Several organizations that had been receiving money from the Baptist State Convention were excluded in the new,single giving plan budget messengers passed in the annual meeting Nov. 10.

Those organizations included Baptist World Alliance, Baptist Center for Ethics, Associated Baptist Press and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, as well as scholarships for theological education in non-Southern Baptist Convention, and non-North Carolina Baptist schools.

Support for three of these entities – Baptist Center for Ethics, Associated Baptist Press and the theological education piece – sprouted when the Southern Baptist Convention Bible controversies seeped into North Carolina. Baptist World Alliance and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs are long lived entities that received significant funding from the SBC, but were cut off when new SBC leadership removed a few fence posts to shrink the corral.

Some North Carolina Baptists, appreciating the value of those organizations, continued to offer funding through Plans B and C after the SBC quit, until those plans were eliminated in the new budget that begins Jan. 4.

No one realistically anticipated any different result when the budget committee was charged last year with creating a single plan budget from the basic Plan A and the three others that had evolved since 1991. Funding for those groups was good as gone as soon as messengers authorized the giving plans study committee in 2007.

But here is where confusion creeps in. Some are extrapolating the Convention budget action to mean a church can no longer designate any money through the Baptist State Convention to any of the above mentioned organizations, or to North Carolina Baptist colleges or Baptist Retirement Homes.

That is not true. The Convention’s financial policy clearly allows any North Carolina Baptist church to designate gifts to any entity that has ever been in the North Carolina Baptist budget, whether or not that entity is currently in the budget.

For example, the Baptist Center for Ethics erroneously claimed in a Nov. 15 editorial by its director Robert Parham that the BSC voted “to deny churches the opportunity to give through the convention to the Baptist Center for Ethics, thereby ending an almost 20-year partnership.” The “partnership” has ended if by partnership the Baptist Center for Ethics means it is no longer in the BSC budget. But the Convention did not vote to deny churches the opportunity to contribute through the Convention.

The BSC financial plan allows designations to be given through the Baptist State Convention to any organization that has been in the BSC budget. That would include Baptist Center for Ethics, CBF national, BWA or anything else that was in the budget.

Such gifts will be sent in a lump sum to the designated organization without detail about the source of the money. That has long been the redistributive policy of the Convention. For that reason, it would be better for the organization if the church sent its gift directly to the organization it wishes to bless. Then the organization will know where the gift came from and will know who to thank.

Of course, the ability to designate through their single check to the Convention makes it easier for the church. And it helps the Convention to continue as such a conduit because it is always good to be the recipient of checks. Limiting options for churches will limit the number of checks the Convention sees in the mail.

If you intend to designate to any organization, be sure to write the organization’s name and not just its ministry. Because new ministries have been started, it is not sufficient to indicate “older adults” if you mean Baptist Retirement Homes, or “women’s ministry” if you mean Woman’s Missionary Union.

Any church can negatively designate up to three budget items and still have its gift qualify as Cooperative Program. A negative designation is a church saying it wants none of its gift to go to some budget line item. A church can negatively designate more than three items, but then none of its gift will count as Cooperative Program.

Money that is designated away from a line item will be distributed by percentage over the entire rest of the budget, according to John Butler, BSC executive leader for business services.

For further clarification, the national Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has been in the BSC budget, so a church can designate to CBF national through the BSC. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina has never been in the BSC budget, so any gift designated to CBFNC will be returned to the church.

Scholarship funds for theological education outside North Carolina in non-SBC schools have been sparsely utilized and are not specifically in the 2010 budget. The 2010 remittance form will have a check box by which a church can designated two percent of its gift to the divinity schools at Gardner-Webb and Campbell Universities.

This is the scenario according to the current financial plan. It honors the historic relationships between North Carolina Baptists and these organizations while leaving decisions about financial support completely in the hands of individual churches.