WOODSTOCK, Ga. (BP) — Greater funding of the Cooperative Program will occur when Southern Baptists have greater confidence their gifts support the priorities of North American church planting, global pioneer missions and theological education, declared Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt in a June 3 interview with four state Baptist paper editors.
Hunt responded to critics who he believes have misjudged his motive in calling for a task force to examine the denomination “at every level” via his Great Commission Resurgence declaration. Far from having “a hidden agenda,” the Georgia pastor said his proposal seeks accountability for the investment of mission dollars.
He predicted his call for a study will be approved overwhelmingly by messengers to the June 23-24 SBC meeting in Louisville.
Johnny Hunt (BP photo)
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Feedback from SBC constituents prompted several revisions to the original draft of the 10-point plan “Toward a Great Commission Resurgence,” with the authors softening remarks that some found offensive. The allegation of “bloated bureaucracy” was removed one day after its initial release and a call to “rethink our Convention structure” has been replaced with an appeal for “valued partnerships of SBC agencies, state conventions/institutions, and Baptist associations to evaluate our Convention structures.”
What remains in the most often cited Article IX is Hunt’s motive in calling for a study “so that we can maximize our energy and resources for the health of our local churches and the fulfillment of the Great Commission.”
In spite of having restructured SBC entities a dozen years ago, Hunt said it’s not too soon to look at it again. “The question was even asked in an [SBC] Executive Committee report — did we really make a great enough commitment in 1997?” Hunt recalled.
“There’s a lot of fear out there because some have chosen to say that they question my intent, my motive. I would ask them to challenge me on the writing of the document, not the intent, unless they think I’m an evil man and if I am, I pray that same group will go ahead and run a candidate that has greater integrity.”
Instead, he wondered aloud if the openness to asking questions depends upon who is doing the asking. “Others have called for this same type of challenge, but with stronger words. So my question is can you ask this question as long as you’re someone else?”
Having made changes that provided a “win-win” result, Hunt said he would reject any appeal for removing Article IX calling for examination of the denominational structure. “That’s like saying let’s use this language we’re all familiar with, but take any teeth out of it that might challenge us. The major change that could happen is in number nine. It gives people greater passion and desire to support the Cooperative Program as long as we continue over the years to hold ourselves to greater accountability.”
The call for self-assessment is already gaining traction among some denominational entities, Hunt said, citing studies underway in his home state convention, at the North American Mission Board, as well as cuts in expenditures at the International Mission Board.
Responding to Executive Committee President Morris Chapman’s contention in a May 29 Baptist Press column that “the slippage in Cooperative Program giving is at the local church level” where the percentage given has declined from 8.24 percent to 6.08 percent in the last decade, Hunt said the point is well taken.
He noted his own church’s increase of another $50,000 for the Cooperative Program for the second year in a row at a time when the budget for First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., was lowered. “It has got to begin with me. Are we using our resources best to be a Great Commission church?” Hunt said he has heard from other local pastors who have made similar commitments to increased CP giving.
Last year the Woodstock church reported nearly $17.5 million in undesignated receipts with $432,977 given to the Cooperative Program, amounting to 2.48 percent, according to the Georgia Baptist Convention. In addition to $57,500 sent to the local association, the congregation contributed $175,000 to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and reported nearly $3 million for other mission gifts.
For critics to question Hunt’s own commitment to the SBC by focusing on his church’s percentage rather than the total dollars given is out of line, Hunt added. “Is there a point where you can’t say that about someone who is so Southern Baptist-involved?” he asked, emphasizing that 128 families from his church are serving in ministry fields and 78 Southern Baptist church plants have been planted during his tenure.
“It’s something that really is not in writing that every church give 10 percent to CP,” Hunt said.
Designating funds made it possible for them to underwrite a major outreach effort of the IMB in the Middle East, he said.
Hunt rejected the charge that he desires to redefine Cooperative Program giving to include designated gifts. “I never said that. I don’t feel that way and I’m not going to push for that. One day maybe there will be another way to celebrate those who choose to be more personally involved and go where their money goes and be involved in a different way in Southern Baptist life instead of really large CP dollars.” Pastors who lead those churches are committed to the SBC, he said, but “placed out there as non-missional.”
“Now the word has been charged that I’ll decimate the SBC,” Hunt said, making a passing reference to a letter Chapman sent to Executive Committee members. In the May 29 letter Chapman warned, “If this change is enacted by the task force to be appointed by the SBC president, the Cooperative Program will be decimated in only a very few years.”
Chapman also wrote, “If we jettison the Cooperative Program and go back to the societal funding model, we will get the same results we did before 1925 — bankruptcy and failure. If we bypass the trustee system by adopting presidential fiat, we replace our cooperative methodology with the vagaries of personality,” Chapman wrote. “And if we wed our autonomous partners together unintentionally by tying structure across the board to the preferences of a single committee recommendation bereft of thoughtful Executive Committee review, we render the entirety of the Convention and its kindred bodies vulnerable to the assault of any single attacker on any missiological, doctrinal, legal, philosophical, or functional front.”
Hunt told editors, “There’s pretty strong language when you say the president is trying to dismantle CP. How under heaven would I, as a pastor, lead my church to give $525,000 undesignated and $2 million to Southern Baptists causes? Why would I try to dismantle what I’ve led my people to give so much money to for so many years? If I do that I am the biggest fool that this convention has ever elected as president. That’s not my intent.”
In a May 29 BP column Chapman also challenged Hunt for thinking “reorganizing the Convention is the road to revival,” characterizing Article IX as “divisive” and “distracting.”
“If the denomination empowers me to appoint a task force, my thought was not to see it go beyond a year,” Hunt responded. “It’s not like I’m on a witch hunt and want to find some stuff. I’m not out to reveal salaries. I’m about greater commitment.”
He clarified his motive for examining the bureaucracy, stating, “If we look back at 1976, it took less than 1 percent of the CP budget to fund the national headquarters and now it’s at 2.86 percent of a much larger budget,” Hunt said, referring to the Executive Committee. “Is there accountability in place? Is it fair to ask the question, ‘Can the bureaucracy quit getting bigger and bigger so that when the money gets bigger we’re able to send greater portions?’ ”
In his letter to Executive Committee members, Chapman also raised the question of whether Hunt’s approach violates SBC Bylaw 18, bypassing the EC assignment to advise the convention on questions of cooperation among entities and those of other conventions, whether state or national. While Hunt told editors he is seeking a system of checks and balances to ensure accountability, Chapman wrote that the EC exists for that purpose between annual meetings.
“The last thing I want to do is be in violation of a convention policy,” Hunt told the editors when asked about the charge. “We’re working on it now and it’s being studied.”
Insisting that grassroots Southern Baptists want to know the funds are being used for maximum impact, Hunt said, “We want to send more. I’m just trying to ask the question. It may come to the point where even the passion to try to do what I’m doing will be squelched. If so, I fear the reactions of this denomination if there is not some way the parliamentarian can tell us to ask the questions I’m asking and get good answers.”
Hunt previously stated that he anticipates leading pastors, a state convention executive director, a seminary president and a college president will be among the dozen people named to the task force. Asked if he would be open to allowing various groups to select their own participant in the study, Hunt said he’d give the idea some thought.
Conservative evangelicals say ballot is key to win
G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Religion News Service
The ink had barely dried on Maine Gov. John Baldacci’s signature legalizing gay marriage in May when Catholic and evangelical opponents began circulating a petition for a “people’s veto” to override lawmakers with a simple majority at the ballot box.
In Iowa, where the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in April, activists are pursuing a constitutional amendment that could get the issue in front of voters as soon as 2012.
And in New Hampshire, where Gov. John Lynch recently signed a bill to make the Granite State the sixth state to allow gay marriage, social conservatives hope to put the issue on town meeting ballots across the state next year in a bid to document widespread dissent.
The message coming from gay marriage opponents is clear: pillar institutions of American democracy — first, the courts and, now, lawmakers — are hopelessly compromised and not to be trusted, at least not with one of the biggest social issues of our time.
Stunned by four states legalizing same-sex marriage in just two months, social conservatives are working hard to stop it, often through the avenue where they’ve had their greatest success: the ballot box.
While some political observers say the tactic might be a risky one, advocates for traditional marriage say they need to pull out all the stops.
“The integrity of our most fundamental institutions is in question and needs to be in question,” says Mike Heath, executive director of the Maine Family Policy Council, an evangelical Christian lobbying group.
“I see our institutions as having become openly hostile [to religious views]. They’re responsive to the elite and moneyed interests that dominate our statehouse. … The only hope here is the people.”
Reason No. 1 for turning to the ballot box? It works.
To date, state constitutional bans on gay marriage have passed in all 30 states where they’ve appeared on the ballots. “I’m getting [the marriage issue] before the people as often as I can,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, a pro-traditional marriage group.
Lawmakers in eight more states tried to move similar measures this year, although none received the legislative green light to advance to the ballot box, according to Christine Nelson, policy analyst for same-sex marriage issues at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Conservatives say they recognize the need to explain not only banning gay marriage but also why they’re choosing to push the issue through the ballot. After all, they’ve agreed to live with legislative and judicial decisions on other hot-button issues, from abortion to religious freedom, even when those decisions haven’t gone their way.
Some argue that gay marriage is so unusual that it requires uncommon measures.
“Some cases that the courts decide are not brought to the people because people can actually see a rationale that the courts give to decide a particular case,” says Kevin Smith, executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research, a conservative advocacy group with a New Hampshire focus.
“I don’t think the pro-marriage folks can see any rationale for saying that same-sex couples have the right to marry. … The courts haven’t touched on the question of: ‘Why do we have marriage in society and what’s the purpose of it?’ We think it’s just a really shallow argument from the courts.”
The marriage issue is just the latest part of a broader critique of particular branches of American government. In Maine, Heath challenges the integrity of heavily-lobbied lawmakers, where he says both parties are “are at best uninterested in serious, meaningful, theological and moral discussion … of issues related to marriage, sexuality and family formation.”
In Iowa, charges center on a judiciary that critics say overstepped its authority and needs to be put back in its proper place. By seeking a popular vote for a constitutional amendment, activists hope to set a precedent with implications for how to handle other issues.
“We don’t have to follow the model that was set before” when abortion opponents accepted Roe v. Wade as law of the land and then “legislated around the edges,” says Bryan English, spokesman for the Iowa Family Policy Center, a conservative Christian lobbying group. “The path that they took did not bring an ultimate end to abortion yet. We have a responsibility … to preserve the liberty that comes from separation of powers and vesting of political power ultimately in the people.”
The strategy is not without complications, however, said David Woodard, a political scientist at Clemson University. Consistency might require conservatives to view “compromised” institutions as unfit to handle a whole range of issues, not just gay marriage, he said.
Otherwise, groups can appear opportunistic and only concerned with winning certain issues in certain ways.
Another risk: voters might actually support gay marriage in the voting booth. A recent Brown University poll found 60 percent of Rhode Island voters favor same-sex marriage in the only New England state that does not allow it. That’s what leads Heath to fear that “we are probably going to lose and [gay rights groups] are going to get marriage at the national level.”
Yet despite the risks, Woodard says gay marriage opponents can’t afford to forgo a direct appeal to voters.
“The alternative is sitting there and sort of passively being dominated by a cultural minority that really can undermine your whole faith — not just your personal beliefs, but also your family and future generations,” he said. “The alternative of being quiet is almost unthinkable in a context where you feel threatened and where, if you just sit there any longer, there’s no telling what could happen.”