Doing missions via the Cooperative Program
Apr 22nd, 2008 | By art rogers | Category: Church, General Christian, Missional, SBC
Something crossed my mind the other day and I just couldn’t let it go. In a discussion over a year ago on Missional Cooperation, a Seminary Student included this thought in a comment left on my blog:
“by giving to the cp, they are already giving to ‘their mission dollars to missions they themselves are doing.’”
I really could not forget that statement and the mindset it represents. Finally, I would just like to put it to be by saying a hearty:
“NUH UHHHH!”
Participation in the Cooperative Program is not doing missions. It is paying someone else to do missions. I’m not saying supporting missionaries that live in a context of lost people is a bad thing. Quite the contrary, I think we should be giving much more to the field.
However, sending money is not the same as personal engagement. We need to be a church that is engaging people in Tulsa, North America and around the world, as described in Acts 1:8. Us. Our church.
The CP has done amazing things, but one of the negative consequences is that our people have become convinced that they do not need to actually get up and do something but by sending some money to the CP, they’ve done missions. and. that. is. a. lie.
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Herein lies one of my big pet peeves. We don’t give “to” the CP. It is not an effort that we support, but a conduit we as Southern Baptists use to be good stewards of our resources in making it possible to achieve Acts 1:8. You’re right, Art, when we substitute our giving practices for our own responsibility, we short-circuit what God plans for us to be doing–it has the same effect as hiring a pastor to do our local witnessing and serving for us. Part of what happens is we forget the dynamic of CP. We give “through” the cooperative program as a means to multiply what we are already doing.
The danger is to assume that because I gave money, I am absolved of my own responsibility to live out Christ’s directives. The perception when we turn the CP into an entity that we give to, rather than a conduit through which we channel our funds, we can easily jump from “plan” to “means”. Giving through the CP is part of the plan, not the means by which we do all things.
Art,
Like to know how many times I’ve heard it preached that when we give, we’re witnessing to folks in the jungles, ministering after tornadoes out west, and feeding starving children in India? Many. Many, many.
As long as folks are out here preaching that sort of thing, you’re going to find the attitude the student displayed. In fact, I’ve read that very thing in blogdom in the last 24 hours. Wish I could remember where.
Benji and Bob,
When you consider how much actually makes it to the field without being siphoned off for “administrative” efforts (read: IMB Trustee meetings – 6 x $500,000 per year = $3 million, and that doesn’t include actual administrative stuff) and other Trustee approved expenses of different SBC entities (read: enormous living quarter additions alongside two Cadillac Escalades with drivers, and that is just for starters) you find that about a dime of every CP dollar (in OK where 60% of the CP dollars are kept in the state) makes it to the International Mission Field, this ought to be more of an issue than it is.
Considering that International Missions has always been our heartbeat and the reason we exist as a denomination, that is absolutely tragic – and deserves to be addressed.
amen!
Art,
Some interesting thoughts you’ve shared here and some good comments as well. I really do believe the CP was a stroke of genius in its day and certainly helped bail the SBC out of a serious financial crisis back in the years immediately following WWI and during the Great Depression. When the bulk of the money was destined for direct missions purposes, it was an easier sell to Baptists sitting in their pews.
Today, that same scenario simply doesn’t exist. As has been pointed out, many entities compete for a slice of the CP pie and the percentage that actually makes it to the mission field is considerably less than it once was. In the last couple of years we’ve all heard and read about (thanks to the advent of SB bloggers) the abuses that exist in some circles regarding the expenditures of those CP funds. That factor, plus an aging constituency, an emerging generation that lacks traditional denominational loyalty, the preference to designate funds for projects where there is some sort of direct connection, and the increasing involvement of short-term volunteers in hands-on missions projects all spell trouble with a capital T for the future of the CP. Can it survive? I’m not a prophet, but I think its days are numbered. I don’t know if that means a decade or two or a couple of generations, but I believe the handwriting is on the wall.
Interesting thoughts. I’ve been engaging over at SBCToday saying how I really don’t care how much our entity heads make. And, I really don’t. I guess that if I were consistent I’d want more of their salaries to go to the mission field or something. But, I think that I just assume that millions upon millions of dollars are being siphoned off for adminstrative expenses and waste to the point of absurdity, that I really don’t care where it goes. It is all going somewhere anyway – it might as well provide a nice lifestyle for an entity head. I guess that I see as much purpose in that as I do most of the other things that we spend CP money on.
This is why the local church needs to be faithful to the task that God has given us, instead of just sending our money off elsewhere. I think that we can see that the more money that goes into the CP, the more money that a handful of people have to work with. Sometimes that is good, but when you look at past decisions, it seems that it is not a good as it should be. At any rate, we are taking responsibility and are not looking back. And, God is doing great things through it.
Art,
I totally agree with your comments! Somewhere, I’m not quite sure when or where it happened, but we really began to believe the idea that we could either “pay our way” through missions or we could “send others to do missions for us.” Either way, we’ve missed the mark, whether in talking about CP, LMCO, or AAEO.
The Great Commission clearly tells us that it is “as you are going…” That calling is placed upon all believers, Christ followers. That calling should be a compelling, driving force in our life. Oh how we cheapen that commission by thinking that giving and sending relieve us of that duty…
Thanks for being it to the forefront!
Steve