EDITORIAL: Budget requires vigorous priority

The Baptist General Convention of Texas must think faithfully and courageously about its 2011 budget. Texas Baptists got a sneak peek at budgeting challenges when the ad hoc Institutional Funding Study Committee presented its report to the BGCT Executive Board a couple of weeks ago.

“Institutional funding by the BGCT reflects a downward trend,” the report begins. That truth mirrors the downward trend of the overall budget. Institutional relations—funds the BGCT provides to 23 child care, aging care and educational institutions—is to receive $16 million, or 36.3 percent, of the convention’s $44 million budget this year. Compared to 2009, the 2010 BGCT budget is down $4.3 million, or 8.9 percent. The institutional cut comprised nearly half the total decline—almost $2.1 million, or 11.5 percent of the institutional allocation.

Institutional relations is only one piece of the BGCT budget pie. The others are advocacy/care, $2.0 million; education/discipleship, $3.8 million; evangelism/missions, $9.4 million; affinity ministries, $1.1 million; and four categories of administration, $11.6 million.

How the institutional piece of the pie has been sliced indicates a faulty assumption in the budgeting recipe. The first two findings reported by the study committee point to the assumption: “1. We anticipate BGCT receipts to remain flat … . 2. If the overall BGCT budget remains at its current level, the institutional portion of the budget may decrease further as BGCT ‘fixed costs’ will probably escalate.”

While some costs truly remain fixed—such as legal obligations to annuitants and maintenance of assets—we should not assume too broad a range of “fixed costs.”

Dialogue between institutional presidents and representatives of the study committee revealed “fixed” thinking. Agreeing 2011 receipts will be flat, both parties acknowledged institutional funding will take another cut, in part to offset smaller cuts elsewhere. The presidents understandably bristled at a proposal to bid for convention funding—asking them to compete with each other for budget money.

That painful conversation pointed to reality: The BGCT does not have enough money to fund every ministry it wants to operate. Now is the time to make hard, far-reaching decisions. While asking ministries to bid for grants might be too crude, the convention must prayerfully, thoughtfully and aggressively do that work itself. We must rank every ministry by priority order and assess the cost of funding each of them—not at a subsistence level, but for world-class excellence—and then fund only the ones we can afford.

Two caveats: First, this would include all ministries sponsored by the Executive Board as well as the institutions. Second, the prioritization should be done by a broad-based collection of Texas Baptists and not managed by the staff of the Executive Board, whose conflict of interest would be obvious.

Of course, this would be traumatic. The very proposal is sure to cause some Texas Baptists to flex in anger and others to gasp in horror. But here is the truth:

1. We cannot afford every ministry we now sponsor. Attempting to fund them all weakens them all, including the most important.

2. A significant reason for the BGCT’s declining support is corroding confidence in our competence and recoil from our real or perceived irrelevance.

3. If we expect renewed engagement and excitement about our ministries, we must excel. We must provide ministries everyone agrees we need and perform them spectacularly so that all will know they change lives and expand Christ’s kingdom.

4. As we begin to succeed and regain our reputation for excellence, more and more churches will recognize reasons to reinvest spiritually, financially and emotionally in our collaborative efforts. Then we will have new money to add ministries—by priority order.

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard. Visit his FaithWorks Blog.