CBF doesn't plan to pick up IMB missionaries, Vestal says
___By Greg Warner
___Associated Baptist Press
___ATLANTA (ABP)--The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship will propose a $19.6 million budget for 2002-03 that promises increases in all five ministry areas, including half a million more dollars for missions.
___But Daniel Vestal, the organization's chief executive, said the CBF will not automatically hire Southern Baptist missionaries who resign or are fired because they refuse to affirm the SBC's new faith statement.
___The CBF's largest-ever budget, adopted unanimously by the group's Coordinating Council Feb. 23, is a 6.9 percent increase over the current year's budget. If approved by the CBF General Assembly in June, the spending plan will take effect when the Fellowship's fiscal year begins July 1.
___Through seven months of this fiscal year, CBF revenue is about $350,000 behind the pace required to meet its $18.3 million budget but 4.4 percent ahead of year-to-date revenue for the previous year.
___Budget planners said they are confident they can reach next year's $19.6 million budget goal. They point to revenues of $2.6 million in January, the highest total for any month in CBF's 11-year history. "Even with the shortfall in (current) revenue, we are healthy and managing expenses," said James Strawn, coordinator for finance and administration.
___Vestal acknowledged many people are asking if CBF will hire any Southern Baptist missionaries who leave the International Mission Board because of pressure to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message statement.
___"The reason why CBF does not do that is because that would transplant a conflict in North America ... all over the world," he said.
___The CBF, which has a missionary force of 115 people, has an equal number of active missionary candidates the organization can't afford to appoint, other leaders said. Missionaries who resign from the IMB may not match the CBF's priority of reaching people groups in parts of the world where the gospel message has not been heard.
___However, CBF officials later said resigning SBC missionaries could be candidates for appointment to mission positions that fit the CBF's global strategy.
___The largest portion of the budget will support CBF global missions, which is slated to receive $11.25 million, up 4.7 percent.
___Two Texas seminaries will receive additional funding from the CBF next year due to a 15 percent across-the-board increase in student scholarships.
___Truett Seminary at Baylor University will receive $71,500 in scholarship money, along with $175,000 in institutional support. Logsdon School of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University will receive $25,000 in scholarship money and $20,000 in institutional support.
___The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University will receive $18,000, a 32 percent increase over this year's budget.
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