(ABP) — A North Carolina Baptist leader will propose scrapping the optional funding plans that are part of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina’s budget, which would eliminate funding of causes popular among moderate Baptists in the state.
Ted Stone, an anti-drug and anti-alcohol activist from Durham, said in a written statement Oct. 27 that he will make a motion at the November state convention annual meeting “to restore the single-giving plan of the traditional Cooperative Program as the sole method of doing missions together.”
Jim Royston, the executive director of the state convention, said Stone’s proposal could cost the convention $1.5 million.
Currently churches giving to the state convention can choose one of four giving plans. In Plan A, the state convention keeps 68 percent of the money and sends 32 percent to the Southern Baptist Convention.
In Plan B, the state convention retains 68 percent and sends 10 percent to the SBC, with the remaining money going to missions partnerships, theological education and other causes. Plan C is similar to Plan B except the 10 percent is sent to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship rather than the SBC. Plans B and C also fund four independent Baptist ministries popular with moderates — the Baptist World Alliance, Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty, Associated Baptist Press and Baptist Center for Ethics.
Under Plan D, the state convention keeps 50 percent and sends 32 percent to the SBC. The other 18 percent goes to the conservative Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute, church-planting efforts and missions partnerships.
Stone’s motion would do away will all plans except Plan A. He will ask that the percentages be changed to have the state convention keeping 65 percent and sending 35 percent to the SBC.
Under his proposal, the changes would not go into effect until the 2006-2007 budget year, which will be voted on at the state convention meeting in November 2005.
Stone will also ask that Fruitland, which could lose money if Plan D is eliminated, be funded at the same level as the smallest N.C. Baptist college. This would mean an increase in funding for Fruitland from about $650,000 to about $990,000, he said.
Missions funding has been a subject of dispute between conservative and moderate Baptists in North Carolina for years. The giving plans allow moderate and conservative churches to decide which ministries to support. As conservatives have solidified their control of the state convention, the giving plans have come under increasing fire.
Stone said the Cooperative Program is “a Southern Baptist program designed and used since 1925 as the best and most unified way for the Southern Baptist Convention and the state conventions to do missions together as partners.”
“The optional giving plans have distorted the original purpose of the designers of this God-ordained program,” he said.
Stone said sending funding to the CBF, which he said competes with the SBC, “makes a mockery of the Cooperative Program.”
“It is time to discard ‘the North Carolina way,’ a descriptive term used by those who are constant critics of our denomination to justify optional giving plans,” Stone said. “It is time for us to do missions together the Southern Baptist way. After all, we are Southern Baptists, and most of us are proud to be Southern Baptists.”
Stone said it is “deceptive and wrong” to call money given outside SBC or state convention budgets Cooperative Program giving.
Morris Chapman, president of the SBC Executive Committee, endorsed Stone’s proposal in a press release Oct. 28.
But Royston said in a written statement that the state convention’s initial calculations show Stone’s proposal “would siphon $1.5 million from vital ministries conducted in North Carolina.”
“It is difficult for me to understand the benefit to missions of slicing the legs out from under some missions to make missions taller elsewhere,” he said. “The solution to sending more money to national and international missions is starkly simple — increase giving through Cooperative Program missions giving.
Royston said that if every church increased its giving by one percent, about $6 million more would be available for missions, of which 32 percent — or $1.9 million — would go to the SBC.
“To simply shift missions money from one pot to another would decimate church starts in North Carolina; ministry to abused children, help for the aging in retirement homes, the hurting at Baptist Hospital, Baptist students in Baptist colleges, preacher training, leadership training at all levels, student work and everything we’re mandated to work for in Kingdom growth,” Royston said.