August 7, 2000
Funding debate questions equity
of money sent to SBC vs. Texas needs need
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., received three and a half times as much funding from the Baptist General Convention of Texas last year as the BGCT gave Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.
___The Southern Baptist Convention-owned seminary located more than 600 miles fromthe Texas border also received 14 times more funding from the BGCT than did Logsdon School of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene.
See chart:
Where Texas Baptists sent money in 1999.
___This is an example of the heavy flow of BGCT funding to SBC causes that has become the focus of attention in recent months as calls have escalated for the state convention to change the way it allocates cooperative missions gifts.
___These calls for change are based in both pragmatic and political/theological concerns. On one hand, leaders of Texas Baptist ministries say they urgently need more funding to meet the challenge of serving Texas' growing population. On another hand, a number of Texas Baptists have expressed concern about perpetuating a system that virtually by default sends large sums of money to the SBC, even though the SBC has taken a different theological and political course than most Texas Baptists.
___SBC officials, meanwhile, insist Texas Baptists should not only continue funding SBC causes but increase the amount of money leaving Texas.
___Among critics of the current system, funding for Southern Seminary is sometimes used as a primary example because the Kentucky school receives the most BGCT money of any SBC seminary outside Texas and serves relatively few Texans or Texas churches.
___Southern Seminary enrolled 34 Texans last year; Truett and Logsdon together enrolled 302 Texans.
___And while the BGCT sent about $1.02 million to Southern Seminary in 1999 through the SBC Cooperative Program, the BGCT's own Cooperative Program provided no base allocation specifically for Truett or Logsdon. The only budget allocation for the two BGCT-related seminaries provides tuition assistance toward master of divinity degree work. In 1999, those tuition grants were budgeted at $288,000 for Truett and $70,000 for Logsdon.
___Together, the six SBC seminaries received $5.34 million from the BGCT in 1999, about the same amount given to all 50 Texas Baptist human welfare outlets such as child care ministries, health care ministries and help for the aging.
___Because of the way BGCT and SBC budgets historically have been constructed, Texas Baptists currently provide much more money to several out-of-state SBC entities than to well-known BGCT ministries in Texas.
___For example, the child-care ministry of Buckner Baptist Benevolences is perhaps Texas Baptists' best-known statewide ministry. In 1999, the BGCT gave $894,000 to Buckner child care. At the same time, the BGCT sent larger allocations to five SBC entities: The International Mission Board, North American Mission Board, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southern Seminary and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
___Caring for Texas families
___No Texas Baptist leader has been more outspoken on the pragmatic side of this question than Ken Hall, a former Longview pastor who now serves as president of Buckner Baptist Benevolences, the parent entity of Bucker Children and Family Services and Buckner Retirement Services. The Buckner system provides child and family ministries to 25,000 clients each year, facilitates dozens of adoptions annually and serves 2,200 senior adults through its retirement homes, assisted living homes, nursing facilities and elder care programs.
___Running this statewide agency's varied ministries takes $50 million per year. Of that amount, Buckner in 1999 received $894,000 from the BGCT for child care ministries, $55,000 for ministries to the aging and nothing for adoption services.
___"Texas Baptists have woefully underfunded the services to our Texas Baptist ministries to the poor and hurting people of our state," Hall said. "When we give a comparable amount of money to Southern Baptist seminaries than we give to all of our human service ministries, something is wrong."
___Buckner, for example, currently can accept only one of every 10 applicants needing care due to abuse, neglect and abandonment, Hall said.
___And despite advocating a "pro-life" position in the abortion debates, Texas Baptists have done little to fund proactive measures such as crisis pregnancy centers and adoption ministries, he added.
___"One of the reasons so few girls can even consider adoption or being able to parent the child themselves is because abortion is the cheapest way to go," Hall said. "It's an economic decision. If Texas Baptists really aggressively chose to promote crisis pregnancy centers through churches, through our Baptist institutions, many of these children who are pregnant, we can care for them."
___As it stands now, the only way to fund adoptions is by charging higher fees to adoptive parents, he continued. This limits the ability of families to adopt special-needs children, who are the hardest to place. "We do nothing financially to assist people of low income or moderate income to adopt children, specifically in the area of helping couples adopt multi-ethnic, physically challenged, AIDS babies or crack babies."
___Buckner did get a one-time appropriation of $15,000 from the BGCT this year to promote adoption services, Hall said. "That doesn't even cover the cost of one adoption. How many more people could adopt, and how many more girls could be helped if we had more money?"
___Texas Baptists should not assume that money sent to the SBC is providing human welfare ministries, Hall added. "There's very little human welfare in any SBC activity. The International Mission Board has moved away from many of the programs they had on a worldwide scale that were human welfare oriented. The North American Mission Board has reduced dramatically over the last several years putting money toward human service issues. That's left it to the state institutions and individual churches."
___Hall emphasized his intent is not to criticize what any Baptist group is doing but rather to make sure Baptist laypeople know what types of ministry needs exist.
___"I'm not sure most Texas Baptists realize how little money actually makes its way to human service needs--the poor, the neglected, the victimized, basically all the folks you see lined up in Matthew 25's description of what Jesus called 'the least of these,'" he said.
___"Texas Baptists have a financial responsibility to those in need. When we bind up others' wounds, we are most like Jesus."
___Ministers for Texas churches
___The needs for educating Texas ministers at Truett and Logsdon are equally great, according to the deans there.
___"We very much need additional dollar support," said Vernon Davis, dean at Logsdon. "When we started this program, Hardin-Simmons as a whole had a massive deficit, $12 million or $13 million in our operating fund. That meant the university as a whole was experiencing some drastic cutbacks. The way we started this program was really on a shoestring."
___The one advantage Logsdon had was use of an already-constructed building well-suited to its needs, Davis said. "We started ahead as far as facilities are concerned, but we started behind in terms of operational funding."
___For example, until this year Davis served as dean, faculty member and the theology school's only recruiter of students. Now Logsdon shares one recruiter who is responsible for bringing in students for all graduate programs at Hardin-Simmons.
___Other urgent needs include building an adequate theological library and providing proper student housing, he said.
___Providing sufficient scholarship assitance for the education of one theology student for one year requires an endowment of $100,000, noted Randall O'Brien, acting dean of Truett Seminary.
___Endowment or some other form of funding for ministerial training is essential because "not many can come in and write a check or take out a loan for their ministerial education and then go pastor a small church," he said.
___O'Brien also noted that without such assistance, it becomes much more economically appealing for students to attend the six SBC seminaries, where tuition is heavily subsidized by Cooperative Program money.
___"We have more Texas students at Truett than Southern Seminary does," he explained. "Yet we're sending funds out of state to educate residents of other states while our own are neglected. There's an opportunity right here at home. The need is great."
___The BGCT's largest allocation of money for theological education goes to Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, although the seminary is governed by the SBC, not Texas Baptists. Southwestern received $1.5 million from the BGCT in 1999, the third-largest allocation given any ministry outside state missions efforts. About 40 percent of Southwestern's students, roughly 1,400, are Texans, according to data published by the seminary.
___Both O'Brien and Davis emphasized the uniqueness of the Texas Baptist seminaries as alternatives to the SBC seminaries, which today are run by the conservative movement that gained control of the SBC over the last 20 years and has been at odds with the BGCT.
___"We believe theological education at Logsdon is clearly within the historic Baptist tradition that values things that seem to be at some risk in the (SBC's) current climate," Davis said. "The other thing is we believe we can train ministers close to home for the task that's right here."
___Creation of the two new Texas seminaries is something Texas Baptists have encouraged and affirmed, O'Brien said, but all the funding necessary to do this task has not been provided.
___"At Truett, we're wanting to respond to the charge of Texas Baptists to educate our young ministers for Christian service. To do that, we have to have the resources," he said. "If we're going to educate our Texas sons and daughters, then we invite Texas Baptists to partner with us in that enterprise."
___Both deans described their schools as heavily Texas focused, drawing students primarily from Texas and sending ministers primarily into Texas churches to serve.
___At Truett, for example, last year's student body of 234 included 227 Texans. At Logsdon, 75 of 81 students enrolled last year were Texans.
___Although the BGCT provides tuition grants of $100 per semester hour for master of divinity students at the two seminaries, these allocations are capped at a certain level. That means after a certain point, each new student recruited for Truett or Logsdon places a greater financial demand on the institution's own resources.
___Despite this, Truett has "some fairly strong goals" for increasing enrollment, O'Brien said. "We hope to have almost 500 students here by 2004. And we hope to have almost 1,000 students here by 2006. Our vision is strong. We want to equip young men and women for ministry. We feel they can get that theological education right here in the state of Texas. In order for that to happen, ... it's imperative that our Texas dollars stay in Texas."
___The SBC's appeal
___Despite these appeals for rethinking funding, Texas Baptists have made a commitment to the SBC they ought to keep, insisted Morris Chapman, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls and now president of the SBC Executive Committee in Nashville, Tenn.
___"From its inception, the Cooperative Program has been a partnership between the state conventions and the SBC for eliciting support from their common constituents, the churches," he said. "Of course, the churches are always free to give as they wish. But the states and SBC have a covenant with each other in the Cooperative Program. The agreement is that the state convention will not only promote and receive contributions for its own ministries but also will promote and receive contributions for the SBC ministries."
___This "division of labor," he said, has worked efficiently to avoid duplication of ministries.
___"The SBC never has suggested that Southern Baptist churches in Texas should not support both the SBC and their state convention," Chapman continued. "I am aware that some anti-SBC voices in Texas are being raised to discourage support for the SBC. I think this is unwarranted and threatens the long-standing partnership between the SBC and the BGCT."
___The SBC is committed to working with Texas churches and "will be forced to find ways to partner together in the event the traditional methods are unavailable," he warned.
___"We are compelled to ask ... why many of those most passionately advocating keeping more money in Texas are the same ones who have demonstrated the most fervent and bitter anti-SBC spirit," Chapman said.
___Further, Texas Baptists have a special responsibility to share their resources with larger Southern Baptist ministries because Texas has been so blessed financially, he added.
___"The Lord Jesus said, 'From everyone who has been given much shall much be required." Southern Baptists in general, and those in Texas in particular, have been given a great deal."
___Chapman acknowledged the argument that Texas has a growing population in need of ministry.
___"But beyond the borders of Texas is a nation of more than 270 million and a world whose population is more than 6 billion souls," he said. "It is crucial that all Southern Baptists do all we can, together, to reach that world. I believe mission-minded Southern Baptists in Texas and all the states want to do that, together with their larger Southern Baptist family.
___"We urge Southern Baptists in Texas to turn away from those who would diminish the spirit of cooperation and block the view of the whole world," Chapman urged. "We implore them to give themselves to the worldwide agenda of God, and strengthen their bonds with the SBC."
___Prioritizing funding
___Despite possible appearances to the contrary, the call for budget changes in Texas is not an anti-missions or Texas-only perspective, countered Hall, president of Buckner.
___He affirmed the need for greater funding at Truett and Logsdon as well as for human welfare causes in Texas.
___"We've got great institutions we ought to be proud of," Hall said. "But the fact is we don't support them the way we should. It's an indictment against us as a family if we know the facts and don't address them. Once we've been told, we need to address it. That's what this is all about.
___"Do Texas Baptist people really believe the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission needs Texas money more to lobby in Washington than (we do) to meet the needs of broken lives and families in Texas? I really believe God has given us the responsibility of educating our preachers and church staff members in Texas. How many of our students are going to go to Southeastern Seminary? They're not. They're going to go to Truett, to Logsdon, to Southwestern."
___"The issue for me is not taking it away from Southern Baptists to give it to Texas Baptists. The issue for me is prioritizing our mission giving."
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