CP standard, WMU ‘invitation’ nixed

Posted: 6/23/06

CP standard, WMU ‘invitation’ nixed

By Robert Marus & Steve DeVane

Associated Baptist Press & N.C. Biblical Recorder

GREENSBORO, N.C.—Southern Baptist Convention messengers turned back a grassroots attempt to strengthen language encouraging the convention to elect leaders from churches that give generously to the denomination’s budget, but they rebuffed an attempt by the convention’s leadership to rein in the SBC women’s auxiliary.

Mike Stone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Blackshear, Ga., attempted to amend a recommendation from the SBC Executive Committee regarding an ad hoc committee’s report on promotion of the Cooperative Program, the denomination’s unified giving plan.

The ad hoc committee originally recommended that churches be encouraged to give 10 percent of their annual undesignated receipts to the program, and it urged the election of state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent to the Cooperative Program.

But on the eve of the convention, the larger Executive Committee revised the report to remove explicit references to a 10 percent standard. Stone’s amendment attempted to restore that language, but it failed by about a 2-1 margin on a show-of-ballots vote.

In the 27 years since fundamentalists began gaining control of the SBC, the denomination’s giving to the Cooperative Program as a percentage of overall revenue has plummeted. Anthony Jordan, executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and a member of the ad hoc committee, said the committee recognized a problem when they studied the history of CP giving.

“In 1980, the Southern Baptist Convention gave (an average of) 10.7 percent per church in undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program. Today, that is 6.6 percent,” he said.

But Executive Committee officials backed off after the report was publicized. Critics feared the 10 percent standard would be used as a de facto litmus test for denominational service—something fundamentalists criticized moderates for during the denomination's struggles in the 1980s.

Rob Zinn, outgoing chairman of the Executive Committee, said his body decided it wanted to be careful not to appear that it was intruding on the autonomy of local churches to give to the denomination as they feel called.

“We believe by putting a percentage there, it will be misconstrued that we are mandating what to give,” he said.

After Stone’s attempt to amend it failed, the recommendation to approve the report passed with little opposition.

Convention messengers turned back an attempt, however, to assert more control over the SBC’s independent women’s auxiliary.

Messengers defeated an Executive Committee recommendation to “extend an invitation to” the Woman’s Missionary Union to tighten its ties with the SBC by becoming an official convention agency.

For its 118-year history, the organization—which promotes the denomination's missionary efforts and provides hands-on ministry opportunities—has elected its own leadership. It receives no funds from the SBC budget.

The measure also offered WMU the option of affirming in its governing documents its “historic, unique and exclusive promotion of Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries,” and asked the organization to explain to the Executive Committee its response to the invitation.

WMU Executive Director Wanda Lee told messengers becoming a convention agency— and thus no longer self-governing—would remove the agency from the grassroots missions supporters who animate it.

The messengers then defeated the measure on a show-of-ballots vote.