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JACKSONVILLE (FBW)—Southern Baptists spend per capita
33 times more for missions in relatively gospel-saturated North America than
they do for the comparatively unreached rest of the world, a recent analysis
asserts.
The primary reason for this “alarming” distortion in
missions funding priorities is Baptist state conventions that “skim”
approximately two-thirds of all SBC Cooperative Program dollars for their own
causes, according to the author of the analysis.
The missions funding analysis caught the attention of
Southern Baptist Convention President Johnny Hunt and was to be among the data
considered by the SBC Great Commission Resurgence Task Force when it met for
the first time Aug. 11-12 in Atlanta.
For at least one state convention executive director,
however, the analysis is “fatuous” and “meaningless” because “it’s not
connected to reality.”
The analysis was done by Daniel Palmer, a May master of
divinity graduate and director of financial development at Southeastern Baptist
Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
“I am about as Southern Baptist as one can be,” Palmer told Florida Baptist Witness, noting his
life-long association with Southern Baptists, his father’s SBC connections and
his commitment to hold membership in churches that give a minimum of 10 percent
to CP.
Palmer also holds a master’s degree in public administration
and policy in which he studied finance and budgeting, statistics and survey
design.
He undertook the study on his own time, he said, prompted by
concern that Southern Baptists do not adequately understand the actual amount
of their Cooperative Program funds that get to the international mission field
and his desire to see greater support for international missions.
As Palmer evaluated denominational missions funding, “I
discovered the SBC is built more like a government bureaucracy than a conduit
for the gospel.”
Created in 1925 in the midst of a financial crisis in the
Southern Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’
unified funding effort for state, national and international missionary
enterprises.
Photo by Joni B. Hannigan
TASK FORCE Johnny Hunt, SBC president, met with the GCR Task Force in Atlanta Aug. 11-12. He was re-elected to a second term as SBC president in June.
State conventions collect CP funds from churches and retain
a portion of the funds for state missions work, as approved by the churches of
that state. Although both SBC and state leaders who created CP set a goal of
50-50 split between states and SBC, with few exceptions this ideal has not been
met by the state conventions.
In an interview last month with the Witness, Hunt briefly cited Palmer’s analysis without naming the
author.
Hunt expressed alarm at the data, asking, “What does this
say about—and let me use the word quickly—our, what does it say
about our commitment? … It’s really making me look to say, does Johnny and
Janet Hunt, are we really devoted to the Great Commission?”
The pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Ga., said
state conventions need to ask the same question, and had a warning for states
that ignore the desire for greater international missions funding.
“If states are not willing to release greater percentages
and greater dollars to the nations, they are going to find people like Johnny
Hunt designating their dollars where they want it themselves instead of
sending it to them when they’re not listening to us,” Hunt said.
After the story was posted to the Witness Web site July 27, Palmer contacted the Witness, identifying himself as the author of the analysis cited by
Hunt and offering to make the data available. Having reviewed the data, the Witness asked Palmer to write an essay
explaining the methodology used for the study, the meaning of the data from his
viewpoint, and what Southern Baptists should do about the matter.
Hunt told the Witness
Aug. 5 the Palmer analysis would be distributed to the other 22 members of the
GCR Task Force at its first meeting in
Atlanta. The task force was appointed by Hunt after the SBC authorized its creation
in June to study how Southern Baptists can work “more faithfully and
effectively together in serving Christ through the Great Commission.”
Hunt declined to comment further on Palmer’s analysis or
essay (both of which can be viewed on the Witness
Web site).
The Witness made
Palmer’s analysis and essay available to David Hankins, executive director of
the Louisiana Baptist Convention and former vice president for Cooperative
Program of the SBC Executive Committee, to evaluate the data and offer his
appraisal of its meaning.
John Sullivan, executive director-treasurer of the Florida
Baptist Convention, was traveling and unable to assess the data in order to
comment.
MISSIONS FUNDING ANALYSIS
Palmer’s
finding that Southern Baptists spend 33 times more on North American
missions than international missions is a “matter of simple arithmetic,” he
wrote.
Using 2008 and 2009 data from various sources, per capita
missions spending in the United States and Canada was calculated by adding CP receipts
retained by state conventions, SBC CP funds for the North American Mission
Board and NAMB Annie Armstrong Offering funds ($447,240,489) divided by the total population of the U.S. and
Canada (340 million).
The result: Southern Baptists spend $1.31 per person for
missions in North America.
Internationally, Palmer added the IMB portion of the SBC CP
budget with receipts from the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (total:
$243,858,417) divided by the world’s population (6.4 billion, excepting the
U.S. and Canada).
The result: Southern Baptists spend $0.04 per person for
missions to reach the world.
Palmer, in his essay, argued per capita spending is a way to
“standardize the assessment” of Southern Baptists’ “missions investment,” which
provides a truer picture than simply noting the 50 percent allocation to
international missions in the SBC CP budget.
“Baptists affirm that every soul is equal before God,”
Palmer wrote. “Does the allocation of our missions giving reflect this truth,
or do we spend more of our missions dollars to reach Bob than we do to get the
gospel to Zimbabwe?”
Asserting some Southern Baptist churches are not supporting
CP “because they are either greedy or they have not found ways to be effective
stewards in order to get more funds to the mission field,” Palmer speculated other
congregations are bypassing CP in favor of supporting specific SBC agencies “or
pursue other missions avenues because they wish to avoid the scenario where
states skim nearly two-thirds of every Cooperative Program dollar.”
While some larger, more established state conventions,
including Florida, retain 60 percent of CP funds, states and fellowships in
areas of the United States where Southern Baptists are less well established
retain as much as 80 percent of CP monies. Reports from state convention annual
meetings in recent years indicate some states have set a goal of 50-50
division.
Among other recommendations, Palmer asserted state
conventions, especially those in the south, should send 65-75 percent of CP
funds to the SBC, arguing a 50-50 split “is a great start, but is not enough.”
States can make this transition over a period of time,
rather than in a “draconian” fashion, by establishing a timetable of moving
more funds to SBC causes. Doing so will “inspire confidence in our churches to
give generously,” he argued.
Although Palmer conceded churches should also give more
funds to CP, he wrote they should only do so “as the states demonstrate a
willingness (evidenced by a real plan) to send more funding along to the
national Cooperative Program.
“The action on the part of the state is critical however.
Until states send more to the national level, giving more to the CP does not
really make much sense because the system would be unchanged and the vast
discrepancy in our spending domestically by comparison with the world would
remain.”
Summarizing the international missions funding, Palmer
asserted, “As it stands currently, the nations receive approximately one-half
of one-third of 3/50th of the tithes and offerings given by Southern Baptists.
As my toddler might put it, that is half of a piece of a sliver of the pie.
Southern Baptists must give more than 3/50th of their tithes and offerings to
CP, but they first need to know that the money they send is actually getting to
the ends of the earth.”
Palmer said the current concentration of missions funding in
North America is a result of misunderstanding Jesus’ challenge to His disciples
in Acts 1:8: “[A]nd you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (HCSB).
“The sequencing of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of
the earth has become a sequencing of spending priority rather than logical
ordering. The text is not a directive to spend more at home than abroad. It is
a directive to begin where you are and move outward. If the Bible prioritizes
any region, it prioritizes the ends of the earth,” he wrote.
‘MEANINGLESS’ ANALYSIS
Although
convinced Southern Baptists need to get more money to the international mission
field, David Hankins told the Witness Palmer’s study is a “meaningless
comparison on a number of levels. It’s fatuous and it’s not connected to
reality.”
BP photo
COOPERATIVE PROGRAM Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Director David Hankins, speaking at a missionary commissioning service in New Orleans in 2008.
Hankins, who has served since 2005 as LBC executive
director, is author, with Chad Owen Brand, of One Sacred Effort: The Cooperative Program of Southern Baptists,
and is a member of a special task force studying the effectiveness of the North
American Mission Board.
Florida Baptist
Witness re-calculated the analysis using Palmer’s recommendation that
states optimally forward 75 percent of CP funds. Such an increase would double
per capita missions spending to reach the world—from four to eight cents
($0.077), reducing per capita spending in North America to $0.56, or about
seven times as much funding for international missions.
“It would be just a few cents more per person, hardly
adequate to reach everyone in the world,” Hankins said of the new calculation.
“I think a better approach is to talk about what’s within
the realm of possibility for us to do, to have a strategy for what we want to
do overseas, tell our people what the real dollar costs are likely to be and
challenge them to reach it,” Hankins said.
“We don’t have an efficiency problem. We don’t have an
allocation problem. We have a giving problem. I really believe that,” he said.
According to Hankins, Southern Baptists in the last 30 years
are “giving a smaller percentage of their incomes than the Great Depression
generation” and “by conservative estimates” Southern Baptists are failing to
contribute $10 billion a year in tithes.
If churches would move from their present average of six
percent CP giving to 10 percent, “I can guarantee” the states would move to a
50-50 allocation between the states and the SBC, Hankins said.
Historically, the 50-50 division was understood to not
include the 2-5 percent necessary for CP promotion and agreed upon priority
items, he added. (Hankins’ ideas about how states and SBC leaders should share CP
gifts are summarized in an excerpt of his book available on the Witness Web site.)
However, Hankins expressed concern state conventions may
have “their feet cut out from under them by a continuing disrespect for the
cooperative methodology, which tends to continue the lowering of the income.”
While Hankins “strongly believes” more money needs to get to
the international field, it should not be accomplished by the suggestion “we
ought to undo valuable, stateside ministries. It ought to be a real, workable
plan.”
Hankins said Palmer’s analysis also fails to take into
account the role of other Great Commission Christians who share the obligation
to reach the world.
Additionally, Hankins argues state convention
ministries—many with fixed costs not easily reduced—exist because
churches value them, disputing Palmer’s claim that state conventions merely
“exist because thriving churches do not.”
Such a state convention “is an imaginary organization,”
Hankins countered. “No such convention exists or has existed in Southern
Baptist life. To suggest so is a gross misrepresentation of the history and
nature of state conventions. The state convention—and other general
Baptist bodies—purposefully have a broader intent.”
Citing the creation of children’s homes, colleges,
hospitals, benevolence, disaster relief, as well as church planting and other
ministries, Hankins said state conventions have created ministries at the
request of the churches.
“State conventions are vehicles churches utilize to do work
that cannot be accomplished as well by the individual churches,” he said.
According to Hankins, several professional surveys of
Southern Baptist pastors and laypersons indicate that most are “pretty well
satisfied” with the present division of state and SBC CP funds.
Hankins said he personally supervised two such surveys
around 2000-2001 in his capacity as vice president of Cooperative Program of
the SBC Executive Committee. Additionally, in 2007-2008, the SBC EC engaged
LifeWay Research to conduct a survey of Southern Baptist views about CP.
According to an executive summary of the survey, more than 9,000 pastors, other
ministers and laypersons participated.
“Approximately 70 percent of respondents agree that the CP
allocates contributions among state, national, and global ministries, missions,
and entities appropriately. This result is also a good news story in that the
results dispel much anecdotal evidence suggesting the opposite were true,” EC
President Morris Chapman wrote in the summary.
In contrast, 29 percent of pastors and 9 percent of
lay-persons believe states should forward more to the SBC, while 10 percent of
all respondents believe the states should retain more CP.
The survey also found while 85 percent of respondents agree
it’s important for CP funds to be spent efficiently by the states and SBC, only
67.5 percent agree that such is the case.
‘HONEST CONVERSATION’
Palmer
said he hopes his analysis will “generate an honest conversation about the role
of conventions and the way we currently spend missions monies within the SBC.”
At the same time, he wished to make clear he does not “wish to malign the men
and women currently serving in state conventions or to impugn their
motives. That is my one fear in publishing this study.”
Rather, “This study is a call for us to assess the status
quo and make changes in response to what the study reveals,” he added.
Palmer noted that as an employee of a seminary tasked with
raising funds for the school it could appear that his study is “self serving.”
Although the seminary would indeed benefit under his desired scenario, Palmer
said he believes it would eliminate the need for his job.
“May God do it all for His glory and in His timing,” he
concluded.
Hankins responded that Palmer does not “give evidence that
he understands” the “history and ecclesiology of Southern Baptists,” which
makes an honest conversation difficult.
“I think, also, he could have a more fraternal spirit and
positive response to enter into the conversation if he didn’t use what is at
best, unprofessional and intemperate language, and at worst, unchristian
language about his fellow Southern Baptists,” Hankins said, pointing as an
example to Palmer’s use of “skim” regarding the state conventions’ retention of
CP funds.
Hankins noted, “It’s not true in fact and the word
‘skimming’ means embezzlement, which is an illegal action.”
Editor’s note:
Florida Baptist Witness is an agency of
the Florida Baptist State Convention, receiving 1.075 percent of Florida
Baptists’ Cooperative Program budget. This funding, which will total about
$377,000 in 2009, accounts for approximately 44 percent of the total budget of
the Witness. As a FBSC agency, the Witness is governed by a 15-member Board of
Directors elected by the state
convention.