By PHILIP TIMOTHY, Message Staff Writer
WOODWORTH – In a show of solidarity, the Executive Board of the Louisiana Baptist Convention on Sept. 28 overwhelmingly passed a resolution supporting the Cooperative Program as the convention’s primary funding method, and encouraging LBC Executive Director-Treasurer David E. Hankins for his unwavering and passionate defense of the cooperative giving process that is now in its 85th year.
Along with a report from Hankins, the LBC Executive Board heard positive reports about mission advance from each of its various committee chairmen. The Executive Board also heard reports from each of its entities – the Louisiana Baptist Message, Louisiana College, Louisiana Baptist Children’s Home and the Louisiana Baptist Foundation. Each entity leader affirmed the value of the Cooperative Program as essential to their ministries.
[img_assist|nid=6700|title=David Hankins, Executive Director of the Louisiana Baptist Convention|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=80|height=100]The resolution, On Cooperative Giving, Our Common Method For Reaching the Peoples of the World with the Gospel, was presented following Hankins’ report to the Board. Board President Steve Horn called on Bob Heutess, pastor of Grace Memorial Baptist Church in Slidell, to offer the resolution to the Board.
In his report Hankins discussed with the Executive Board members several of the dynamics taking place nationally among Southern Baptists, and what was being asked of the state Conventions.
“I want to share with you about the relationship of the LBC and the SBC,” Hankins said. “It is the topic of the day, and it has consumed a lot of my time lately. The SBC is presenting the LBC – all state conventions – with a number of challenges.
According to Hankins, the SBC is recommending to the states that they adopt a 50/50 allocation, “which we have already been working toward that goal over the last three years.” The SBC allocation from LBC has risen a percent and a half in the last three years.
In addition to the reallocation, over the course of seven years, NAMB funding for Louisiana shared ministries is to be reduced from $825,000 to zero. The goal is to eliminate the shared missionary personnel and projects in Louisiana where LBC pays a portion and NAMB matches those funds.
Hankins shared that the new SBC President Bryant Wright wants state conventions to “radically repriortize” and operate on 25-30 percent allocation and send the balance to the SBC.
“He (Wright) says it is radical, and I concur,” Hankins said. “Instead of cutting, I would rather increase our funding to cover these different ministries. I prefer a “growth-based” plan rather than an “elimination-based” concept.
Hankins told the board that Wright’s idea would eviscerate the state convention ministries and that was unacceptable. Hankins said that if he must, he was willing to play “the skunk at the tea party.”
“I am speaking the truth in love and I am challenging some of the assumptions of our Southern Baptist brothers,” Hankins said. “The state conventions are being accused of being the bottleneck preventing mission dollars getting to where they need to be.
“I say the biggest problem is the back pockets in our own Baptist churches,” Hankins said. “Our members are giving less percentage of their income than our parents and grandparents did 80 years ago during the Great Depression. If people gave as generously as they did 20 years ago then another $300 million would have been given through the Cooperative Program this year.”
“There is a lot of talk, but not a lot of action, at the SBC about getting resources to the ends of the earth,” Hankins said. “The SBC has not reallocated one additional penny to the two mission boards.” The SBC has had two opportunities to do so in the last 15 years when unallocated money was released back to the budget. Instead of increasing support for missions, SBC leaders recommended increased funding to the seminaries, the Executive Committee and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
“I would suggest if the SBC wants more money for IMB, it allocate the money it has charge over, rather than trying to allocate the money it doesn’t have charge over,” Hankins said.
“So, what do we do? We stay the course,” Hankins said. “Churches don’t want to be told they need to eliminate a state convention ministry to fund another ministry. They love the International Mission Board, but they also love Louisiana College. What is being suggested is unwise and unnecessary.”
“If we have learned anything in the last 150 years, it is this. We can do more if we work together. And the Cooperative Program enables us to work together. I am concerned there are those leaders who are about to give away our strength. Everything we have is because of cooperative giving.”
When discussions began on the resolution, David Crosby, pastor of First Baptist New Orleans, asked for a slight tweaking, but left no doubt where he stood on the CP. “We are in a battle for cooperative mission giving,” Crosby said. “The CP is the glue that binds us all together. I would like to see this small change made, but I feel strongly we should make this statement.”
Howard Turner, pastor of Live Oak Baptist Church in Montegut, agreed with the change in wording suggested by Crosby, but spoke against removing other parts of the resolution. “We shouldn’t be politically correct when it comes to battling for the Kingdom of God. Our executive director was right on,” Turner said. “Facts are facts, and he spoke the truth.”
The Board voted to accept the tweaking, but not the elimination of the paragraph detailing appreciation for “Hankins courageous stand in sending an Open Letter to the North American Mission Board Trustees that raised concerns about that entity’s new president whose church leadership reflected a lack of support for cooperative mission giving.”
Bob Adams, pastor of First Baptist Bogalusa, called for a vote on the resolution, and it passed overwhelmingly.
After the amended resolution passed, a motion made by David Shaw, pastor of Parkview Baptist Church in Alexandria, to send the resolution to SBC Executive Committee President Frank Page passed unanimously.
The resolution is below:
On Cooperative Giving, Our Common Method For Reaching the Peoples of the World with the Gospel
WHEREAS, these are unprecedented times of globalization, communication, declining Western Civilization, and a great opportunity for sharing the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and shining the light of the Gospel; and
WHEREAS, these times call for an unprecedented level of cooperation to accomplish the goal of bringing the Great Commission message to every people group in Louisiana, North America and the world; and
WHEREAS, the recently adopted Great Commission Resurgence Report adopted by the Southern Baptist Convention was an attempt to refocus the energy, creativity, leadership, institutions and financial resources of Southern Baptist churches and entities on the task of reaching people who have never heard the Gospel; and
WHEREAS, the Southern Baptist Convention’s history includes several decades of churches attempting to resource its national and global mission endeavors independently before discovering a cooperative missional model that has become the envy of the evangelical world, a model that has 1) developed an unprecedented international strategy for reaching generations with the Gospel, 2) leveraged the personnel and financial resources of churches working through their respective state conventions and associations to permeate unreached demographics in North America, 3) created the means by which each state convention determined the most appropriate strategy for coordinated Gospel outreach and collaborative church planting, 4) provided superb theological education for leaders who would lead for generations the convention’s churches and its entities, 5) established a moral and religious liberty lifeboat in the midst of a culture drowning from its wicked choices; and
WHEREAS, the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Orlando, June 15, 2010 voted to adopt the Great Commission Resurgence Report that refined the strategies of the convention but only after the report was amended by a nearly unanimous vote to state unequivocally that Cooperative Program giving is the preferred method for funding the Southern Baptist Convention’s ministries and that designated giving is not a substitute for Cooperative Program giving;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, the Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Board meeting in Woodworth, Louisiana, September 28, 2010 acknowledges the value of concerted, cooperative ministries of our churches to reach the peoples of our state, the nation and the world; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we are concerned about the strength and vitality of our coordinated strategies, ministries and institutions being diminished by the independent model that proved to be a failure decades ago; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we encourage Baptist conventions and boards to select leaders for their entities who have demonstrated strong support for our cooperative missions model; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we want to express our gratitude to Dr. David E. Hankins, executive director-treasurer of the Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Board, for his courageous expression in his Open Letter to the North American Mission Board Trustees that raised concerns about that entity’s new president whose church leadership reflected a lack of support for cooperative mission giving; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we are grateful for Dr. Hankins and his staff for their public and private advocacy for the Acts 1:8 model of simultaneously reaching the lost in our local areas, the state, the nation and the world through the Cooperative Program; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that we embrace the Cooperative Program model as the most accountable, effective, efficient and compelling method for fulfilling the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ.