Outgoing BGAV president Jeff Bloomer leads messengers in voting during the annual meeting.
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FREDERICKSBURG, Va. (ABP) — Despite a shaky economy, Virginia Baptists
in their recent annual meeting adopted a 2010 budget of $14 million —
about 1.4 percent larger than 2009’s budget, which is expected to see a
shortfall.
Next year’s budget, approved by messengers during the Baptist General Association of Virginia’s Nov. 17-18 annual meeting in Fredericksburg, Va., is $200,000 more than the current $13.8 million allocated for state, national and international ministries.
Though allocations for most line items in the 2010 budget are similar to this year’s, a significant change eliminates a popular retirement supplement for ministers and church staff, which in 2010 would have totaled about $250,000. Left intact was a life and disability insurance supplement for ministers and church staff.
A messenger’s attempt to restore the retirement supplement and cut the insurance supplement failed by a large margin.
The budget action was taken during a meeting low in attendance but high in enthusiasm for Virginia Baptists’ mission and ministries. The 984 registered messengers — the second smallest at an annual meeting since 1975 — welcomed representatives of national and international mission partner organizations, who shared the stage with Virginia Baptist leaders during a multimedia celebration of their common task.
Messengers participate in a “Stop Hunger Now” project that will provide bags of food for uses in crisis-burdened areas around the world.
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Living up to meeting's theme
Messengers also elected officers for 2010 and heard three ministers interpret the meeting’s theme — “A Time for Extravagance.”
The theme accurately reflected the budget committee’s call to meet the challenge of funding ministry in a recession-wracked economy. BGAV treasurer Eddie Stratton has reported that the current $13.8 million budget will see a shortfall, perhaps by more than $800,000.
“Either we could do what we did last year and make the budget meet our projected income, and our budget this year would be substantially lower,” said budget committee member Billy Burford, who presented the proposal on behalf of committee chair Tom McCann. “Or we could meet the challenge. And that’s what we did.
“Kingdom Advance [Virginia Baptists’ mission strategy] is a challenge and it takes money to do it,” added Burford, administrator at First Baptist Church in Richmond, Va. “So the budget before you represents what the budget committee believes is necessary to carry out the goals and aspirations of Kingdom Advance and to meet the needs of our [ministry] partners.”
McCann, who was unable to attend this year’s meeting, told the Virginia Baptist Mission Board in October that the proposed 2010 budget would be larger than this year’s.
“Costs increase. We can’t get around that,” McCann said then. “We can decide to go out of business and sell everything. Or we can understand we have a God-sized job to do and do it as free and faithful Baptists in Virginia.
BGAV treasurer Eddie Stratton welcomes 19th-century Baptist minister William B. Hatcher (portrayed by Fred Anderson of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society) to discuss the “Virginia Baptist temper.”
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“This budget takes us back to the budget of two or three years ago,” he said. “But we need to do that. Unless we want to go backwards we’ve got to move forward, and in order to do that we need to encourage our folks to step up to the demands of reality. If we’re going to do Kingdom Advance we need the funds to do it.”
The retirement supplement cut was the focus of wide-ranging discussion in a budget breakout session during the annual meeting and sparked an amendment during floor debate.
Since the 1970s, the BGAV — like most Baptist state conventions — has provided life and disability insurance supplements on behalf of eligible ministers and church staff through GuideStone Financial Services, the Southern Baptist Convention’s pension fund manager. In the 1990s, the VBMB begin matching retirement contributions, assisted in part by a surplus of funds from investment returns on the BGAV’s payment of life and disability insurance premiums.
By 2002 those surplus funds were depleted, and in 2007 GuideStone asked state conventions to assume half of those costs, phasing them in over a five year period. That cost for both the retirement and insurance supplements was expected to have grown to about $500,000 by 2010 to cover the more than 1,500 eligible participants.
In examining next year’s expenditures, the budget committee said the retirement supplement portion of those contributions — which are only $210 per participant annually but which will total almost $250,000 in 2009 — was carefully scrutinized.
“In our examination we discovered we are not being good stewards of the dollars being asked for in this line item,” said Burford. “Many employees of Virginia Baptist churches were not even aware that the supplements were being paid. Some small churches were being asked to supplement the ministry staff of large churches.
“This is not only important for the 2010 budget but for Cooperative Missions budgets for years to come,” he added. “The budget committee believes it makes good stewardship sense to remove the $230,000 in this line item.”
Burford acknowledged concerns that the cut will create hardships for some ministers and church staff attempting to take on the additional $210 a year.
“In a letter distributed to all churches and published in the Religious Herald, [BGAV executive director] John Upton said there have been funds set aside to help,” said Burford, who encouraged ministers to contact the VBMB if serious help was needed.
BGAV officers for 2010 are (from left) Tim Madison, president; Bob Bass, first vice president; Kevin James, second vice president; and Fred Anderson, clerk.
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Officer elections
Messengers elected Tim Madison, pastor of Mechanicsville Baptist Church in Mechanicsville, Va., as president. Madison, who was unopposed for the office, was endorsed by Virginia Baptists Committed, a moderate advocacy group that has successfully nominated BGAV candidates for nearly 25 years.
Madison had been serving as first vice president and his election follows a recent practice of electing first vice presidents to the presidency, which is constitutionally restricted to a single term. His election also conforms to a much longer tradition of alternating the presidency between ministers and laypersons each year.
Bob Bass, a Richmond layman, was elected first vice president, also without opposition. In an unusual move, Bass was nominated outside the normal VBC channel. Travis Collins, pastor of Bon Air Baptist Church in Richmond, which Bass attends, said last month he was nominating his church member because he is “uniquely poised to lead us now.”
“I’m grateful for those who annually nominated the candidates,” said Collins, referring to VBC, “but I believe Bob is the right one for the job. So it seemed right, being a Baptist, to offer someone for nomination who is outside the pipeline that has developed.”
VBC later endorsed Bass’s election, saying the group “saw no need to field a different candidate for first vice president.”
VBC’s endorsed candidate for second vice president — David Plott, director of missions for two associations in southwest Virginia — lost in a contest with Kevin James, pastor of Salem Baptist Church in Sparta, Va., not far from this year’s meeting site in Fredericksburg. James, nominated by Dee Whitten, pastor of Fairview at River Club, a Baptist congregation in Fredericksburg, won 52 percent to 48 percent.
Elected to a 29th term as clerk was Fred Anderson, executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society.
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Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Virginia Baptist Religious Herald.