Year-to-date contributions to Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) national and international missions and ministries received by the SBC Executive Committee are 4.01 percent above the year-to-date budgeted projection through the first four months of the convention’s fiscal year, according to a news release from SBC Executive Committee President and Chief Executive Officer Frank S. Page.
The total, which also is 2.47 percent above contributions received during the same time frame last year, includes receipts from state conventions and fellowships, churches and individuals for distribution according to the 2017-2018 SBC Cooperative Program (CP) Allocation Budget.
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As of Jan. 31, gifts received by the Executive Committee for distribution through the CP Allocation Budget totaled $66,567,735.86, or 104.01 percent of the $64,000,000.00 year-to-date budgeted amount to support SBC ministries globally and across North America. The total is $1,607,169.24 more than the $64,960,566.62 received through the end of January 2017.
The convention-adopted budget is distributed 50.41 percent to international missions through International Mission Board (IMB); 22.79 percent to North American missions through the North American Mission Board; 22.16 percent to theological education by the SBC’s six seminaries; 2.99 percent to the SBC operating budget; and 1.65 percent to the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
According to the budget adopted by the SBC at its June 2017 annual meeting in Phoenix, if the convention exceeds its annual budget goal of $192 million, IMB’s share will go to 54 percent of any overage in Cooperative Program allocation budget receipts. Other ministry entities of the SBC will receive their adopted percentage amounts and the Executive Committee and SBC operating budget’s portion will receive no portion of the overage.
In designated giving, the $36,693,145.17 received for the same year-to-date period is 1.44 percent, or $537,850.34, below gifts of $37,230,995.51 received at this point last year. This total includes only those gifts received and distributed by the Executive Committee and does not reflect designated gifts contributed directly to SBC entities.
The Cooperative Program is a program of giving through which a local church is able to contribute to the various ministries of its state convention and to the various missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention with a single contribution.
January’s CP allocation receipts for SBC work totaled $20,338,510.40. Designated gifts received last month, meanwhile, amounted to $25,072,784.29.
State and regional Baptist conventions serve as collecting entities for Cooperative Program contributions. They retain a portion of church contributions to the Cooperative Program to support work in their respective areas and forward a percentage to Southern Baptist Convention national and international causes. The percentage of distribution from the states is at the discretion of the messengers of each state convention through the adoption of the state convention’s annual budget.
The end-of-month total represents money received by the Executive Committee by the close of the last business day of each month. Month-to-month swings reflect a number of factors, including the number of Sundays in a given month, the day of the month churches forward their CP contributions to their state conventions and the timing of when state conventions forward the national portion of their CP contributions to the Executive Committee.
CP allocation budget receipts received by the Executive Committee are reported monthly to the executives of the entities of the convention, to the state offices and denominational papers and are posted online at cpmissions.net/CPReports.