SBC ends fiscal year with $18.72 million in extra money
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___The Southern Baptist Convention took in a surplus for the fiscal year just ended that is three times more than the amount Texas Baptists are being asked to withhold from the national convention next year.
___When the books closed on the SBC's fiscal year Sept. 30, total gifts to the national Cooperative Program unified budget were $178.3 million, which is $18.72 million over budget.
___Meanwhile, SBC leaders have harshly criticized a Baptist General Convention of Texas proposal to reduce funding for the SBC by $5.3 million next year. The Texas proposal would reduce funding for the six SBC seminaries from $5.3 million to a maximum of $1 million and would eliminate another $1 million in funding for the SBC Executive Committee and Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
___According to SBC policy, the $18.72 million surplus will be distributed to all SBC agencies on the same percentage basis as regular Cooperative Program funding.
___That means the SBC seminaries as a group will receive a windfall of $4.01 million, almost the same amount threatened to be lost from Texas next year.
___Despite this unanticipated funding boost, leaders of several SBC seminaries have said the proposed reductions from Texas will cause severe financial strains at the seminaries. Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in California, for example, has begun a budget-cutting process that President Bill Crews said could involve staff layoffs.
___Members of the BGCT Seminary Study Committee that recommended the reallocation of Texas money have called Golden Gate's action and others like it political grandstanding intended to sway votes of messengers at the BGCT annual session in Corpus Christi next week.
___The SBC Executive Committee, which would lose $696,291 in funding from Texas next year, gained nearly that same amount in the year-end windfall, $621,342.
___The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which would lose $364,582 from Texas, gained $278,855 from the year-end overage.
___The proposed changes in Texas funding would not reduce allocations to the SBC's International Mission Board, North American Mission Board or Annuity Board.
___Those agencies also received year-end bonuses from the SBC overage, with the largest shares of money going to the two mission boards. The IMB received $9.36 million in extra money, and NAMB received $4.27 million in extra money.
___SBC agencies have received bonuses from Cooperative Program overages for the last several years. The SBC has experienced seven consecutive years of Cooperative Program increases, a fact Executive Committee President Morris Chapman has said indicates rank-and-file Southern Baptists approve of the convention's current leadership and direction.
___During the same period, assets of SBC agencies have grown substantially, fueled by increased giving, a strong stock market and the fulfillment of deferred gifts such as wills and trusts.
___The Baptist Center for Ethics, a moderate Baptist agency based in Nashville, Tenn., pointed out in a recent e-mail newsletter that the SBC is sitting on more than $1 billion in assets.
___In its newsletter "BCE Bytes," the ethics agency reported assets in investments, cash, property and equipment at the SBC's two mission boards and six seminaries totaling more than $1,016,000,000.
___Using what agency head Robert Parham called a "conservative" calculation of figures printed in the SBC's 2000 Book of Reports, BCE reported the following:
___ The International Mission Board, which supports 4,800 missionaries and has an annual budget of $250 million, held investments of more than $387 million at the end of 1999. Property and equipment assets totaled just over $17 million.
___ The North American Mission Board, with a $126 million budget, held $87.3 million in investments and $23.8 million in property and equipment. The agency reported cash and interest deposits of $6.5 million, third-party investments of $30.7 million and mission properties of $5.8 million.
___ Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was the richest of the six SBC seminaries, with $193 million in cash, investments, property and equipment.
___BCE's $1 billion-plus calculation did not include accounts receivable, student-loans receivable, inventories and pledges receivable. The count also excluded $127 million in church loans reported as a NAMB asset and $27 million in non-current assets at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
___The recent report of the BGCT Seminary Study Committee also commented on the assets of SBC seminaries, noting the six schools have combined endowment funds of more than $189 million.
___A footnote in the committee's report listed the 1998 endowment of each of the seminaries: Golden Gate at $8.1 million; Midwestern at $5.2 million; New Orleans at $23.2 million; Southeastern at $16.6 million; Southern at $72 million; and Southwestern at $64.2 million.
___Parham said the SBC's vast spoils might help explain the aggressive political tactics used by conservatives to gain control of the denomination during the 1980s. He also suggested that rank-and-file Southern Baptists are largely unaware of the convention's wealth and that denominational officials for years have downplayed the amounts for fear that Baptists would not give sacrificially to programs that already appear flush with funds.
___Two weeks after BCE's e-newsletter first drew attention to the investments and holdings of SBC agencies, Baptist Press issued a story responding to the issue. The story turned the focus toward the BGCT, claiming the BGCT's assets were far greater than the SBC's.
___The BP story tallied the assets and investments of all BGCT agencies and institutions--such as Baylor University, Buckner Benevolences and Baylor Medical Center--and suggested the BGCT owns those assets.
___In reality, the state convention owns none of its agencies and institutions. That is a major difference between the way the BGCT operates and the way the SBC operates. The SBC has taken steps in recent years to cement its ownership and direct control of all its agencies and schools.
___IMB President Jerry Rankin said the BCE report on SBC assets unfairly gives the impression that the IMB is flush with money.
___The report "does not discuss the reserves in the context of the scale of our missionary work," he said. And he lamented that "there are those who are seeking to persuade churches to diminish their support ... to deprive churches from participating" in Southern Baptist efforts to "share the gospel with the world's unreached masses."
___The IMB's $387 million in financial reserves were built largely through wills and other designated gifts from individual Baptist donors, Rankin said. The initial vision for using reserve funds strategically was articulated by former agency head Baker James Cauthen, he said.
___Interest income from reserves provides 11 percent of the IMB's operating budget--the equivalent of funding 550 of the board's 4,800 missionaries, Rankin said.
___Reserve funds also allow the IMB to respond to emergency needs, he added.
___A NAMB spokesman also criticized the report on SBC assets, noting that last year the domestic missions agency took $5 million out of its reserve funds to use in "front-line missions."
___"Responsible financial stewardship, along with the SBC Business and Financial Plan, directs us to maintain sufficient reserves to manage cash flow and to provide for unanticipated economic downturns," said spokesman Marty King. "Our mission properties are certainly not investment properties. They're used for Southern Baptist churches, for ministry centers and for new SBC churches.
___"To imply that the North American Mission Board has some secret wealth is simply misrepresenting the truth," King said.
___Though responding to the assets story, SBC officials downplayed the year-end overage of Cooperative Program funds. As of Oct. 18, Baptist Press had not published a story announcing the year-end bonuses, although an Oct. 2 story briefly mentioned the year-to-date receipts as of September, though not identifying that total as a year-end figure.
___Chapman detailed the year-end excess to agency heads in a letter dated Oct. 4.
___With additional reporting by Steve Devane of the North Carolina Biblical Recorer



The Baptist Standard