result of merging three previous organizations: The Home Mission Board, Brotherhood Commission and Radio-Television Commission. Those three agencies, under the old organization, received 24.15 percent of the Cooperative Program. NAMB’s hope for having more money for missions must be in administrative and personnel savings.

The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission has received an increase in percentage from .99 percent to 1.498 percent.

The six SBC seminaries have seen their percentage grow from 20.4 percent before restructuring to 21.64 percent, moving the seminaries much closer to full funding of their formulas for receiving support.

SBC seminaries receive funds according to a complicated formula based on enrollments. Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., has received the largest increase based upon this formula, and Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY., has lost the most.

The Executive Committee has seen its part of the budget grow from 2.48 percent to 3.32 percent. In restructuring, the Executive Committee has assumed the work of the Southern Baptist Foundation.

So, it looks like reorganizing to get more money to “frontline missions” was a good idea, and a good selling point for reorganization. But it also appears that it will not happen as far as percentages for the Cooperative Program are concerned, at least for the time being.

Messengers will approve the proposed budget in Atlanta this June. The budgeting process is too complicated to accomplish from the convention floor. But, there is no question, if Southern Baptists across the land could vote on giving a larger percentage of the Cooperative Program to “frontline missions,” as they were encouraged to believe would happen during the vote on restructuring, they would do so in a heartbeat. It is a shame that apparently it will not become a reality.

July 1999