No one expected the Giving Plans Study Committee to arrive at a recommendation other than to return to a single giving plan. The multiple plans unique to North Carolina Baptists had simply become a source of more contention than the Convention could continue to endure.

While supporters believe the multiple plans provide avenues to keep diverse North Carolina Baptists together, detractors believe they symbolize a fractured family and fuzzy focus.

They believe a single plan would focus us on common mission, rather than on differences.

The single plan the committee proposed preserves a place for everyone looking for a reason to stay involved with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC), and it deserves your support when it comes up for vote at the annual session Nov. 10-12. Committee Chairman Ed Yount, pastor of Woodlawn Baptist Church in Conover, was not exaggerating when he told the BSC Board they were about to take an “historic” vote on his committee’s recommendation.

For several years the tenuous allegiance to the BSC of churches which also support ministries of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) seemed to hang on the continued availability of a giving option that contributed to national CBF and to other organizations that had lost favor with the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). (Nothing in the budget has ever directed funds to the state CBF organization.)

The giving plans were consistently challenged at annual session but retained by messengers each time. Their potential defeat always seemed to be the landmine that would blow the legs off of our cooperative veneer.

For the past 18 years North Carolina Baptists have been alone among Baptist state conventions in utilizing multiple giving plans. Years earlier leadership created “negative designations” to keep anger over dancing at Wake Forest University from dominating every annual session. Churches could designate funds away from Wake Forest and still have their gifts count as Cooperative Program. Until then, only undesignated gifts counted as Cooperative Program, which ultimately affected the number of messengers a church is qualified to send to the BSC and SBC annual meetings.  Normally a gift is not “cooperative” if you’ve designated it for a specific purpose, or away from specific purposes.

The new plan retains the ability of a church to negatively designate up to three items and still have its gift count as Cooperative Program.

By 1990 other issues dominated the national SBC landscape, particularly turmoil in Southern Baptist seminaries which prompted North Carolina Baptists to adopt a giving plan that directed 21 percent away from the SBC to provide for theological education and special missions in North Carolina. In 1994 Plan C which provided direct budget funds to the national CBF was implemented. Reaction to that in 1998 took money from the BSC general budget to fund specific ministries at a higher rate, particularly Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute.

In reality Fruitland didn’t receive “extra” money even though it is a specially named recipient in Plan D because it is a ministry of the Convention and its budget is funded through the Cooperative Program, no matter which plan it comes through.

The Giving Plans Study Committee came down on the side of a single plan, but with an adroit option that lets autonomous Baptist churches act autonomously. With the option of a single check box on the remittance form any church can designate 10 percent of its gift to national CBF. That doesn’t mean CBF is in the BSC budget. It just means that if your church wants to designate 10 percent of your gift to go to national CBF all you have to do is check that box. Your action wouldn’t affect anyone else’s church or position and would not raise the specter of annual floor fights over the budget.

Only a small number of churches will exercise that option, given current patterns. But having the option is huge because it says the Convention recognizes and respects a church’s autonomy.

Jeff Roberts, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Raleigh, said his diverse church utilizes the giving plans options and it works well for them. A member of the study committee, Roberts said the single plan says to churches like his, “there’s still a place for you if you want to cooperate, and you’ve given us a vehicle to do that.”

The recommendation is a framework only. It is not a budget. The budget committee will consider all the needs against anticipated income and make recommendations next year for 2010. For 2009 the two-year budget passed in 2007 is in effect, including use of the current four giving plans.

While Board members asked about funds to be included for specific organizations, they were continually told that is in the hands of the budget committee. One interesting exception, however, is in the provision that Fruitland and partnership missions continue to be funded at a level comparable to what they receive in the current giving plans.

That could be a reflection of the fact that Plan D, which allocates a five percent “bonus” to Fruitland, is the one plan growing robustly. It could reflect the significance that, according to retiring Fruitland President Kenneth Ridings, one in five North Carolina Baptist pulpits is occupied by a Fruitland graduate. Either way, it is worth noting that the one directive to the budget committee involves Fruitland and partnership missions.

When President Rick Speas asks for you to show your ballot if you’re in favor of this Board recommendation from the Giving Plans Study Committee, lift it high.