Perhaps more people attended the annual meeting of the Baptist Convention of New Mexico this year than any year since it was founded 94 years ago.
The 2006 convention was the first since New Mexico Baptists elected Joseph Bunce as new executive director in February.
In a move to accommodate more diversity within the ranks, members of two of the state's language cultures enjoyed for the first time simultaneous translations of convention proceedings into their native tongues.
Twenty people used receivers to hear the convention in Spanish, and five others utilized receivers tuned into a Navajo translation. Everyone heard the Tewa language of the state's pueblos when Edna Romero opened the Tuesday evening session with Scripture and prayer.
In business sessions, messengers approved a convention budget for 2007, the largest in the convention's history and its first in excess of $4 million. The budget requires $4,112,565 in Cooperative Program receipts from churches next year and includes a salary increase of 4.5 percent for Baptist Building support staff members and a 3 percent raise for administrative staff members.
After the exception for exempt obligations is applied, 30.5 percent of the Cooperative Program receipts, an estimated $1,184,105, will be forwarded to the Southern Baptist Convention for national and international missions and ministry. No increase in the percentage was proposed for next year.
Associated Baptist Press