No sideline passes will be distributed for the Baptist State Convention’s (BSC) annual meeting in Greensboro Nov. 9-11. You need to be in the game.

Messengers to the 179th annual meeting — called “e3” for encounter God, engage culture, experience peace — will elect new leadership, adopt a single giving plan budget for the first time since 1991, confirm bylaws changes that — among other things — will finally define the relationship of the BSC with Baptist Retirement Homes, and meet in a new facility that will offer exceptional convenience.

For the first time the BSC will meet at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro, beginning a commitment to that site for three years. After many years in Winston-Salem before getting bumped twice by Wake Forest University basketball games, the BSC met three years at the Greensboro Convention Center. It was not quite as centrally located as Winston-Salem, but the site afforded more convenient breakouts and auxiliary meeting spaces.

Meeting at Koury provides free meeting space to the Convention, if enough messengers stay at the Sheraton Hotel, which is part of the Koury complex. The convenience is unmatched. You can park your car Monday night and never have to get into it again until you leave after President Rick Speas drops the final gavel Wednesday at noon.

Greensboro’s Four Seasons Mall shares the same parking lot. Inside the Koury are a variety of restaurants, and the staff is working closely with BSC staff to match peak demand times with an assortment of other dining possibilities.

Koury room rates of $126 are higher than for discount hotels nearby, but remember the quality, convenience and ultimate cost savings of thousands of dollars to the Convention if there is no charge for meeting rooms.

Plus, you will have the best meeting spaces you’ve ever enjoyed for a great lineup of breakout sessions.

New budget
Messengers will consider a budget that reflects an increased commitment to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and eliminates money to the national Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) and several organizations funded through optional giving plans. While the first optional giving plan was adopted in 1991, messengers in 2008 eliminated all three. Funds are gone for the Baptist World Alliance, Associated Baptist Press, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and the Baptist Center for Ethics.

Messengers in 2008 also amended a Giving Plans Study Committee recommendation that would have provided an option in the single giving plan for a church to designate 10 percent of its gift to the national CBF. In 2010 remittance forms will include a check box for churches to designate two percent of their gift to theological education at Campbell and Gardner-Webb divinity schools.

The $34.8 million proposed budget will be the smallest BSC budget since 2000. This will be the fifth year of the past seven in which Cooperative Program income is less than the previous year, and the seventh year in the past nine in which income failed to make budget.

Consequently, the budget committee, chaired by Steve Hardy of Winston-Salem, prepared a budget based on 2008 income. It reflects the fifth consecutive one-half percentage point increase to ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention. The steady percentage increase to the SBC is cheered by those who want closer ties to the national body. Others lament the “loss” of $862,500 to state convention ministries that the percentage distribution change over the past five years represents in the 2010 budget.

The full budgetary consequences of shedding support for organizations a significant number of North Carolina Baptist churches appreciate will not be known until several months into 2010.

Responding to complaints that the budget is presented on Wednesdays of the annual meeting, the least attended session, the Program, Place and Preacher Committee, chaired by Timmy Blair, moved the budget discussion and vote to 2:10 p.m. Tuesday.

Officer elections
Four men announced in May that they will be candidates for BSC offices. Others may surface by Convention time, but early announcements tend to limit the field.

Ed Yount, pastor at Woodlawn Baptist Church in Conover, is the only announced candidate for president. He is current first vice president.

Mark Harris, current second vice president, will be nominated as first vice president. Harris is pastor of First Baptist Church, Charlotte.

In the only currently contested race, Ray Davis, pastor of Forbush Baptist Church north of Winston-Salem, will be a candidate for second vice president, as will CJ Bordeaux, pastor of Gorman Baptist Church in Durham.

Yount said in his announcement that he sees the presidency as a position that “would be both ears and voice for North Carolina Baptists and try to serve as a catalyst for evangelism and missions.”

Baptist Retirement Homes
Ever since the Baptist Retirement Homes received tentative approval from the BSC Executive Committee in 2005 to invoke the provisions of the BSC Articles and Bylaws to allow the Retirement Homes to elect its own trustees in exchange for giving up Cooperative Program funding, the relationship between that institution and the BSC has been in turmoil.

The Executive Committee eventually revoked its tentative approval after Convention lawyer John Small interpreted the action as a “severing” of relationship, rather than simply an adjustment of relationship. Articles and Bylaws provisions govern the process of severing a relationship and establishing a new one.

When Small and the Executive Committee suggested that the Retirement Homes back up and start over, the Retirement Homes clung to what it perceived as original approval and declined to restart the process. Numerous letters, conversations, meetings and a task force study ensued with no ultimate resolution, except a growing conviction that parting of ways was ultimately inevitable.

The Articles and Bylaws changes messengers will consider in November will designate the Retirement Homes as an “historical social services institution,” indicating a once upon a time relationship.

Other changes in the Articles and Bylaws, carried in this issue of the Recorder in complete detail, condense, combine and simplify but have few substantive changes.

Come to Greensboro. Get into the game.