Nashville – Year-to-date Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program contributions to the SBC Executive Committee are 0.08 percent below the year-to-date CP budget goal, and 1.33 percent below contributions received during the same time frame last year, SBC Executive Committee president Frank S. Page reported.
The total represents money received by the Executive Committee by the close of the last business day of February and includes receipts from state conventions, churches and individuals for distribution according to the 2013-14 SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget, supporting Southern Baptist national and international missions and ministries.
The $79,726,685.78 the Executive Committee received from Oct. 1 through Feb. 28 represents 99.92 percent of the $79,791,666.67 year-to-date budget, and is $1,075,143.34 or 1.33 percent less than the $80,801,829.12 received through February 2012.
Designated giving of $92,190,959.26 for the same year-to-date period is 0.36 percent, or $329,310.85, below the $92,520,270.11 received at this point last year. This total includes only gifts received and distributed by the Executive Committee and does not reflect designated gifts contributed directly to SBC entities. Designated contributions include gifts to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, Southern Baptist Global Hunger Relief (formerly the World Hunger Fund) and other special gifts.
February’s Cooperative Program allocation receipts for SBC work totaled $18,090,900.91. Designated gifts received in February amounted to $55,085,287.88.
The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ channel of giving through which a local church is able to contribute to the ministries of its state convention and to the missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention with a single contribution to its state convention.
State conventions retain a portion of church contributions to the Cooperative Program to support work in their respective states, and forward a percentage to Southern Baptist 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 SBC allocation budget goal for 2013-2014 is $191,500,000, an increase of 1.86 percent over the $188,000,000 budgeted goal for the previous year, and is distributed as follows: 50.41 percent to support more than 4,800 overseas personnel with IMB, 22.79 percent to help fuel North American evangelism and church planting through the North American Mission Board, 22.16 percent to help underwrite low-cost ministerial preparation and theological education through six SBC seminaries, 2.99 percent to the SBC operating budget and 1.65 percent to promote biblical morality and religious freedom through the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
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 Cooperative Program contributions to their state conventions, the percentage of CP contributions forwarded to the SBC by the state conventions after shared ministry expenses are deducted and the timing of when the state conventions forward the national portion of CP contributions to the Executive Committee.
Cooperative Program allocation budget receipts received by the Executive Committee are reported monthly to the executives of the entities of the SBC, the state convention offices and state Baptist papers, and are posted online at www.cpmissions.net/CPReports.
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Compiled by Baptist Press staff.)