BWA leaders cut spending, make bylaws revisions

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP)—Members of the Baptist World Alliance’s executive committee heard a sobering financial report detailing investment losses over the last year, agreed to slash the group’s budget, gave initial approval to organizational changes and met BWA’s new director for freedom and justice during their annual meeting.

Gathering at the organization’s headquarters in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Falls Church, Va., BWA leaders agreed to slash the 2009 budget by nearly 30 percent, from an original figure of $2,973,155 to $2,111,155—a reduction of nearly $900,000 in expenditures.

Ellen Teague, finance director for the worldwide umbrella group for Baptists, said the cuts are necessary to maintain a decent amount of reserve funds, heavily depleted over the last year because of huge investment losses.

The organization was forced to draw heavily from its reserves to cover heavy investment losses owing to the world’s tanking markets. BWA transferred more than $2.3 million in unrestricted reserves to the operating fund to cover the losses.

In order to stick to internal guidelines that require a minimum of $500,000 in reserves—and even under a best-case 2009 income scenario of donation income similar to 2008’s—Teague said BWA would have to slash its spending dramatically.

BWA General Secretary Neville Callam said the organization’s staff already had instituted pay-raise freezes and significantly cut their expenditures in anticipation of a reduced overall budget. After the committee approved the new budget figure, Callam said he and Teague would go line-by-line to figure out exactly where the additional cuts should come. Callam added he hoped to identify new sources of revenue by beefing up BWA’s list of potential contributors.

The body also gave initial approval to a set of bylaws revisions necessitated by constitutional changes already in motion. The BWA General Council—a larger governing body that gathers annually—is scheduled to have a final vote on the recommendations at its next meeting, set for July 27-Aug. 1 in Ede, Netherlands.

Committee members also voted to recommend the General Council approve Raimundo Cesar Barreto as director of the new BWA Division of Freedom and Justice. Council members created the new division—which will focus on religious freedom and justice issues that affect BWA member bodies—last year at the organization’s annual gathering in Prague, Czech Republic.

Barreto, currently a pastor in Salvador, Brazil, holds a doctorate in Christian ethics from Princeton Theological Seminary. He also has degrees from Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology and the North Brazil Theological Seminary. He has taught at theology schools in Brazil and the United States.

Executive committee members also heard that the recipient of the 2009 Denton and Janice Lotz Human Rights Award is Indian Baptist activist Leena Lavanya.

Lavanya’s Serve Trust organization operates several charities among India’s poor and dispossessed. They include HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention and other ministries to female sex workers as well as homes for the elderly and those suffering from leprosy.