Stone again seeks end to BSC giving plans

By Steve DeVane

BR Managing Editor

A trustee of a Southern Baptist seminary says he will make a second attempt to end the Baptist State Convention's (BSC) four giving plans when the BSC meets for its annual meeting next month.

Ted Stone, a member of the trustees' executive committee at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas and a member of the Board of Visitors at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, said Thursday that he would ask the BSC to go back to one giving plan.

The BSC has offered multiple giving plans since the early 1990s.

Last year, he made a similar motion, which failed by about a two to one margin on a show of ballots. Stone said he will ask for a secret ballot this year so people can vote "as the Lord leads" rather than being "intimidated" by the way other people vote.

Stone, who is best known as an anti-drug and anti-alcohol activist and has walked across the United States three times to promote those causes, said he thinks he represents a majority of N.C. Baptists. He said he does not understand how anyone who claims to be a "loyal Southern Baptist" can support the BSC giving plans.

"It is time for us as Baptists in North Carolina to recognize that we are not on the same page, and as much as we love our Christian brothers and sisters who have negative attitudes toward our denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, the 'let's pretend' game being played by some with the budget is doing more to harm our work for the Lord than it is doing to heal the breach," he said.

Stone said his motion will send 35 percent of funds collected from churches to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and keep 65 percent in the BSC. That would be an additional 2.5 percent for the SBC than in the BSC's plans A and D in the proposed budget and 3 percent more than the SBC currently receives through the those plans.

Currently the SBC general fund receives 10 percent in Plan B and no funds through Plan C. All four plans give .5 percent to the SBC's program that helps needy, retired ministers.

Stone's proposal also calls for Fruitland Baptist Bible Institute to receive funding equal to the lowest amount given to a BSC college. That would give Fruitland about $300,000 more than it currently gets through the BSC budget and Plan D.

The budget recommended by the BSC Board of Directors keeps all four plans but would no longer count money sent to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as Cooperative Program giving.

BSC budget committee members had told the BSC Executive Committee that the CBF exception was added in hopes of preventing a motion to abolish the four plans. Stone said no one discussed it with him.