State Wrap 2011

by T. C. Pinckney                                                                                                  Vol. XXV, No. 1, January 2012

     Editor, The Baptist Bnaner

Overview

Producing a meaningful, concise description of what is happening across the SBC’s state conventions is a lot like herding cats ... impossible. Nevertheless, here are some conclusions drawn from the Baptist Press reports of each state convention and telephone conversations with contacts in most of the states.

The primary concern this year is definitely the impact of the Great Commission Task Force Report adopted in June 2010 at the annual SBC meeting. A major impact is revision of how NAMB funds are used. Far less goes from NAMB directly to state budgets to support staff, church planting, and other state activities. One new work state rep mentioned an 81% reduction of funds from NAMB! Obviously, if the states cannot increase funding for their activities, there will have to be major reductions in church planting. It is still too early to see how this will work out.

Calvinism is mentioned every year as a problem in a few states. (Of course, by “Calvinism” I mean five point or hyper-Calvinism.) Most states indicated that Calvinism is not a problem, but each year there are a few who are experiencing difficulties with it. Typically, such problems are described as five-pointers seeking growing influence, discouraging evangelism, and/or disrupting churches by causing church splits or, through lack of outreach, leading churches while they just wither away.

In a good many states this year Calvinism was not noted as a problem. But in several others it was raised as an actual or potential issue. Where that was the case, frequently young pastors, recently out of seminary, were identified as the instigators.

A separate issue mentioned by my contacts in some states was that a good many young pastors seem to know little or nothing about the SBC, plant churches with no reference to “Southern” or even “Baptist” in the church name, and just seem to want to go their own way.

From a conservative perspective one encouraging trend is that the “Cooperative Baptist Fellowship” is in continued decline. Note that this only means one liberal organization is withering; it does not mean that liberalism itself is dying. Till Christ returns there will always be those who claim the name of “Christian” but ignore or consciously reject inerrancy. Satan is not very imaginative, but he is remarkably persistent. We must never think that now we can relax because the battle for the Bible has been won. As just noted, that battle will never be won until Jesus returns. Until He does, true believers must be alert about where the next struggle will be focussed. Also, once elected to influential positions many conservative leaders have a tendency to relax, to become far less selective in their appointments or nominations. Their assumption seems to be that, “Now that I’m leading, everything will be okay, so I’ll pour oil on troubled waters by toning down the rhetoric, by appointing ‘nice’ guys to committees, and by not standing openly for complete biblical doctrine.” Standing firm for a time but then buckling to the ever-present pressure to compromise God’s Word is a sure indicator that when standing before Jesus’ throne one will not hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master” but rather, “Depart from me ye worker of iniquity. I never knew you.”

State Budgets

Two major factors affected state budgets this year: the national economy and the impact of the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force report. When the economy Is bad, families’ incomes decrease and, not surprisingly, they give less. We are still in the very early stages of GCRTF impact, and we cannot yet know for sure just what that impact will be.

It does seem clear that the major impact will be in “new work” states, states in the north and west where Southern Baptists are not so well established. In these state conventions the North American Mission Board has been funding much of the state staff and church planters. But as a result of GCRTF those funds are being substantially trimmed back with more of the responsibility now on the state conventions. And as we would expect, this causes much concern and uncertainty in new work states.

These factors have had very close to the same impact on 2012 budgets that they had on 2011budgets. For both 2011 and 2012 25 states reduced their budgets, nine stayed the same, and six increased their budgets. For 2012 the states and percentage changes are:

Decreases: NY -44%, AK -14.6%, UT-ID -13.74%, NE -13.5%, TX-BGCT -9.07%, IA -8.9%, OH -8%, MI -7.7%, IN -7.6%, VA-BGAV -7.1%, NM -6.1%, GA -6%, PA -5.4%, NW -4.85%, HW -4.62%, MO -3.9%, CO -3.3%, SC -3.2%, IL -2.2%, MS -2%, CA -1.9%, DK -0.5%, WY -0.05%. In addition, MT & NV reduced their budgets by unknown percentages.

Unchanged: AL, AZ, AR, KN-NB, KY, MD-DE, MN-WS, VA-SBCV, WV.

Increases: FL +1.96%, LA+1.2%, NC +2.5%, OK +2.8%, TN +0.7%, TX-SBTC +3.16%.

SBC Contributions

Each state sends a certain percentage of the Cooperative Program donations it receives on to the Southern Baptist Convention. And during the last several years there has been an educational effort to encourage state conventions to forward 50% of undesignated receipts to the SBC ... which was the original vision in 1925 when the CP was begun. While only two states reach or exceed the 50% goal, many states have been moving in that direction. Here are the changes in the 2012 budgets.

Twenty-three states (compared to 14 last year) raised the SBC’s percentage” OK +6% to 46%, MI +5.5% to 30.5%, NM +4.5% to 35%, NE +3.25% to 25%, MD-DE +2% to 43%, IN +1% to 37.5%, NW +1% to 26.5%, SC +0.56% to 41%, AL +0.5% to 43%, CA +0.5% to 30.5%, FL +0.5% to 40.5%, MN-WS +0.5% to 13%, MS +0.5% to 36.25%, NV +0.5% to 30.5%, NC +0.5% to 35.5%, CO +0.25% to 30%, MO +0.25% to 25%, NY +0.25% to 28%, TN +0.25% to 40.25%, VA-SBCV +0.25% to 50.75%, WY +0.25% to 32.75%, AR +0.2% 42.77%, AZ +0.13% to 26.016%, PA-SJ +0.1% to 25.4%.

Fourteen states kept their CP giving the same for next year: TX-SBTC 55%, IL 43.25%, GA 41%, OH 40.25%, WV 38%, LA 36.49%, AK 33%, KN-NE 32%, NW 31.5%, MT 22%, TX-BGCT 21%, IA 20%, DK 16%, UT-ID 9.25%, WV 38%.

The VA-BGAV budget has so many alternatives that it is impossible to state what percent will flow on to the SBC. Specifically, plan #1 sends 34% to the SBC, #2 designates 28% for a mixture of SBC and CBF causes, #3 sends nothing to the SBC, and fourth a church may design its own distribution plan.

Only one state reduced the CP percentage. KY dropped 0.6% to 43.54%.

Resolutions

This year nine states passed resolutions in favor of traditional marriage and/or opposing repeal of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act). Eight had pro-life resolutions. Four expressed appreciation for the U.S. military. Three had resolutions dealing with Christian citizenship. Two supported prayer for our political leaders. and elections. And two states expressed appreciation for Disaster Relief workers. No other topic received a resolution from more than one state.

While we normally do not report resolutions passed in only one state, a few this year are worthy of mention. TN opposed changing the name of the SBC. IL supported homeschooling. LA expressed disappointment with the New International Version of the Bible. NW appealed for involvement by Christians in the political process, and TN promoted prayer before the presidential election.