I have been employed by the Middle Baptist Association since 2009. This June will be 12 years that I have served churches in three mostly rural counties. This ministry is funded 99% by partner churches. The Georgia Baptist Mission Board sends us a monthly stipend that totals less than 1% of our budget. I fully expect that stipend to cease any day now because of the GBMB's own budget constraints.
What I am saying is that the MBA isn't supported by the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention. And yet as a Southern Baptist I care very much about the state of the Cooperative Program. Recently, Randy Adams, Executive Director of the Northwest Baptist Convention, shared the following graph that illustrates the unhealthy trajectory of CP giving among SBC Churches. https://randyadams.org/2020/10/14/the-crisis-of-decline-in-the-sbc-why/
As you can see, it ain't good. An obvious observation is that the decline coincides pretty directly with the aftermath of the global economic collapse that occurred in 2007-2008. This especially got my attention at the time because I wanted an explanation for why my retirement savings were inexplicably disappearing. Financial forces that were at work in the world at large probably impacted churches and large church bodies negatively.
The economic crisis intersected with another problem that was at work in culture. There has been a consistent, systemic, membership decline in the SBC since 2009. Mainline churches had been hemorrhaging members for decades, and there was a sense (at least to me) that the SBC was impervious to that skid. But that has proven not to be true.
Often when observers discuss the decline in the SBC we talk about it as if it is occurring in a cultural vacuum, but that is obviously not the case. The adjacent quote illustrates that the main people who are departing churches, generally, are younger adults. Experientially, when I see younger adults at some of our SBC churches, it feels a little as if I have discovered the proverbial unicorn.
Because religious decline is taking place in the culture at large, efforts to understand CP (and SBC membership) decline by only examining internal features is a flawed approach. Or maybe, more accurately, it is an exercise in overlooking the obvious. But I see a troubling trend. This is the main reason I am writing. I notice that many churches are changing their missions giving pattern through the Cooperative Program at the exact moment that systemic cultural religious decline is simultaneously happening. It's a perfect storm for unhelpful disruption and accelerated denominational decline.
Are we on the path to societal giving? Many leaders are looking for culprits to blame. But too few leaders are asking, what is the ultimate cost of withholding, redirecting and reducing CP giving? I know some of the reasons that people are doing this, but we are on the path to societal giving. In the past SBC churches were inundated with individual requests for direct funding to missionary societies which "resulted in severe financial deficits, competition among entities, overlapping pledge campaigns, and frequent emergency appeals which greatly hampered the expanding ministry opportunities God was giving Southern Baptists." https://www.sbc.net/missions/the-cooperative-program/about-the-cooperative-program/
As any faithful SBCer would know, in 1925 the Cooperative Program was launched as a way of giving a unified approach to supporting SBC causes. Without thoughtful discussion and debate, SBC churches may inadvertently invite all the confusion that attended societal giving right back into our churches. And what are the residual consequences?
SBC Seminaries and entities will suffer, missionaries will be grounded, and State Convention work will be negatively impacted. I attended Southeastern Baptist Theological College in Wake Forest, NC from 1996-1998. Southern Baptists paid for half of my tuition through CP dollars. Thank you! I ended my college career with no debt! Before we pull the rug out from under future seminary students we ought to be very sure that we know WHY we are doing it. Our seminaries depend on the CP.
The International Mission Board depends on two financial streams: CP and the Lottie Moon Christmas offering. I know that some churches are using some clever financial gymnastics to give directly to the IMB, but our denominational life is symbiotic. Our entities and state mission boards will suffer. CP distribution starts at the state level in the SBC. If churches begin to give directly to the IMB or NAMB consistently, that is problematic, unless it doesn't matter to you to have a well-funded state convention (which is short-sighted).
Some observers have ascribed the decline in CP giving to unhappy constituents. I think the case for this is overstated. I'm not ignorant of the unhappiness some folks (not me) have with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. I'm not blind to perceived problems at the North American Mission Board or with the Executive Committee itself or the need for possible reform and better equipping of our entity trustees. I think I've read as extensively about CRT and Resolution 9 as many people, and I continue to assert that I could easily make a list of 20 problems that will affect your church's health far before CRT/I does.
Conclusion - I pastored churches for about 15 years before transitioning into my current role. I know that sometimes disgruntled church members "designate" their gifts to causes hoping to put the squeeze on the church budget. I know pastors usually hate that behavior and consider it extremely unproductive and immature. I can't see how this is any different. Just on a larger scale.
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