The Road to Greensboro, pt. 2 - Will There Be a Race for the Presidency?

Greensboro is approaching fast and someone in Georgia is (supposedly) considering throwing his name in the hat this week for the Presidency of the SBC Convention. The only current candidate, Ronnie Floyd, is under much scrutiny for leading a church that only gave 0.27% to the Cooperative Program last year.

How significant is this issue of level of CP giving? I think it is fairly signficant.

Several years ago, similar concerns were expressed about conservative candidates for the SBC presidency. The reason I heard then for weak CP giving was that there were still too many liberals drawing paychecks from CP dollars and once the denomination was cleaned up, the dollars would start pouring in.

Well, as far as I can tell, the clean-up job has been finished for some time now. That excuse is moot...unless some still think more cleaning up is needed by booting the Charismatics, Calvinists, and Contemporaries out of the Convention.

So far, on the blogosphere, I have observed two arguments attempting to nullify the impact of the low cooperative program giving. The first argument is that FBC Springdale may only give 0.27% to the cooperative program, but their total missions giving is 22%. I believe someone even pointed out that if all SBC churches were as mission-minded as Ronnie's church, we wouldn't have to cooperate to get missions done! Now there's a Biblical reason! Yikes! Now that's an awful thought: cooperating for the sake of the Gospel! With that mindset, we'll guickly be back to pre-1925 days, with our missionaries spending 40-60% of their time raising funds, rather than focusing on the mission.

The second argument I've come across is 10% to the Cooperative Program has never been a litmus test for leadership in the SBC. I'm just curious if the people who buy into this line of thinking apply the same principle to their local church. I suppose when it comes to elevating people to vital positions of leadership in their church, it doesn't matter a bit if they just tip God when it comes to giving to their local church, even if they are giving very generously to "other" Christian causes.

How will our missionaries feel about a President who says, "We love and care for you, our dear missionaries," when he leads his megachurch to invest in other mission causes, while the CP giving is miniscule? What message is he sending?

I do not know Ronnie Floyd personally. I have never met him. This is not an attack on Ronnie Floyd. He pastors an autonomous Baptist church that has every right to give as much money to whatever missions causes they feel led to support. I have no reason to believe that he is not a wonderful husband, father, and pastor. In fact, I suspect he is a very godly man who I would love to get to know. It seems he has been a very effective pastor of a very dynamic church.

I just think that the next President of the SBC should be a man who leads a church that is more generous in financially supporting the very organization he is desiring to represent.