Updated Friday, Jan. 11, 2008

Setting true priorities

In the Oct. 27 issue the editor implied the more opportunities people have to give, the more they will learn to give. I have no problem being cited in the article with the exception that it stated my comments in the Board of Directors meeting were meant to imply "if we did not have special offerings, people and churches would give more through the Cooperative Program (CP) to get the job done."

This is not at all what I intended to suggest. I was suggesting that if we would start fully funding through the Cooperative Program what we preach as priority, then giving to CP would go up. Then we wouldn't need special offerings to cover the expenses of priority ministries and could therefore use special offerings to fund what is not highest priority. It is my strong belief that if we as a Convention take this approach to budgeting, CP will go up significantly!

This implies that we as N.C. Baptists would have to have a serious, non-territorial, biblical discussion on what is really most effective in the movement of Christ to reconcile the world to the Father. It remains to be seen if we are honestly willing to have this discussion and act upon the results.

In a state with thousands of Baptist churches and billions of dollars of resources, we still insist on spending most all of our millions of CP dollars on programs and ministries that relate primarily to N.C. Baptist (Christians). Meanwhile, things that have the greatest impact and positive testimony of Christ in a massively lost world, like the International Mission Board, Baptist Children's Home, Disaster Relief, etc., are dependent on secondary offerings to fund their ministries - all while we talk about them as the "highest priority!"

The only worthy purpose of the N.C. Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention is to be a network to do things together that we can't do alone in order to reach the most people possible with the gospel! Let's take the "Simple Church" model the Convention is encouraging for local churches and apply it to the Convention.

Austin Rammell

Dallas, N.C.