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SAN ANTONIO—Cooperative Program receipts were ahead of budget in the first quarter of 2011 and were $480,777 ahead compared to the same time last year, the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Executive Board was told during its April 26 meeting in San Antonio.
The board hired a new Hispanic Initiative & Ethnic Ministries associate, Jesse Contreras, and learned of the planned retirement of Don Cass, SBTC evangelism director, who joined the convention staff eight years ago. In a letter copied to board members, Cass said he plans to leave his post at the end of February 2012.
The board also approved the affiliation of 58 churches while also clearing its roll of 39 congregations. Of those, 33 have disbanded, three disaffiliated with the SBTC and three others merged with other churches. The total number of SBTC affiliated churches as of May 4 was 2,362.
GIVING AHEAD OF BUDGET
The $6.28 million in undesignated receipts was $33,747 ahead of budget through the end of March, Chief Financial Officer Joe Davis reported. Compared to the same period last year, CP receipts were up $480,777. Total net operating income through March was $373,138.
The 2011 CP budget is $24,940,475, with 45 percent—or $11,752,726—marked for in-state ministry.
Through March, giving through the Reach Texas Offering for state missions was up $5,722 over the same period last year; the Lottie Moon Offering for International Missions and the Annie Armstrong Offering for North American Missions were both down from a year ago, by $750,667 and $78,213, respectively.
Davis also reported that a $422,631 CP shortfall at year’s end was offset mostly by under-spending, resulting in a total net operating income of $1,101,553 as of Dec. 31.
NEW ASSOCIATE
Contreras, the newly elected associate for the Hispanic Initiative and Ethnic Ministries, will direct and assist with the Spanish-language portions of the SBTC annual meeting and the Empower Evangelism Conference, youth camp at Alto Frio, regional Spanish equipping conferences, and related ministries with and for Hispanic Baptists and other ethnic groups.
Contreras came to faith in Christ following the witness of Criswell College students in 1992. He went on to earn a bachelor of arts in biblical studies and a master of arts in Christian education from Criswell.
Contreras has served churches in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and in Manila, The Philippines. Most recently, he was worship and discipleship pastor at Woodbridge Bible Fellowship in Wylie.
A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Contreras moved to Dallas in 1985. He and his wife Wendy have three children.
CASS RETIREMENT
Cass said in his retirement letter, addressed to SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards and copied to the board, “I can hardly believe I am at that [retirement] stage in life, but reality tells me I am.”
Cass said his frequent travel schedule and his wife’s scheduled back surgery—her fifth—makes his continuing as evangelism director “no longer wise.”
“Forty-five years ago I promised her and God that next to Jesus she would be my highest priority in life and I must keep that promise,” he wrote.
Cass came to the SBTC as evangelism director on March 1, 2004, succeeding interim director Ronnie Yarber. He served six years as New Mexico Baptists’ evangelism director and also served as an associate evangelism director at the Baptist General Convention of Texas as well as pastor of numerous churches in Texas and New Mexico.
SBTC FOUNDATION
Johnathan Gray, SBTC Foundation executive director, told the board the foundation’s assets as of Dec. 31 had grown to nearly $20 million. Gray said the SBTCF Enhanced Cash Fund—a short-term investment available to churches and ministry institutions—ended the year with an annualized 1.4 percent return. Meanwhile, the annual return rate of the SBTCF Endowment Fund was 13.52 percent while the SBTCF Income Fund garnered an annual return rate of 7.41 percent.
The foundation has also begun offering the Next Generation Fund, a perpetual ministry fund that annually support the ministries aided by the Reach Texas Offering, Gray said.
Also, Gray said an online estate planner is now accessible at sbtexasfoundation.com.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT
SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards spent most of his report time speaking of the Cooperative Program, the unified missions funding channel that fuels cooperative Southern Baptist work in Texas and worldwide.
Richards said a CP Summit in February with leading CP giving churches revealed that more needs to be done in explaining and promoting CP to church leaders and members. He lauded a new promotional video (accessible at sbtexas.com/CP) that includes testimonies of how the CP propels ministry endeavors in Texas and beyond.
“The response to the renewed emphasis on the Cooperative Program has been encouraging and the confidence that we have here in Texas in the SBTC CP has been a blessing. But there still are some alarming trends,” Richards said. “And these trends show us that unless there is more information and then enthusiasm of giving through the Cooperative Program, that there will be a debilitating effect.”
Over a 15-year-span, “the dollars have increased, the church budgets have increased, but the Cooperative Program percentage of giving has decreased,” Richards said, adding that at current levels of giving decline, the SBC missionary and education ministries could become “unsustainable.”
“And the only thing we can do is turn it around. So let’s turn it around. It’s not time to give up, it’s time now to be enthused by all these testimonies we’ve heard, all these people who are getting saved, all these new churches getting started. It’s because we’re doing it together. We’re doing it through the Cooperative Program.”
Richards urged pastors and lay persons to join the convention staff in taking up the cause of championing the Cooperative Program.
