The Open Door

Since 1925, Southern Baptists have been building a huge worldwide mission enterprise through a unified giving plan called the Cooperative Program. Prior to the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptists were burdened with an ineffective methodology often referred to as the societal approach to supporting missions.

What is that, exactly? The societal approach to missions giving requires each agency, each institution, and each missionary to raise his or her own support. In this process, there was a constant stream of folks coming before our congregations and making urgent and emotional appeals for funds. This failed approach created constant challenges for our churches as they hosted various individuals and organizations appealing for money. It was also ineffective for the agencies, institutions, and missionaries as some met with success while others failed to raise adequate support.

The work and ministry of these “fund raisers” was often put on the back burner as they had to leave the mission field or the work of their agencies to travel among the churches to raise support. We must never return to that model!

The Cooperative Program was adopted by Southern Baptists as a new way to support ministry in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. That is, CP funds would support the work of Southern Baptists from state missions to national missions and international missions. Jesus made it clear in Acts 1:8 that we are to be committed to the entire scope of missions, from our neighborhoods to the nations.

Because the challenge of Acts 1:8 came from the lips of our Lord, none of us should ever argue about which mission field is “our mission field” or which mission field is the most important. Clearly, a lost person on your neighborhood street is just as lost as a lost person in a village in Eastern Africa. We are to reach all of them with the Good News of the Gospel! Jesus said so and that settles it.

Now the question is, “How can we most effectively reach the entire world with the Gospel?” Clearly, as committed as my church is, giving 13% to missions through the Cooperative Program, we cannot do this job of missions alone. What it will take to get the message of Christ across the entire world is the generous cooperation of every Southern Baptist church.

With genuine respect for the “Great Commission Resurgence,” there can be no Great Commission surge among Southern Baptists until every Southern Baptist church gets serious about the responsibility they have for doing their part in fulfilling the Great Commission. Too many Southern Baptist churches are touching missions too lightly when the International Mission Board has missionaries who are ready to go across the world, but insufficient funds to send them, when the North American Mission Board desires to be more aggressive and more generous in the planting of evangelical Southern Baptist churches across North America, but lacks the funds to do so, when the seminaries and agencies of our convention are struggling financially.

Our Georgia churches in 2007 sent 5.71% of undesignated offering plate dollars compared to 8.03% in 2000. Had we given 8% of our offering plate dollars in 2007, we would have had $20,000,000 more to do missions at home and throughout the world.

The growing percentage decline of Cooperative Program dollars is common throughout the SBC. We need a revival of missions commitment among our churches if we are to experience a Great Commission Resurgence. Will we be satisfied with giving through the Cooperative Program, on average, a little over one nickel out of every offering plate dollar received to accomplish the Great Commission?

Some suggest that the state conventions have kept too much Cooperative Program money in the states and should send more to the SBC. Having been a pastor for 27 years before becoming a state convention executive director, I can tell you that as a pastor I didn’t have a clue about the extent of ministries supported by state conventions. Though I had been a state convention president, chairman of an executive board, chairman of an administrative committee, chairman of a cooperative program budget committee, and chairman of a state missions budget committee, I simply did not know the extent of state convention ministries.

I never thought about the fact that the church-to-church promotion of the Cooperative Program is actually done by state conventions. It didn’t occur to me that state conventions are staffed by “real live missionaries” who are also doing the work of missions especially in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (three of the four regions of missions Jesus commissioned us to reach).

I never thought about how much it costs to support institutions like colleges, senior adult facilities, children’s homes, campus ministries on over 50 college and university campuses, assist with funding a protection plan for ministers across the state, fund volunteer missions that involves over 140,000 people every year, do the work of disaster relief, assist financially and provide conferences and counseling to displaced ministers and their families, provide emergency financial assistance to hurting ministers, train thousands of Sunday School leaders every year, support the ministry of three conference centers, youth ministries that touch thousands annually, student missions that touch approximately 20,000 people across the world with the Gospel every summer, plant nearly 100 churches every year and provide financial support for the ministers serving those churches, support the ministry of missionaries to the international cultures in a state that worships in more than 30 languages every Sunday, and train ministers and laity in evangelism, discipleship, music and worship, missions education, ethics and public affairs, leadership, and the developing of healthy churches.

Could I keep going with this? Yes I can, but suffice it to say, there is no other entity in our denomination that ministers among the churches like the state conventions and the local associations. Strong Southern Baptist ministries in North America and around the world are the result of strong, informed, and faithful Southern Baptist churches at home.

I agree that we should all make sure that we are operating as efficiently as we can and we will look at that again in Georgia. In my opinion, however, the problem is not state conventions. We are, in fact, the ones who are raising the Cooperative Program support among the churches across 42 state conventions.

In Georgia, when the Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon offerings are included, we send 53% of all mission monies we receive to Southern Baptist Convention causes.

The secret to exponential growth in the Cooperative Program resides in the heart of every individual Southern Baptist who has yet to become a tither as we are commanded in Scripture. Beyond the individual, we cannot effectively reach the mission fields of the world until every Southern Baptist church is demonstrating strong commitment to missions by generous support through the Cooperative Program.

One final word – as long as we are fighting each other and choosing up sides, we will never experience the strength we are seeking. We will find strength in unity not in divisiveness. We will find the success we seek through Biblical obedience to tithing and the Great Commission.