NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — Even before considering a recommendation by the Southern Baptist Convention that it reduce its budget by nearly a third to channel more money to international missions, the SBC Executive Committee is facing a cash shortfall fueled by declining giving to the denomination and low interest rates in a weak economy.
For the second straight year the Executive Committee will build an SBC operating budget smaller than the previous year. A budget summary adopted Sept.21 projects income and expenditures of $8.6 million in the 2010-2011 fiscal year. That is down $505,000 from the current budget year ending Sept. 30.
"This is not a [Great Commission Task Force] reduction. This is a budget reduction," Michael Routt, chairman of the business and finance subcommittee, told Executive Committee members.
The Executive Committee's largest source of income, $6.8 million, is 3.4 percent of projected receipts anticipated through the Cooperative Program, a unified budget plan that funds a variety of Southern Baptist ministries at both the state and national levels. The SBC operating budget goes toward administrative support of convention operations such as planning the annual meeting, promoting the Cooperative Program and communications through Baptist Press and a bi-monthly newspaper called SBC Life.
In June the Southern Baptist Convention adopted recommendations of a Great Commission Task Force that propose reducing the Executive Committee's allocation from the Cooperative Program by 1 percent and increasing the allocation of the International Mission Board by 1 percent, to 51 percent.
The recommendation, which will be considered at the Executive Committee's February meeting, would reduce the Executive Committee's budget by about 30 percent from current spending levels.
Cutbacks in 2010-2011 budget include phasing out Empowering Kingdom Growth, a convention-wide initiative launched in 2002 that is led by Ken Hemphill, who took early retirement as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2003, reportedly under pressure from some trustees. Hemphill, 63, hopes to keep the program, which costs $275,000 a year, alive and is looking for another sponsor.
The operating budget also calls for reducing funding for Global Evangelical Relations, a program formed after the SBC pulled out of the Baptist World Alliance and led by former convention president Bobby Welch, from $345,000 to $275,000.
In other business at the Sept. 20-21 meeting in Nashville, Tenn., the Executive Committee declined to recommend that Baptist Press become a separate entity with its own board of directors.
The action responded to a motion referred to the Executive Committee made at the convention by Martin King, editor of the Illinois Baptist. King, unable to attend the meeting because of a schedule conflict, said in a letter he was concerned about "past and recent perceived failings" of the current structure.
In June King and two other editors jointly published an editorial in the Florida Baptist Witness addressing "perceived lopsided coverage" of the Great Commission Task Force, which was publicly opposed by Morris Chapman, the Executive Committee president who retires later this year.
Twelve other Baptist state paper editors, including the immediate past president of the Association of State Baptist Papers, wrote in defense of Baptist Press.
The Executive Committee declared a 1982 study of the structure of Baptist Press "still valid" and recommended that Baptist Press "continue to operate as an integral part of the ministry assignment of the Executive Committee."
The committee also advised against amending the SBC's constitution article on membership to disqualify churches that act to affirm, approve or endorse racial discrimination. Responding to a referred SBC motion by Dwight McKissic, an African-American pastor in Arlington, Texas, the committee said the Baptist Faith and Message already speaks to the issue and that no constitutional change is needed because a means for disfellowshipping churches for any reason is already available through the motion process.
Darrell Orman, chairman of the administrative subcommittee, said SBC resolutions since 1961 have consistently called for improving race relations and increasing ethnic involvement in the denomination.
"Because of the browning of America, if we are serious about reaching America for Christ, we really need to get this down and get this right," Orman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stuart, Fla., told committee members.
Orman said the Executive Committee is in its second year of studying how to include more African-American and other ethnic leaders in SBC life. He encouraged fellow pastors and denominational workers to "adopt" a non-Anglo pastor in their community and involve them locally in order to get more people of color "into the pipeline of leadership" of state and national Baptist conventions.
"It is not an intentional exclusion, but we need to be intentional in our inclusion of these others if we are going to win this browning America to Christ," Orman said.
McKissic's motion attempted to add "racial discrimination" to a sentence added to the constitution in 1993 to included churches "not in friendly cooperation" with the convention's work those that "act to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior."
Twice before, in 1994 and 2009, proposals came to disqualify churches that ordain or have a woman pastor in the membership article, but both times convention leaders said it was not advisable to create a laundry list of membership requirements already addressed elsewhere in the convention's official confession of faith.
A Sept. 20 banquet honored Morris Chapman, who retires Sept. 30 after 18 years as president and chief executive officer of the Executive Committee. His successor, Frank Page, takes over Oct. 1. Page told committee members he would be developing a 10-year plan for increasing cooperation and building trust within Southern Baptist life.
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.