It was not until I was 18 and beginning Basic Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma that I realized I was a Southern Baptist. My discovery was due to noticing under the heading "Religious Preference" on the dog-tags I had just been issued that it read "So. Baptist". It took me a minute to figure out that the "So." stood for "Southern". My initial thought in that moment? "Yes, of course. I'm a Baptist and I'm from Tennessee, so that's why they listed me as a Southern Baptist." I suppose I was not paying very close attention or connecting the dots well in the church I'd grew up in, Liberty Baptist in Wartburg, Tennessee. My subsequent young-adult years as a member of FBC Woodlawn, TN - an SBC church - and later while working on my Masters of Divinity at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, helped to not only educate me well regarding the SBC, but also instilled a deep love and appreciation for that fact that thousands of like-minded churches were working together as SBC churches to fulfill the Great Commission. So, that is in part why I am sharing the following - to educate our church a little more intentionally regarding why and how we voluntarily cooperate with the SBC and allocate part of our church budget accordingly. 

  FBC is an autonomous/self-governing church. We voluntarily cooperate with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to fulfill the Great Commission. This year we have once again allocated $17,000 (about 4.9% of this year's budget) to be funneled through what is known as the Cooperative Program of the SBC. Since we are also part of the Illinois Baptist State Association (IBSA) we send this $17,000 to IBSA (located in Springfield, Illinois) which keeps 56.5% of CP giving from local churches (which amounts to $9,605 from FBC this year) to fund various ministry tasks throughout our state - things like church planting, campus ministries, disaster relief, and leadership training.

  Each state convention sends the remainder of the CP giving they receive from local churches to the Executive Committee of the SBC (located in Nashville, TN) which oversees the distribution of this money to fund the SBC entities listed below. As you will see below, this means that First Baptist will send $7,395 to the SBC this year:

First Baptist Church: $17,000 from FBC this year to the Cooperative Program (CP) = Close to 4.98% of our 2024-2025 budget.

Illinois Baptist State Association (IBSA): IBSA keeps 56.5% to do missions work like church planting, disaster relief, and leadership training in Illinois; $9,605 from FBC this year. Watch this brief overview video to learn more.

Southern Baptist Convention (SBC): $7,395 from FBC this year. This money from our church will be allocated among the following entities according to the the budget by messengers from local churches at the SBC's annual meeting:

1.  International Mission Board (IMB): 21.9% = We will give $3,723 from FBC this year.  This year FBC also gave over $10,000 through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering which goes directly to IMB which supports 3,532 missionaries.
2. North American Mission Board (NAMB): 9.9% = $1,683 from FBC this year.                                                                                            FBC also participates each spring in the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering which goes directly to NAMB.
3. Theological Training: 9.7% = $1,649 (allocated among each of the six Southern Baptist seminaries).
4. Executive Committee (Operating Budget): 1.3% = $221 from FBC this year.
5. Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC): 0.7% = $119 from FBC this year.

 There are 46,906 SBC churches fuding the SBC's CP budget of $190,250,000. Through special offerings, investments, etc. the comprehensive operating budget of the SBC is over $1 billion. The big picture of all of this is that when you give your offering at FBC it is being used to do Great Commission work not only in our community but also in the state of Illinois, North America, and throughout the world, even among unreached people groups. So, the reason for this brief summary is to remind us of the privilege and opportunity we have to partner with like-minded churches to spread the gospel through our joyful and generous giving. At the same time, the occasion for presenting this information to our church family is also to acknowledge our need for prayerful attentiveness to how those funds are being used, which I will elaborate on more in the second part of this series of posts.

Note: This post is the the summary of a portion of a presentation I shared recently with our church family regarding our ongoing voluntary cooperation with the Southern Baptist Convention . I read somewhere where someone said that "the SBC  is not essential, but it is important". I agree with that statement. In recent years, valid concerns have been raised about the trajectory of the SBC - ones we do not take lightly. Yet, as I shared with our church family, we have reason to be optimistic regarding the SBC.  I will elaborate on those issues of concern as well as the reasons for optimism in future posts.