CBF General Assembly Report

                                                                                                                         Vol. XI, No. 7, August 1998

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship met in Houston 25-27 June for its annual assembly and adopted a budget of $14.8 million, up from $14.3 million this year. Ed Vick, finance committee chairman, said CBF leaders are “cautiously optimistic” they will complete this year in the black after running a deficit last year. As a precaution, next year’s budget limits spending during the first six months to 90% of budget levels to allow for mid-year adjustment if income is below expectations.

Martha Smith of Gastonia, NC, completed her one-year term as CBF moderator and is succeeded by John Tyler, layman, of Webster Groves, MO. Sarah Frances Anders, a retired sociology professor from Louisiana, was chosen moderator-elect to succeed Tyler in the 1999-2000 CBF year.

Daniel Vestal, CBF coordinator, noted that CBF supports 143 missionaries. (This compares to some 9,000 SBC missionaries.)

Final registration for the meeting was 2,925, below expectations after a series of rallies across Texas aimed at countering negative publicity and encouraging attendance at the Houston meeting.

[Editorial Comment: The above is excerpted almost verbatim from an article in Baptists Today, by Bob Allen of Associated Baptist Press. The Texas meetings to which Allen refers were not encouraging to CBF. Reports from Texas say that there were 35 such rallies most of which were poorly attended, one having only seven present of whom one was a curious conservative. Conservative Southern Baptists should not, however, place too much stock in the assembly’s low attendance; our own SBC meeting in Salt Lake also was the lowest in years. In both denominations it may simply be that the contentious issues are settled and those who were willing to sacrifice to attend when the battle raged see less need now to make the sacrifices of time and money. TCP]