Have Southern Baptists entered an era of declining funding for national evangelism strategies?
IS THERE A MILLENNIAL SHIFT OCCURING?
For 25 years it occurred as steady as clockwork. Nearly every five years Southern Baptists would launch a national evangelism strategy that motivated congregations to reach their communities with a renewed zeal. But since the dawn of the Millennium that regularity has been short-circuited and strategies have rarely made it off the drawing board. The denomination, slowing in baptisms and membership growth, is now finding it increasingly difficult to financially	partner with state conventions in key evangelism strategies. Southern Baptists may not be too supportive of Global Warming, but may be caught up in what could be described as Millennial Cooling in how to fund those strategies. Has evangelistic outreach become too expensive for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination? Next year may be a defining moment as the North American Mission Board rolls out its newest evangelistic strategy – with a new funding twist.

An Analysis

When North American Mission Board President Geoff Hammond stood before Southern Baptists in Indianapolis in June for the annual convention meeting, he announced the launch of a major evangelistic emphasis to bring the gospel to every person in North America by 2020. Code named GPS for God’s Plan for Sharing, the 10-year strategy has the potential to be the lasting legacy of the Alpharetta-based agency.

The initiative will strive to put the wind back in the sails of the agency that has drifted in providing such vision since its founding in 1997. Never has the denomination attempted such a methodical plan for evangelizing the United States and Canada.

Frank Page’s clarion call for such an emphasis during his two-year stint as SBC president set the tone for the initiative that has been embraced by every state convention. Even secular media picked up on the initiative’s launch as the denomination’s attempt to reverse declining baptisms and membership numbers.

As introduced in Indianapolis, the decade-long emphasis will call for exceptional organizational skills, unparalleled teamwork with state partners, and a refocusing of NAMB’s budget and organizational priorities to impact the agency before it impacts the denomination.

Five months after its debut the initiative is beginning to take shape and offers promise of being a well-conceived approach to evangelism. But the biggest worry to state conventions is that the approach may stumble over a lack of dollars and saddle them with an unfunded mandate.

That worry may have taken on new meaning when NAMB trustees, at their October meeting in suburban New Orleans, adopted a budget with zero funding for the massive undertaking. A look at that budget as obtained by The Index following the meeting shows the lifeblood of the GPS emphasis as spelled out in dollars and cents: no funds have been allocated to the initiative.

But that should really come as no surprise because state directors of evangelism and state executive directors have told The Index that in separate meetings in July and September, Hammond told them that while NAMB would provide a media kit with a DVD, the purchasing of airtime and print ads would be their responsibility.

That came as quite a surprise for the state partners, many of whom are longtime veterans of Southern Baptist evangelism strategies where the national agency always funded the media coverage.

In a Nov. 14 interview with The Index, Hammond, evangelism strategist Ken Weathersby, and agency spokesman Brandon Pickett affirmed NAMB’s commitment to the evangelistic emphasis. However, the interview made clear that NAMB is not following generally accepted accounting rules of line item budgeting for the initiative.

That new philosophical shift in accountability, along with a growing chorus of state partners calling NAMB to task over the media buy issue, may be the greatest threat to the denomination’s most ambitious evangelism effort to date.

 

National media buys always part of the deal

In 1986 the denomination launched its first national evangelism strategy, Good News, America, which called for a nominal media buy, some branded witnessing materials/Bibles and simultaneous revivals. Even operating on a shoestring budget of $200,000 (not adjusted for 25 years of inflation) produced a surprising result: 106,000 professions of faith in a highly focused six-week period.

From that bold experiment the sponsoring agency (the former Home Mission Board) and state conventions committed to having a national evangelism emphasis every five years. Individuals familiar with those early days explained that the evangelism event became a “special projects” item in the budget with anywhere from $300,000 in lean years to more than $1 million in better years being put aside.

When the next cycle rolled around, up to $5 million was banked and ready to be plowed into the harvest. States knew, definitively, how much the national agency would funnel to them to assist in the campaign. They built their budgets on line items that would be funded directly by the agency.

Ernest Kelly knows a thing or two about finances and balancing budgets – and how you fund evangelism. Early in his career he served 14 years at the Georgia Baptist Convention – six years as assistant to the state executive and six years as the GBC’s first director of evangelism and missions. From there he went to the HMB where he eventually served as executive vice president and, later, as interim president during its transition to NAMB.

“In good times and bad, even during the recession of 1990, the Home Mission Board placed a high priority on the savings plan and tightened our budget in other areas, if needed, to realize the savings,” he explained. “States participated in the venture, allowing a portion of the supplement they normally received from us to be credited to the event.”

Kelly said that disciplined approach took “a good bit of planning to have an effective five-year budget, but as soon as we ended one evangelism campaign we would start building a new budget. With that kind of long range planning we didn’t have to balloon our budget at the very end and scrimp to meet the need.”

The former administrator said the agency used overages from the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, unspent money from vacant positions ... “anywhere we could identify untapped or unexpected income. We negotiated in a similar way with the states as we aligned our budgets; 18 months before the launch we would be in full swing with the writing and printing of materials for the roll-out at the annual SBC meeting.

“We would have the full amount, as much as $5 million, and lived within that budget,” he says. “It was always fully funded.”

But, as they say, that was then and this is now.

 

A new set of priorities

The newly formed North American Mission Board realized a cash windfall when it was formed in 1997 by a merger of the HMB, Memphis-based Brotherhood Commission, and Forth Worth-based Radio-Television Commission. Reduced overhead with fewer staff resulted in lower operating costs and freed up new revenue for expensive projects of the new administration.

Putting funds aside for the future was discouraged. In a mad rush to push money to the states, the agency quickly lost sight of its historic long-range vision. As a result of the new priorities the national evangelism strategies experienced an identity crisis.

· The budget for the first campaign, Celebrate Jesus 2000, was trimmed from about $5 million to $3 million.

· The next campaign fully birthed by NAMB -– What Now?/What Now, Canada? – was originally announced with an $11 million budget. Billed as a media extravaganza featuring billboards, print, television/radio spots, and websites, it went through repeated cuts before it was eventually whittled down to $360,000 and then defunded in mid-stream. Even the media firm hired to guide the project was so demoralized it quit.

· Following close on the heels of What Now?, the next campaign – Who Cares? – was designed as a high-tech, Internet-savvy approach to mass evangelism. For all of its strengths and for all the Cooperative Program dollars invested in its development it was owned by an outside vendor who had the rights to resell the concept to other faith groups - – thus ultimately diluting its effectiveness as a unique Southern Baptist-branded evangelism effort. Six months after its intended Fall 2005 launch there were no billboard, no TV or radio spots, no print campaign. The initiative never materialized.

And that brings the newest initiative, GPS, front and center on the evangelistic stage.

Launched at the SBC annual meeting just five months ago, the initiative promises to be the denomination’s largest evangelistic push to date. If implemented it will be NAMB’s first cohesive effort to bring an evangelistic message to both the United States and Canada.

The only sticking point, though, is funding. If budget line items are any indication, there doesn’t seem to be any. But when the entire budget is designated to one project, you don’t need a line item … or so the logic goes.

 

Gentleman’s Agreement

Southern Baptists’ track record historically included a media buy as part of any national evangelistic message. State partners came to accept that as part of the unspoken Gentleman’s Agreement between the two entities; it became an automatic, accepted part of the campaign as expected as an evangelistic invitation at the end of a sermon.

The best example of a media buy was Celebrate Jesus 2000.

In September 1999 NAMB launched its national media campaign for the emphasis, which had been conceived in the waning years of the Home Mission Board. Toby Frost, then manager of event evangelism and chairman of the strategy’s task force, told Baptist Press the television spots would reach more than half of all individuals in the country between the ages of 18 and 54 at least twice.

More importantly, he added, it would serve as leverage for thousands of churches, associations, and state conventions to sponsor complementary efforts - creating a synergy that could result in thousands coming to faith in Christ. Using a military analogy, Frost likened the value of the national media buy to the “air war” that can only be effective if supplemented by the “ground forces” in churches and associations.

The “air cover” can never replace the ground troops who share their faith one-on-one, door-to-door, he stressed, but it does pave the way for their presence in their communities.

Nine years ago this month NAMB reported on the results of that media buy. According to Baptist Press on Nov. 11, 1999, the October 4-31 advertising campaign resulted in “an unprecedented 43,300 calls to a national toll-free response number” and 203 immediate professions of faith.

The campaign included two TV commercials on four national cable networks and the full set of six CJ2000 radio ads. For once, even if briefly, Southern Baptists had a national image campaign that could hold its own against that of the Mormons and United Methodists.

The campaign, which cost $500,000, was the first to include a response mechanism for viewers – NAMB’s new Evangelism Response Center, which is still in use. “One of our telephone encouragers said this is like fishing in a fish hatchery,” Frost told the news service. “In a fish hatchery, the fish are just fighting to get at the food. Those are the people who are calling us.”

The story reported that the campaign provided churches with thousands of names for local follow-up visits. Unfortunately that was the last time the agency ever made a national media buy.

 

Providing their own “air cover”

When state directors of evangelism and state executive directors learned that there would be no media buy for GPS, the uproar began. State leaders maintain that NAMB is meeting them only halfway in the campaign and have changed the rules of engagement.

They say that under the new approach, state partners are still responsible for getting the troops on the ground but now have to provide their own “air cover” as well.

Several state evangelism directors, who declined to be quoted due to a possible harming of funding they receive from the agency, affirmed that historical arrangement and said they could not imagine attempting such a campaign without major commitment to media support.

The timing was also significant. NAMB was making the announcement at a time when the state leaders were building their 2010 budgets. Without any financial assistance the launch year would be placed in serious jeopardy, several evangelism directors told The Index.

That concern came to a head on Oct. 29 when Alan Quigley, state evangelism director of Oklahoma, abruptly resigned from a key leadership position due to the funding issue. Quigley was serving as chairman of the ACROSS North America Campaign for NAMB, which is the first two-year installment of the national evangelism initiative.

That element of the campaign is based on the highly successful ACROSS Oklahoma evangelism emphasis that included a media buy. Much of that campaign’s success was attributed to the media element – and the lack of that element’s adoption by NAMB was apparently the breaking point for Quigley.

Quigley declined to be interviewed for this article. But in his letter, which was sent to all state directors of evangelism and came to the attention of The Index, he stated NAMB’s decision against a media buy “has undermined the entire strategy.”

He then added it would be especially hurtful for state partners in “pioneer areas as well as conventions located in major media markets (who) cannot afford to purchase the airtime needed to saturate their regions with commercials.

“This and other areas of the National Evangelism Initiative that are virtually unfunded make the idea of embracing NAMB’s attempted strategy unlikely,” he concluded.

In a response to Quigley and copied to other evangelism directors on Nov. 8, Weathersby announced the agency had decided to provide some limited media exposure for a test pilot early next year but sidestepped any discussion of a commitment to a large scale media buy.

In the interview with The Index, though, Hammond appears to have reversed course and said the agency will fund a media purchase, defined now as a “targeted media campaign.” But any Southern Baptist would have to wonder where the funds could come from if there are no funds set aside in the budget.

For many of the state leaders who are veterans of former campaigns, the memory of the What Now? intiative remains fresh in their minds. That is when many state conventions, including Georgia, invested large sums of money to plan block parties and simultaneous revivals – and the promised media coverage never materialized.

And as state partners plan their budgets, many feel as if NAMB is offering them a promissory note against the future delivery of the goods. In taking the note they can only hope the money will be in the bank on the day the note comes due.

 

A top priority

In their Nov. 14 interview Hammond, Weathersby, and Pickett maintain that GPS is the top priority and all of NAMB’s energies are focused on the concept. It would follow, then, that the agency’s budget would reflect that commitment and would be a good barometer of how it planned to fund the initiative.

But if funding drives strategy, then strategy may be on shaky ground.

There was no discussion from the floor when NAMB’s trustees voted to approve the budget on Oct. 8. A look at that budget shows the lifeblood of the evangelism emphasis as spelled out in dollars and cents.

Two items stand out for an agency that is claiming its entire focus will be on one evangelistic push – philosophy and funding.

First, the philosophical embrace of the initiative: Hammond maintains that GPS will be the focus of everyone in the agency. But if the goals and objectives of the Evangelism Group is any indication, the focus may be a little blurry.

Hammond, in defending the ‘zero line item’ approach to budgeting for the initiative, told The Index that Evangelism Group team leaders have been asked to show how their assignment relates to GPS – whether it is “praying, sowing, engaging, or marketing. We will begin to see that affect the whole building” as other teams follow the same methodology.

But a closer look at NAMB’s 2009 budget paints a slightly different picture. It appears that the evangelism unit did not get the memo.

NAMB’s Evangelism Group is divided into six teams and is guided by a senior strategist (vice president) group office, resulting in seven budgets. But of those seven budgets, only two work units – Spiritual Awakening/Mass Evangelism and Personal Evangelism -– made any reference to the initiative in their upcoming goals and objectives.

The other five areas, including Weathersby’s office that oversees the initiative, were silent in any mention of GPS as a priority.

Second, the funding formula: A look at line items on a year-by-year comparison, the generally accepted way businesses set priorities, reinforces that concept. The 2008 budget showed a GPS line item of only $66,000; the 2009 budget, as approved by trustees just six weeks ago, shows no funds allocated to the initiative.

 

NAMB’s New Math

But in the New Math being rolled out by NAMB, you don’t need line items if you have $130 million at your disposal. And while the budget shows no funds allocated to the initiative it does show a consistent $190,000 allocated to 2008 and 2009 budgets for annual Crossover events.

It is unclear why the agency would feel the need to have a line item for Crossover but none for GPS, which could easily result in 20 times the expenditure. Or, for that matter, why it uses line items at all.

NAMB intends to take strong exception to those who draw a conclusion that a lack of line item means a lack of commitment. It will remind its critics that all of its assets are focused on the initiative. But with more than 500 line items in the budget covering a range of programs it is not clear why the most important initiative for the next decade is an orphan.

God may own the cattle on a thousand hills, but getting a side of beef into your freezer is an entirely different matter.

One denominational executive familiar with budgeting issues says it would be stretching it to say that the agency’s entire resources are available for the initiative. Much of NAMB’s budget is automatically committed to overhead such as state partnership agreements, staff and missionary salaries, and healthcare and retirement benefits that cannot be reallocated.

What is left over is considerably less than $130 million.

The bottom line question remains: How much is being budgeted? The answer is highly philosophical in nature because the dollars and cents that spell out strategies and priorities are avoided in the discussion.

Such logic is similar to learning a foreign language without being fluent in its vocabulary. It is easier to communicate the big picture but far more difficult to communicate the nuances. You may order beef in an Argentine restaurant and get hamburger, ribs, or sirloin steak. And your bill could run $5, $25, or $50.

The average Southern Baptist could not be faulted for wondering what would happen to the Cooperative Program if individuals followed that same formula. A breadwinner may say his or her entire income belongs to the Lord and, in theory, intends to tithe $6,000 this year. But if that individual does not budget $500 per month it may be difficult to write that check after the mortgage, car payment, utilities, and grocery bills have been paid.

The trickle down effect would mean that financial support for the local church, association, and state convention could be severely impacted. As one state executive with decades of experience from the “old school” way of budgeting has said in a variety of settings, strategy without funding equals no strategy.

In NAMB’s new world of rationalization, GPS is poised to be the most successful initiative in history without any expenditure of new funds. Any budget area can be tapped for the initiative and those funds can be “baptized” as being under the GPS umbrella.

Such convoluted funding of the GPS, though, is not the only issue affecting the agency. It is only representative of larger concerns that many say are contributing to an erosion of confidence in leadership and a dramatic decline in employee morale.

 

Funding questions draw fuzzy answers

Historically NAMB (and its predecessor agency, the Home Mission Board) constructed detailed budgets for national evangelism initiatives. Media kits, advertising, and witnessing materials were all assigned specific budget numbers and funds. That system, based on generally accepted business principles, drove the strategy and substantially changed the agency’s budget.

If state leaders are wondering about NAMB’s commitment to the initiative outside the agency, a closer look sheds light on its commitment within its four walls.

 

Deputizing budgets

Based on the Nov. 14 interview, NAMB has entered a new era of financial rationalization – a philosophical shift in how it funds national evangelistic enterprises.

Rather than assigning the initiative specifically to the Evangelism Group, it is delegating fiscal responsibility throughout the building and is, in effect, deputizing individual budgets on the fly to cover expenses as they arise. That can make it very difficult to know how much is actually being spent and if the initiative is within budget or over budget. A paper trail for accounting purposes is nonexistent; but with no budget, that is really no concern.

For example, Pickett, the communications spokesman, talked about the agency’s strong support of the initiative by stating that about $400,000 had been spent on media from his budget area in 2008. On the surface, in NAMB’s logic of financial attribution, that claim could be interpreted to mean that all of those funds are being used to support GPS simply because they deal with the much broader Sharing Jesus objective of the agency – and, after all, the initiative certainly is about sharing Christ with others.

But Pickett quickly clarifies that statement by saying that not all of those funds were earmarked specifically for GPS and says, “a good chunk of that went to media.” But again, that could mean any media product produced by the agency could be ‘baptized’ as supporting GPS whether or not it shows up in the media kit.

A look at the 2008 budget shows only $12,000 appears in a line item for National Evangelism Initiative “communications/media” – a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of dollars Pickett is alleging. Perhaps that amount was used for the media kits now under production … but there is no line item for the kits, either, just a line item for “communications/media.”

Under this new way of budgeting, funds are quickly intermingled under the broader GPS banner.

So, which figure is accurate and how much has NAMB actually spent on initiative media expenses as it prepares to roll out the emphasis? To paraphrase former President Bill Clinton, it depends on how you define “expenses.” Either $12,000 or $400,000 or maybe somewhere in between. Any answer is entirely defensible.

In the interview, Hammond conceded that individuals are asking what NAMB’s line item budget is for the initiative – how much of its budget is earmarked for the emphasis. He unhesitatingly stated that, “we do not have a line item on NEI” but explained that “what we are trying to do is say is that we need to bring all of NAMB’s resources to bear on NEI.

“For example, in the Evangelism Group in the 2009 budget, every MMA (Major Ministry Action) will have something related to NEI. Now, the targeted media buy may come out of the Communications budget rather than the Evangelism budget so what we are committed to do is have the resources necessary [to fund NEI].”

That is how the co-mingling of budgets finds its way into funding the initiative. But the bottom line remains that no new funds are being put into the project.

Hammond then acknowledged that the agency does not have unlimited resources but reiterated he intends to “bring to bear all the resources we can to this particular initiative. Just this year we gave $1.7 million to the states in what we call ‘new money’ and I’m hoping that a lot of that will be used toward NEI initiatives.”

“Hoping,” though, does not mean it will occur. States are free to spend those funds and are not obligated to hold any portion of them back for the initiative.

Hammond also stated that the agency has “a huge field ministry budget” that is forwarded to state conventions to use at their discretion “that has in it evangelism … [but] we don’t want to force it (GPS) on our partners but we are asking the questions strategically: “How could NEI help you in your evangelism strategies in 2010?”

As the U.S. and Canada enter one of the most difficult recessions in decades, though, it could be expected that many states, if not all, will use those funds to shore up sagging budgets and not launch new programs. Without strings attached, without any pre-arranged understanding of how the funds will be spent, there is no accountability on either side of the equation.

That is why the former approach of saving funds for the future proved so valuable. Regardless of the overall financial condition of the nation, Southern Baptists always managed to have the funds to present a unified gospel presentation on the local, state, and national levels.

 

Morale issues continue to dog the agency

While NAMB works to get its third evangelism attempt in 11 years off the ground, it continues to deal with considerable staff morale problems.

Under its first administration trustees reluctantly identified a “culture of fear” which prevented staff from discussing irregular operating procedures with up- line supervisors. That investigation eventually led to a change of administration in the spring of 2006 and resulted in 12 months of rebuilding staff morale.

During that transition between administrations, trustees, in a 38-page document released by their Executive Level Policy Committee, acknowledged the morale issues and created an Open Door Policy to short-circuit future abuses of operating policy and staff. The Executive Level Policy also went one step further with creation of quarterly performance reviews of the president “for both affirmation … as well as admonition.”

That new wrinkle in presidential oversight, found in Section 1, Paragraph D, was spelled out in a new era of openness and transparency between the trustees and their public.

Legendary Southern Baptist evangelism professor Roy Fish was pressed into service as interim president and largely served as chaplain to the staff. Fish worked hard to restore morale and eventually handed an invigorated, newly energized staff over to the new administration in May 2007.

The new management team was initially well received by staff who were seeking a new era of openness and fairness. All seemed to go smoothly during the early days of the new administration until reports began to surface in late 2007 that all was not well in Alpharetta.

What was first dismissed by trustees as invalid staff concerns took on a new urgency after the first of this year. As the concerns continued to build, trustee officers made an unannounced visit to the agency in April to determine if the rumors were fact or fiction.

They picked a time frame when Hammond was out of town so they could meet in private with employees. While morale concerns came from throughout the building, the trustees centered their investigation on the Evangelism Group.

The officers asked for honest evaluations of how effective the department was operating, explored the freedom of the staff to discharge their duties with minimal interference, and general morale. All upper management were asked to leave after a brief introduction and the meeting continued behind closed doors.

Given the freedom to express their concerns the staff leveled with the board officers and kept them for more than two hours.

Details of the meeting were never made public but issues ran the gamut from micromanagement to a top-down governing style – problems that eroded efficiency and which coincidentally led to the downfall of the previous administration. In fact, during the transition between the two administrations trustees clearly stated they were seeking a new management team that would avoid those very issues – especially a top-down management style.

Empowering well-trained employees to perform their duties had apparently fallen between the cracks in the transition of administrations. And trustees, who were charged with oversight of the agency, seem to have developed amnesia of the guidelines they have created.

Trustee officers, as recently as the board meeting in New Orleans, assured The Index that there are no serious morale issues. They largely dismissed any discussion of low morale as being from disgruntled employees who did not receive promotions in the transition or were demoted to make way for the incoming employees in good standing with the new administration.

 

If it’s good enough for Billy it should be good enough for NAMB

If there is anyone who knows how to plan and coordinate large evangelism events it’s the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Georgia pastors and laity are now working closely on teams to share the gospel through the Greater North Atlanta Franklin Graham Festival in August 2009.

One thing that impresses those leaders is the attention to detail; no item is too small to be overlooked or accounted for. In fact, the BGEA could be considered the poster child for fiscal accountability among Christian organizations.

In a recent interview with The Index one of the individuals engaged in the campaign shared the organization’s philosophy for accountability and line item budgeting which has kept it out of trouble for more than half a century. It’s a lesson that NAMB would be wise to follow: “If you don’t develop a strategy and fund that strategy, it’s just not going to work.”

That’s an approach that has worked for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association since its founding.

The bottom line is that past NAMB evangelism initiatives cost between $3 million and $5 million, not adjusted for inflation, with those costs being largely funded by the national agency. The most recent media buys cost $500,000 in addition to production costs.

Without such detailed accounting that information would be lost for future administrations to evaluate and build their own budgets. Knowledge, and a sense of history in such matters, is power.

How NAMB will fund the most ambitious undertaking in the denomination’s history without line item budgeting and without that initiative rearranging its budget is yet to be seen.

As one prominent evangelist from the past used to say, “Expect a miracle.”