Posted: 6/13/03
NC giving plan OK,
study committee reports
By Tony Cartledge
North Carolina Biblical Recorder
CARY, N.C. (ABP)–The giving plan that allows North Carolina Baptists to send mission funds to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship instead of the Southern Baptist Convention does not violate the state convention's constitution, according to a study committee.
The six-member committee, equally divided between conservatives and moderates, was asked to determine if the so-called Plan C–which funds the CBF but not SBC–is consistent with the constitution of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
The constitution says, in part, “The purposes of the convention shall be to assist the churches in their divinely appointed mission; to promote missions, evangelism, education, social services, the distribution of the Bible and sound religious literature; and to cooperate with the work of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
The heart of the committee's report, according to chair Charles Page of Charlotte, is the finding that, “It is neither logically nor legally necessary that each action of the Baptist State Convention fulfill each purpose of the convention in order for the action to be in furtherance of the multiple purposes of the convention.”
“In other words,” Page told convention leaders, “not every thing deals with every thing.”
Plan C giving fulfills all the purposes of the convention with the exception of cooperation with the SBC, Page said.
Convention churches choose which of four funding plans they want to support. The other three giving plans send national missions money to the SBC. Churches in those plans also have the option of excluding the SBC or any other budget items included in the plan.
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The study was the result of a motion at the annual state convention meeting last year and will be reported to the convention in November.
The one-page report acknowledged differences in Baptist life but said North Carolina Baptists have a tradition of cooperating in ways that transcend differences between and within the SBC and the CBF.
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