ATLANTA (ABP) — For the fourth year in a row, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has received a multimillion-dollar anonymous gift for global missions — this time $5 million.
The majority of the gift will go to field personnel salaries, benefits, equipment and training, with additional designated funds for expanding HIV/AIDS initiatives and Partners in Hope, the Fellowship's rural poverty initiative. The remaining $300,000 will go to the Asian response fund for tsunami relief.
It is the fifth anonymous multimillion-dollar donation to CBF missions in the last four years. In 2002 CBF received a gift of $4 million. In 2003 it was $5 million. And in 2004 $7 million was given.
The gifts have added $21 million to support global missions and are being spent over several years.
This fiscal year CBF has an operating budget of $16 million, of which at least $9 million will be spent on missions.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an organization of moderate Baptist churches and individuals, currently supports about 150 missionaries, most of them among unevangelized people groups and the world's poor.
As in the past, the Fellowship did not reveal the name of the individual donor.
“We are grateful for the trust this free and faithful Baptist places in the Fellowship's ministries among the most neglected,” CBF coordinator Daniel Vestal said. “All that we do to be the presence of Christ in the world is in partnership with Fellowship Baptists like this one, who responded to God's call. Many needs will be met because of this gift and gifts like it from those who believe in the work of this Fellowship.”
Barbara Baldridge, CBF global missions coordinator, said the gift will greatly enhance the work of its field personnel. “We will not only be able to keep adding and equipping field personnel, but we will be able to expand ministries to those affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty and the December tsunamis. It is both humbling and inspiring to be charged with implementing new ministry efforts resulting from this gift.”
In other CBF news, Tom Newsom, coordinator for development, announced April 5 he will retire at the end of July. Newsom, based in Waco, Texas, has worked to raise money for CBF for the past four years.