fbpx
×

Log into your account

We have changed software providers for our subscription database. Old login credentials will no longer work. Please click the "Register" link below to create a new account. If you do not know your new account number you can contact [email protected]
Executive Committee hears Rammell on motion
Norman Jameson, BR Editor
July 19, 2010
4 MIN READ TIME

Executive Committee hears Rammell on motion

Executive Committee hears Rammell on motion
Norman Jameson, BR Editor
July 19, 2010

Austin Rammell,

pastor of Venture in Dallas, said unless priorities change in Cooperative

Program (CP) allocations, he sees a “massive decrease” coming in CP giving.

Rammell was

invited to address the Executive Committee meeting July 15 to explain issues

behind his May motion that the Board of Directors study the feasibility of

moving priority items funded through the North Carolina Missions Offering

(NCMO) into the budget, and moving “non-mission and non-high priority items”

out of the annual CP budget and into a “new statewide offering” that would

replace the NCMO.

Rammell said his

experience as a personal evangelism consultant on the Florida Baptist

Convention staff for four years prompted him to say, “This doesn’t make any

sense.” He said he drove the state, consuming lots of time and money to talk to

small groups of people about evangelism who were already excited about

evangelism.

BR photo by Norman Jameson

Austin Rammell, pastor of Venture in Dallas, explained the motive behind his motion to change Cooperative Program budget priorities.

Instead, he

said, with modern technology and young pastors adept at networking, churches

who seek information can find it among themselves, freeing missions funds

consumed in the current BSC structure for work overseas where Christians do not

have the “billions of dollars” in resources that North Carolina Baptist

churches enjoy.

“We’re too big,”

he said of state conventions. “We’re replicating the local church on a massive

level, and it costs a lot of money to do it. I’ve heard the same thing from

other pastors.”

That conviction

led him to recommend the elimination of many positions in Florida, he said,

including his own. He resigned and came to North Carolina to pastor a church.

Rammell said

marketing the Cooperative Program is not the issue, and that next generation

pastors understand it just fine. “The issue is what we then do with that money

and how we divide it up,” he said.

His

recommendation seeks to put “what we say are our priorities” into the budget

and let non-priority items fend for themselves in a special offering. If the

churches do not support some area financially, “You’ll give it its democratic

death,” he said.

Rammell said

this is “not a young people issue. Don’t make the mistake that this is a bald

headed and goateed guy issue.”

He said he’s

heard similar dissatisfactions voiced by pastors in very traditional churches.

Which items?

Budget committee

chairman Steve Hardy asked Rammell to identify “non-priority” items he would

move from the budget to such a special offering.

Rammell said he

would begin by identifying anything that replicates the local church, or could

be done better by “raising heroes and leaders out of local churches” who would

pull together the resources of several churches to produce something the state

convention now does.

He used as an

example an annual evangelism conference, and said First Baptist and Hickory

Grove churches in Charlotte “could combine with other local churches and put on

an evangelism conference the state convention couldn’t compete with.”

“One of the ways

you’re going to get guys like me excited about giving more to the CP is to get

more money out of the state,” Rammell said, “and then to use what money stays

in this state more effectively.

“That’s my

motive, where I’m coming from. That’s why I made the motion.”

Executive

Committee Chairman Bobby Blanton will name a committee to take up Rammell’s motion.