GREENSBORO, N.C. (ABP) — Southern Baptist Convention messengers turned back a grassroots attempt to strengthen language in a report that encouraged 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.
“To stand at the platform … year after year after year and to urge our pastors and churches to be exemplary in the area of CP giving and then to fail to have the courage to at least encourage churches to give at the level of 10 percent is an inconsistency of the highest order,” he said, to applause.
The percentage of annual revenues that many prominent SBC leaders'
churches forward to the budget has been a hot topic in recent months.
Since fundamentalists began winning contests against moderates for
convention offices in 1979, many of them have been pastors of churches that sent far less than 10 percent to the Cooperative Program.
In the 20-plus years since conservatives began gaining control of the SBC, the denomination's giving to CP 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 that the committee realized 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. “We're walking away
from our responsibly to fund the greatest missionary force in the
evangelical history of Christendom.”
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.
Bob Cleveland, a messenger from First Baptist Church in Pelham, Ala., said he was concerned about infringing on local-church autonomy.
“When the tithe is given by the member to the local church, that
becomes God's money…and nobody outside the local church can tell the
church what to do,” 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.
In other business, messengers approved revised articles of
incorporation for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in
California, recognized Nashville attorney Jim Guenther on 40 years of
service as the SBC's general counsel and approved a $195,948,423
Cooperative Program budget for the 2006-2007 fiscal year.
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