CBF revenues top $24 million in past year_110104

Posted: 10/29/04

CBF revenues top $24 million in past year

By Greg Warner

Associated Baptist Press

ATLANTA (ABP)–The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship finished its 2003-04 fiscal year with revenues of $24.26 million, the highest-ever annual total.

The record total included undesignated contributions of $8,869,883, designated gifts of $8,709,160, and a global missions offering of $5,738,222–each one an all-time high.

The Fellowship spent $19.6 million of that revenue during the fiscal year and left a revenue overage of $4.7 million, most of which is designated for global missions.

However, the undesignated contributions–which fund partner organizations like seminaries and CBF's own non-missions programs–were $136,876 below budget expectations.

Cost-cutting allowed the Fellowship to end the year with revenues $5,845 above expenses, however, finishing in the black for the first time in three years.

Rusty Brock, a pastor from Ardmore, Okla., and chair of the council's global missions team, said the Fellowship spent $12,255,636 on global missions in 2003-04, including designated and undesignated funds.

The Fellowship benefited from several large donations designated for missions–including anonymous gifts of $5 million and $1.8 million–but those funds will be depleted in 2006 and must be replaced in order to maintain the same level of missions activity, Brock said.

Speaking at the CBF Coordinating Council's fall meeting, Fellowship Coordinator Daniel Vestal called CBF's recent acceptance into membership of the Baptist World Alliance, an international fellowship of Baptist bodies, “a very important moment for us.”

The Southern Baptist Convention, historically BWA's largest member, pulled out the group in June largely because it granted membership to the Fellowship, which is comprised mostly of moderate former Southern Baptists.

Vestal pointed out there are 16 million Southern Baptists but 17 million other Baptists in North America. He called for a revitalization of the North American Baptist Fellowship, one of the BWA's regional organizations, which he said could be the focal point for “a new day for Baptists in North America.”

The Coordinating Council expects to hear a recommendation during its February meeting from the Baptist World Alliance Task Force, which is studying ways to increase CBF funding of BWA.

Also expected in February is the long-awaited report of the Partnership Study Committee, which is re-evaluating CBF's relationships with and funding of partner ministries. Committee Chair Charles Cantrell, a lawyer from Mountain View, Mo., presented the committee's statement of “guiding principles” for partnerships.

The statement says CBF is committed to ministry through partnership with autonomous organizations rather than establishing its own institutions. Those partnerships are voluntary, based on mutual trust and respect, and characterized by caring, accountability and mutual sacrifice for a shared mission.

Cantrell said the committee also is developing a set of general guidelines for partners and a specific statement on CBF's relationships with theological schools, which account for the largest portion of its partner funding.

The partnership study is expected to produce funding changes, but Cantrell said no changes will take effect until the 2006-07 fiscal year.

In his coordinator's report, Vestal voiced his desire for the Fellowship to be more ethnically diverse. While more diverse than most Baptist groups in the South, the Fellowship needs to do better, he said.

“I believe it was in the heart of this movement from the beginning, in our DNA from the beginning,” he said.

The Fellowship supports ethnic networks to involve Asians, Hispanics and African-Americans in the organization.

Vestal confessed he does not know how to increase diversity, but added: “We're going to have to take some risks. We're not going to be able to keep doing things the way we've been doing things.”

Vestal admitted to failure in making the Fellowship more diverse, but he pledged: “We're not going to quit. We're going to fund some things differently. Our staff is going to look different. But I believe much of our future is in the multiethnic area.”