Posted on Jun 26, 2003 | by David Roach

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (BP)--For the second consecutive year, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship expenditures will exceed the organization's revenues, according to a finance committee report delivered to the CBF Coordinating Council June 25. For the 2002/2003 fiscal year, the report said, CBF will operate with a deficit of more than $650,000.

In response to the report, the Coordinating Council adopted a recommendation to lower its monthly contributions to partner organizations to correspond with the decrease in undesignated offerings received each month. Additionally, financial difficulties have forced the CBF to close offices in Raleigh, N.C., and Dallas, Texas; cut missionary budgets; and put a freeze on new missionary appointments except for those missionaries funded by designated gifts, CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal said in his report to the Coordinating Council.

Revenue for the CBF this year totaled more than $14.9 million or 18 percent less than the amount called for in the 2002/2003 budget, the report said. Nearly half of the revenue, however, was generated by a $5 million anonymous gift and a $2 million grant to fund clergy education and leadership development from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, Vestal said.

According to Philip Wise, chairman of the Coordinating Council finance committee, CBF financial difficulties have been the result of overly optimistic budget projections and a struggling U.S. economy.

"What happened basically was that our revenue stream flattened out," Wise said. "And we all know about the economy and what's happened in our national economy, and that's simply impacted us. And what we've tried to do both in terms of the staff and the finance committee is to, without hurting any of our programming and continuing to provide the ministries to support our missionaries, look at our expenditures to try to contain them as much as possible."

Budget woes will almost certainly continue into the 2003/2004 CBF budget, said Chuck Moates, chairman of the Budget Priorities Task Force.

"At this point we do not think it is reasonable to expect -- based on what has happened since our February meeting when we voted on this budget -- it is not reasonable to expect that we are going to be able to give that budget," he said.

Because of time constraints, CBF leaders have no plans to revise the 2003/2004 budget, Moates said.

"The cost and time factor of bringing the whole Coordinating Council together again did not seem to be a wise thing to do in light of this situation. Secondly, and also just the timing of it ... We did not feel comfortable bringing to you a revised budget only hours before the General Assembly starts with nothing that we can have in print," he said.

Instead of a revised budget, Moates and his committee offered several recommendations to the Coordinating Council on how the CBF can curb expenditures.

Among the recommendations:

--CBF funded missionaries should begin to prioritize work areas and people groups to determine where funding can be delayed or terminated.

--Staff growth should be halted, and attrition should be used to remove staff positions.

--CBF should use a percentage of all designated gifts to cover any administrative costs required to implement the gifts.

But CBF churches should not be overly disheartened by the financial troubles, said CBF Moderator Phill Martin, because many other denominations are experiencing similar problems.

"It's been a little assurance to me that it is not just an issue of 'if we could have only managed more carefully' we would have seen this coming and [been] able to have taken care of it," Martin said. "Almost every major denomination, the Missouri Synod Lutheran, ELCA, American Baptists, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, have dealt with the same kind of budget constraints and controls."

Still, Vestal concluded, "We are behind in budget and going to have to address that. We're going to have to deal with it."

Among other business discussed by the coordinating council:

--Vestal said he expects the CBF to be granted full membership in the Baptist World Alliance at the July 7 BWA meeting in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Despite opposition from other Baptist groups, most BWA members have welcomed CBF participation in the alliance, he said.

After a recent meeting of the BWA membership committee in Seville, Spain, Vestal said that he received overwhelming encouragement from several committee members.

"You know the report from the membership committee was not received unanimously by the General Council," he said. "And after the report a number of leaders from Baptist bodies in different parts of the world came to me ... came to us with great emotion. Some of them were so emotional they couldn't even talk, and some of them ... they would just come up and put their hand on my shoulder. They'd just fill up. They were so emotional. Others of them would come and say, 'Thank you,' or, 'We want you in. Please don't leave. Please don't withdraw. You're important to the future.'"

--Vestal reported that through May 1, the CBF had 1,720 contributing churches and that over the past 12 months 241 churches contributed to the CBF for the first time. A contributing church has been broadly defined in the past to include anything from one member to the entire church body giving money to the CBF, Vestal said previously.

--The CBF will have 149 missionaries under appointment by the end of this year's general assembly.
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