Greensboro Convention Is Gonna Be Messy

Southern Baptists from across the country will descend on North Carolina this summer for the annual gathering at the convention. This is the fifth time the SBC has held their annual meeting in North Carolina but the first time since 1916 in Asheville.

There are many topics that will bring much heated discussion this June and one is the election of our new president. Johnny Hunt was supposed to be nominated (and the way it works these days - to be "nominated" is to later be "coronated" - there is no "election). For some reason, Dr. Hunt withdrew his name from consideration. At the same time, Dr. Hunt nominated Ronnie Floyd of the First Baptist Church of Springdale, Arkansas (yes, the "fire-engine-baptistry" church).

Since then, Dr. Floyd has had no end of trouble. First, he agreed to an interview on a Baptist blog (see questions here) then suddenly declined.

Meanwhile, much is being made of a recent recommendation by the Executive Committee that a person should not be nominated to denominational office unless the church in which he serves gives at least ten percent to the Cooperative Program. The Florida Baptist Witness just published an article saying that this new rule means Floyd can NOT be president because his church gave a total of 0.27% to the CP last year.

This blog shows all the hard-n-fast numbers:

Year	Undesignated Receipts	Cooperative Program	Percentage
1986	$1,398,075	$128,586	9.19%
1987	$1,651,755	$146,929	8.89%
1988	$1,882,105	$179,840	9.56%
1989	$2,165,265	$200,000	9.24%
1990	$2,434,105	$200,000	8.22%
1991	$2,584,245	$200,000	7.74%
1992	$2,955,735	$200,000	6.77%
1993	$3,783,625	$220,000	5.81%
1994	$4,323,764	$242,000	5.60%
1995	$4,510,307	$250,000	5.54%
1996	$4,915,860	$275,000	5.59%
1997	$5,174,379	$219,000	4.23%
1998	$5,386,436	$225,000	4.18%
1999*	$5,926,454	$486,800	8.21%
2000*	$7,392,331	$474,927	6.42%
2001	$8,028,127	$174,992	2.18%
2002	$8,278,618	$248,917	3.01%
2003	$10,470,164	$204,992	1.96%
2004	$10,881,867	$312,226	2.87%
2005	$11,952,137	$32,000	0.27%

*Data for these two years does not differentiate the church's
CP participation from its total missions expenditure for the year

Of course, this does not take into account other types of giving, such as Annie Armstrong, Lottie Moon and giving that bypasses the state convention.

Stuff like this reminds me of why I will NEVER work in denominational politics.