Missouri Baptists and the Cooperative Program

In the Southern Baptist Convention, CP giving is being stressed now more than ever. When I was in seminary, lessons on the Cooperative Program became required for every student. I had one class that met for the specific purpose of learning convention history and function, which concluded with a visit to the ’05 National Convention in Nashville. In this class we discussed CP giving on the state side – and how it was originally set up so that states would keep 50% of their CP giving, and send the other 50% to fund national entities. While that may have been the original idea, that has not been the norm. In fact, the vast majority of states keep much more than their allotted 50%.

When I returned to Missouri in ’06, I was quite dissapointed to find out that my beloved convention was keeping 62% of its CP funds in state. In my mind this seemed like an enormous amount. In fact, I’ll admit that when I first heard this, I figured that our state probably kept more money in house than the vast majority of state conventions. Appaerentally, I am not the only one who has felt this way. There have been pastors from several sectors in MBC life that has complained of the amount that we keep to ourselves. Some have gone so far as to lead their church to skip the state level all together and send their money directly to the national convention. I breifly considered this option myself, but then thought it best to first study this matter a little further. What follows is the fruition of my investigation. I have arrainged our state conventions based upon their giving, highest to lowest (based on percentages), and listed their individual percentages. This information was gleaned from the SBC website here.

Rank - State - % Kept - % Sent
1. - Mississippi - 40.40 - 59.60
2. - SBTC - 41.01 - 58.99
3. - SBCV - 49 - 50
4. - Alabama - 57.71 - 42.29
5. - Georgia - 57.87 - 42.13
6. - Illinois - 58.03 - 41.97
7. - Arkansas - 58.23 - 41.77
8. - S. Carolina - 58.99 - 41.01
9. - Mary./Del. - 60.5 - 40.37
10. - Ohio - 60 - 40
10. - Oklahoma - 60 - 40
11. - Florida - 61.90 - 38.10
12. - Tennessee - 62.25 - 37.75
13. - Missouri - 62.5 - 37.5
13. - West Virginia - 62.5 - 37.5
14. - BGCT - 63.61 - 36.39
15. - Kentucky - 64.66 - 36.04
16. - D.C. - 65 - 35
17. - Louisiana - 64.5 - 34.36
18. - Alaska - 67.02 - 32.98
19. - Wyoming - 67.75 - 32.25
20. - Michigan - 68.26 - 31.74
21. - Hawaii - 68.5 - 31.5
22. - Kan./Neb. - 68.59 - 31.41
23. - Indiana - 69.03 - 30.97
24. - New Mexico - 70.02 - 29.98
25. - California - 70.16 - 29.84
26. - Colorado - 70.99 - 29.01
27. - Nevada - 71.25 - 28.75
28. - N. Carolina - 72.80 - 27.20
29. - Iowa - 74.22 - 25.78
30. - New York - 74.58 - 25.42
31. - Arizona - 75.03 - 24.97
32. - Northwest - 75.15 - 24.85
33. - Penn./S. Jer. - 75.76 - 24.24
34. - Montana - 78.07 - 21.93
35. - New England - 78.54 - 21.46
36. - Utah/Idaho - 79.00 - 21.00
37. - BGAV - 86.29 - 13.71
38. - Dakotas - 86.74 - 13.26
39. - Minn./Wis. - 86.79 - 13.21

There are a few surprises here. First, that percentage wise, Mississippi comes out as the top CP giver. Good job Mississippi! I honestly would have never guessed that myself, especially since the Southern Baptists of Texas keep tooting their own horn about how much they send on to the SBC.

Second, when compared to other state conventions, Missouri’s giving isn’t all that bad. Missouri is well above the median average in giving (n=20, Missouri = 13), and it is also above the national average in giving as well (n=33.07%, Missouri=37.5%).

Now, while I do not think that this is cause for celebration, I also don’t think it’s time for alarm either (at least not stateside). Our giving is considerably better than the vast majority of state conventions, and our current state leadership has a plan to increase Missouri’s CP giving for the next several years. That said, I think it would be prudent to stick with our current form of CP giving – through the state convention. If churches started to circumvent the state now, the loss of income stateside would likely give some the steam needed to move toward actually giving less to the SBC.