NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — On Friday, Nov. 9, Executive Committee President Morris H. Chapman mailed a letter to every church pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention asking him or her to participate in a Cooperative Program/ Stewardship survey.
Chapman said the purpose of the survey is “to collect data that will provide an empirical baseline of our churches' thoughts, feelings and perceptions about Cooperative Program/stewardship and to give us insights for developing a more focused strategy in the promotion of CP and stewardship across the convention.”
LifeWay Research, the research arm of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, is conducting the survey at the request of Chapman, who described it as the most ambitious survey conducted to date by LifeWay.
Chapman stated in the letter to pastors, “Learning actual opinions and assessments is our objective.”
Chapman noted that “every pastor plus five members of each church in the convention are being asked to participate. We are asking some very tough questions in this survey — many of the questions are groundbreaking in nature.
“The survey provides the churches of the convention an opportunity to both praise and criticize what we are collectively doing with the gifts given through the Cooperative Program,” Chapman continued. “We can only improve the value added to the Cooperative Program gifts we receive if we know the heart of our churches in their giving practices.”
Chapman said results of the survey will be released once sufficient time has been spent to properly analyze and evaluate the survey data.
This information, Chapman said, will help leaders across the SBC “to better serve our churches which, of course, is the primary assignment and objective for both state conventions and the national convention.”