Three task forces and a committee will bring important reports at the annual meeting Nov. 10-12. Messengers will hear the reports of two simply for information and the reports of two they will be asked to approve.

This issue (Nov. 8) of the Biblical Recorder includes for the second time the proposed changes to the Baptist State Convention’s (BSC) Articles and Bylaws. As I said in the previous issue, Articles and Bylaws Committee Chairman Shannon Scott and staff liaison Brian Davis have gone out of their way to be transparent and to give you all the detail you could want on the changes.

You can trust the proposal when you are asked to approve it. It is primarily condensing, sorting and organizing the document, which was not done when the Convention incorporated in 2004.

The most significant change is that the Woman’s Missionary Union of North Carolina (WMU-NC) loses its representative on the Executive Committee and its place on the Board of Directors reverts to just a non-voting ex officio member. This is not a small point but it became almost inevitable given attitudes among the deciders toward WMU-NC’s moves the past year.

Three task forces, initiated by Executive Committee action in December 2007, will bring their reports at various times. Each of them carries a burden of history and their adoption will mark a distinct step for the Convention away from previous ways of doing business and toward something new. Some of you will feel the pain of loss; others will feel the excitement of the new.

Since 1990, North Carolina Baptists have utilized alternate plans through which churches could give and still have their gifts count as Cooperative Program. These plans were developed as reaction to events in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that were at odds with the prevailing atmosphere in the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

First came Plan B, which provided funds for theological education beyond the six Southern Baptist seminaries. Plan C in 1994 provided an avenue for churches to support the nascent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF). In 1998 a fourth plan decreased the percentage of money supporting the BSC general budget and increased allocations to specific BSC ministries.

Continually challenged, these plans have been lauded as a key to keeping diverse churches engaged, or they’ve been lamented as divisive tools that diffuse focus.

Giving Plans Study Committee Chairman Ed Yount will present a plan at this convention that reverts to a single avenue for giving, with options. It provides a framework for budget committees to follow. You will be asked to approve this plan, and you should.

While a single plan in simplicity, it provides several options. Churches can make up to three negative designations and still have their gift count as Cooperative Program. Church remittance forms will include three optional check boxes. One would send 10 percent of the church’s gift to the national CBF; one would send two percent to the Adopt an Annuitant program that helps pastors who are living below dignity level because they served churches that did not provide a decent retirement program; one would send two percent for theological education at Campbell and Gardner-Webb divinity schools.

This is a framework. It does not establish percentages for division of gifts between the BSC and the SBC. It neither includes nor excludes gifts to the Baptist World Alliance, Associated Baptist Press or the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs or Baptist Center for Ethics—all entities that receive money now — nor does it allocate BSC program money.

With one exception, spending recommendations were left up to the budget committee, chaired by Steve Hardy, a staff minister at Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem. The exception is the study committee’s recommendation that Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute and partnership missions both be funded at least to the levels they currently receive.

The 2009 budget is unaffected, because it is part of the two-year budget passed in 2007.
 
Embrace
Because the Executive Committee has the necessary authority to guide and approve programs of work, the task force reports on Embrace women’s ministry and North Carolina Baptist Aging Ministry will be for information. Messenger approval is not required.

During the entire two years of discussion, letters, meetings and frustrations of the WMU-NC and BSC dialog, BSC Executive Director-treasurer Milton A. Hollifield Jr., said that the BSC “will have” a women’s ministry emanating from the Baptist staff building in Cary.

With WMU-NC leaving the building, although not changing its ministry in any way, Embrace is the department of work to step into that supposed programming gap.

Phyllis Foy led the task force that came up with Embrace. Her heart beats missions and she was very involved with WMU-NC. So there naturally are overlaps between the mission of WMU-NC and that of Embrace.

We can ill afford redundancies. But many churches have “women’s ministries” now, rather than WMU or in addition to WMU and they need resourcing. Cindy Stevens, an Executive Committee member who was on the task force, said Embrace is not in competition with WMU because many women need to be reached. Nancy Curtis, former WMU executive director, said months ago that a women’s ministry will not be competition for WMU because WMU’s purpose is to support missions.

At an associational meeting I attended in October the WMU director was wondering what to do with the colorful Embrace promotional material. She obviously was perturbed about the potential tension between those who would support Embrace and those who see it as an intrusion. The director of missions, himself concerned about potential conflict in churches between supporters of the new and advocates of the current, said he would discuss it all later.

The circumstances that prompted creation of Embrace are regrettable. But adding avenues of ministry is like planting churches. More people will be reached with Embrace and WMU than by WMU alone.

Messengers will not be asked to approve Embrace. Information is already distributed, and Greensboro will be a coming out party.
 
NCBAM
With the heartbeat between Baptist Retirement Homes (BRH) and the BSC flat lined, North Carolina Baptists last year urged that a study be made of ways they can remain involved in ministry to aging adults. Baptist Children’s Homes (BCH) trustee Sandy Saunders of Fayetteville chaired the task force and Michael C. Blackwell, BCH president, volunteered BCH to be the driving force behind development. The task force formulated the very broadest strokes of what is tentatively called North Carolina Baptist Aging Ministry (NCBAM).

Residential care is not in NCBAM’s plans. Instead, NCBAM would develop resources and strategies for churches and associations that want to minister to and with this aging population. They will seek answers to questions like: How can churches help seniors stay longer in their own homes with a simple meal or safety check? How can associations organize adult day care? Can associations or churches build small apartment units where mobile seniors live in mutually supportive community?

What do churches need to know to help their aging members with finances, estate planning and child issues? What about grandparents forced to raise young children? Or seniors frantically searching for a way to buy both food and medicine?

NCBAM will not be a location where aging adults can come for help, but will be a resource for churches and associations, which desperately need to rise up and embrace the opportunities for ministry among the aging in America.

The logical source of money for this ministry is the pot of nearly $1 million that was going to Baptist Retirement Homes. It is enough to fund a small NCBAM staff and provide seed money for a special project or two each year. But that money is not guaranteed to be available, nor is it guaranteed to go to NCBAM if it is available.

Truly creative approaches will require funding if NCBAM is to be more than a salve to smear over the wound of Baptist Retirement Homes’ leaving the BSC. Bobby Boyd, a BCH trustee and retiring director of social services of Catawba County, has agreed to get the ministry up and running.

Messengers will not be asked to vote on NCBAM, either. But hear their report with interest and be prepared with questions.

These are crucial days for North Carolina Baptist churches. Each step into an uncharted future reveals a little more path ahead, and closes another door behind.