NASHVILLE (BP) — Year-to-date contributions to Southern Baptist national and international missions and ministries received by the SBC Executive Committee are $1,075,153.03, or 0.76 percent, above the year-to-date budgeted goal and are 2.33 percent below contributions received during the same time frame last year, according to a news release from SBC Executive Committee President and Chief Executive Officer Frank S. Page.
The total includes receipts from state conventions, churches and individuals for distribution according to the 2012-13 SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget.
The Cooperative Program is a channel of giving, begun in 1925, through which a local church is able to contribute to the various ministries of its state convention and to the missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention with a single contribution.
As of June 30, gifts received by the Executive Committee for distribution through the Cooperative Program Allocation Budget totaled $142,075,153.06 or 100.76 percent, of the $141 million year-to-date budgeted amount to support Southern Baptist ministries globally and across North America. The total is $3,383,892.51 less than the $145,459,045.57 received through the end of June 2012.
“For the past two years, the Southern Baptist Convention has demonstrated its wisdom in adopting a fiscally responsible Cooperative Program allocation budget goal,” Page said. “The folks at LifeWay tell us that church giving generally lags behind the economy by 18 to 24 months. We see encouraging signs that the economic health of our churches is slowly rebounding and remain confident that Cooperative Program giving will increase over the next several years.”
The convention-adopted budget is distributed as follows: 50.2 percent to international missions through IMB, 22.79 percent to North American missions through NAMB, 22.16 percent to theological education, 3.2 percent to the SBC operating budget and 1.65 percent to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. If the convention exceeds its annual budget goal of $186 million dollars, IMB’s share will go to 51 percent of any overage in Cooperative Program allocation budget receipts. Other ministry entities of the SBC will receive their adopted percentage amounts and the SBC operating budget’s portion will be reduced to 2.4 percent of any overage.
Designated giving of $176,708,750.07 for the same year-to-date period is 1.85 percent, or $3,204,271.21, ahead of the $173,504,478.86 received at this point last year. This total includes only those gifts received and distributed by the Executive Committee and does not reflect designated gifts contributed directly to SBC entities.
Traditionally, state and regional conventions have acted as collecting entities for Cooperative Program contributions. They retain a portion of church contributions to the Cooperative Program to support work in their respective areas and forward a percentage to Southern Baptist national and international causes. The percentage of distribution from the states is at the discretion of the messengers of each state convention through the adoption of the state convention’s annual budget.
CP allocation budget receipts received by the Executive Committee are reported monthly to the executives of the entities of the convention, to the state offices, to the denominational papers and are posted online at www.cpmissions.net/CPReports.
June’s CP allocation receipts for SBC work totaled $15,273,060.24 Designated gifts received last month amounted to $16,881,104.03.
The end-of-month total represents money received by the Executive Committee by the close of the last business day of each month. Month-to-month swings reflect a number of factors, including the number of Sundays in a given month, the day of the month churches forward their CP contributions to their state conventions, the percentage of CP contributions forwarded to the SBC by the state conventions after shared ministry expenses are deducted, and the timing of when the state conventions forward the national portion of Cooperative Program contributions to the Executive Committee.
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Compiled by Baptist Press staff.
