Stone to seek removal of giving plans

From staff reports

A longtime anti-drug and anti-alcohol activist will ask the Baptist State Convention (BSC) in November to do away with the optional giving plans.

Ted Stone said in a written statement Oct. 27 that he will make a motion at the upcoming BSC annual meeting "to restore the single-giving plan of the traditional Cooperative Program as the sole method of doing missions together."

Currently churches giving to the BSC can choose one of four giving plans.

In Plan A, the BSC keeps 68 percent of the money and sends 32 percent to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

In Plan B, the BSC retains 68 percent and sends 10 percent to the SBC, with the remaining money going to missions partnerships, theological education and other causes.

Plan C is similar to Plan B except the 10 percent is sent to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) rather than the SBC.

Under Plan D, the BSC keeps 50 percent and sends 32 percent to the SBC. The other 18 percent goes to Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute, church planting efforts and missions partnerships.

Stone's motion would do away will all plans except Plan A. He will ask that the percentages be changed to have the BSC keeping 65 percent and sending 35 percent to the SBC.

Under his proposal, the changes would not go into effect until the 2006-2007 budget year, which will be voted on at the BSC meeting in November 2005.

Stone will also ask that the Fruitland, which could lose money if Plan D is eliminated, be funded at the same level as the smallest N.C. Baptist college. This would mean an increase in funding for Fruitland from about $650,000 to about $900,000, he said.

"The Cooperative Program is a Southern Baptist program designed and used since 1925 as the best and most unified way for the Southern Baptist Convention and the state conventions to do missions together as partners," Stone said in his statement. "The optional giving plans have distorted the original purpose of the designers of this God-ordained program."

Stone said sending funding to the CBF, which he said competes with the SBC, "makes a mockery of the Cooperative Program."

"It is time to discard 'the North Carolina way,' a descriptive term used by those who are constant critics of our denomination to justify optional giving plans," Stone said. "It is time for us to do missions together the Southern Baptist way. After all, we are Southern Baptists, and most of us are proud to be Southern Baptists."

Stone said it is "deceptive and wrong" to call money given outside SBC or state convention budgets Cooperative Program giving.