Numbers show Texas leaders
continue high support for SBC missions
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___DALLAS (ABP)--Propsals to cut funding next year to six seminaries and two agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention have prompted some SBC leaders to label Texas Baptists as uncooperative and "anti-SBC."
___However, even with passage of a Baptist General Convention of Texas proposal to reduce SBC funding by a total of $5.4 million, Texas Baptists would continue to pour more than $17.8 million into SBC missions and ministries next year.
___The BGCT proposal calls for reducing $5.3 million now sent to SBC seminaries to a cap of $1 million and reinvesting those funds in three Texas schools. Another $1.1 million trimmed from the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and Executive Committee would go for Hispanic and human-welfare ministries in Texas and to Texas Baptists' own Christian Life Commission.
___The proposed budget still would send about $12 million to the SBC International Mission Board, $5.6 million to the North American Mission Board, $186,000 to the Annuity Board and $59,000 to the SBC Historical Library and Archives. Those figures total more than any state convention gave to the SBC in 1998-99 through the Cooperative Program unified budget except Texas and Georgia.
___And while SBC leaders have attempted to paint the BGCT as being concerned with "Texas only," a look at giving patterns of selected churches shows that Texas Baptist leaders continue to support at least some SBC programs, in some cases more sacrificially than their counterparts at the national level.
___SBC President James Merritt's 11,000-member First Baptist Church in Snellville, Ga., gave $210,000 to Georgia Baptists' Cooperative Program last year, according to records obtained from the Georgia Baptist Convention. That equaled 3.6 percent of undesignated receipts. In addition, the church gave $25,000 to SBC missions through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions and $15,000 to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American missions. Another $342,000 went to "other missions" that the church's associate pastor described as local ministries, including a television ministry.
___By comparison, BGCT President Clyde Glazener's church, Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth, averages about 250 in Sunday school but gave a higher percentage of its offerings to denominational work. Gambrell Street gave $57,125 to the Cooperative Program in 1999, according to figures requested from BGCT offices. That represented nearly 10 percent of the church's total receipts of just over $582,000. Of that, $38,684 funded BGCT ministries and $18,440 went to worldwide ministries.
___Glazener said his church uses a giving option offered by the BGCT that divides its missions gifts 73 percent for the BGCT and 27 percent for four SBC entities--the two mission boards, Southwestern Seminary and the Annuity Board--and the Baptist World Alliance.
___While that option allows the church to avoid supporting some denominational entities it finds in disfavor, Glazener said, it also means a member of his church gives proportionally more of his offerings to SBC missions and to Southwestern Seminary than a comparable congregation using the traditional Cooperative Program.
___On top of that, Glazener's church gave $9,550 to Lottie Moon and $3,984 to Annie Armstrong in 1999 for direct funding of SBC missions.
___Rudy Sanchez, pastor of First Mexican Baptist Church in Dallas, is chairman of the BGCT's Executive Board, the group that is officially bringing the Texas funding recommendation.
___His small church gave $11,950 to cooperative missions last year, according to BGCT records. Of that, $9,026 went to BGCT and $2,923 to worldwide ministries. The church gave $796 to Lottie Moon and $276 to Annie Armstrong. The amount of the church's total receipts was unavailable.
___His counterpart on the SBC Executive Committee is Claude Thomas, pastor of First Baptist Church of Euless. That church gave $284,732 through the BGCT last year but designated 70 percent for the "worldwide" portion of the budget; $84,649 went to the BGCT, while $200,084 went to worldwide ministries.
___Those gifts totaled 1.9 percent of total church receipts of $14.5 million. The church also gave $64,930 to Lottie Moon and $29,155 to Annie Armstrong.

The Baptist Standard