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NASHVILLE?Great Commission Resurgence Task Force Chairman Ronnie Floyd believes Southern Baptists want to see more of their dollars reaching the nations with the gospel. By cutting a slightly more generous slice for the International Mission Board’s piece of the Cooperative Program pie, another $1.4 million will be provided for this effort.
In the process, the portion set aside for Facilitating Ministries?largely the SBC Executive Committee?would be cut by almost a third.
“It’s a matter of what we would rather see it go towards,” Floyd said in a Feb. 24 interview, acknowledging the lower funding of the SBC Executive Committee (EC) budget. The task force progress report asks state conventions to take primary responsibility for Cooperative Program promotion and stewardship education (see April 19 TEXAN), freeing up much of the $1.2 million allocated for that EC ministry assignment.
When asked where the rest of the cuts might come, Floyd said that’s outside the role of the task force. “It will simply be our goal and our intention that we allocate 51 percent in the coming budget year to the IMB and we do that by taking from the facilitating ministries budget.”
When the SBC was restructured in 1995, the Annuity Board and Executive Committee were classified as facilitating ministries, however the insurance, retirement and investments provider (now known as GuideStone) opted out of receiving CP funds in 2007, leaving only the Executive Committee under that budget category.
As the Executive Committee assumed responsibilities previously held by the Stewardship and Education commissions and gained the Southern Baptist Foundation, the portion allocated for areas under EC supervision grew from 2.22 percent in 1995-96 to 3.03 percent in 1996-1977; it now stands at 3.4 percent.
The EC’s role is administrative, carrying out the will of SBC messengers between annual meetings by disbursing convention budget allocations to the SBC entities, which include two mission boards, six seminaries, and a social concerns agency.
With the task force proposing that the EC relinquish primary responsibility for stewardship and CP promotion, freeing up about $1.4 million in the EC budget, another $600,000 in cuts will still be needed for the committee to operate within a CP allocation of 2.4 percent.
The convention’s operating budget administered by the Executive Committee is divided into two categories. Convention administration expenses include SBC general operations, SBC committees, annual meeting, SBC building management and operating reserves.
The category of Executive Committee operations, with figures for the 2008-2009 budget, includes administration ($1.7 million), convention policy ($599,515), convention relations ($1 million), convention news ($802,908) and the $1.4 million cost of CP/stewardship. The 2009-2010 budget was reduced for 2009-2010 by $321,000 due to CP shortfall.
