Cooperative Program Giving - Why the 10% Ideal?

My comment on the other thread about seeking a restriction on SBC presidents has to do with common participation.

The mega church generally outgive the small churches in terms of dollars but not in terms of sacrifice. Churches that give sacrificially to the CP need to be the churches that lead the convention (presidents, committee members, etc...)

Now if a church is giving 10% to CP but is unable to properly support a pastor and the local ministries with the remaining 90%, there is way more wrong the particular church than with its CP percentage.

 

I think the cooperative program is a great program for the foreign missionaries. It allows them to send their children to any school they desire. It also allows them to receive a standard of living comparable to pastoring a 900 member church. If you will look at the return rate of SBC missionaries it is nil compared to those who employ the societal method of raising support. If you will go back in Baptist history the societal method was being severely abused. There were those who were getting wealthy by raising support for those already there. It was kind of like a tax collector. So along came the coperative program. What disturbs even more is the fact that men like O.S. Hawkins who was at FBC, Dallas now works for the annuity board and received a pay increase.

But have you ever seen a denomination that didn't go down over time? The only one I can think of is the Worldwide Church of God. It is the only denomination that actually came around to believing the Bible and stood for what is right.

 

My point is that if a church is unable to support the ministries that the members of the church desire to support, there may be a more serious reason.

I prefer the Baptist "free church" tradition but am fully aware that probably the majority of all smaller churches are the results of church splits over trivial issues. The result of this is often that these churches are unable to do what they believe that God would have them do.

There are approx. 41,000 SBC churches in the U.S. with an average size of less than 250 members. My experience tells me that there are considerably less than 41,000 authentic, God-called pastors in the SBC (judging from the quality of preaching, pastoring, mindsets and attitudes of a number of pastors) and there are probably considerably less than enough motivated laity to sustain 41,000 churches at the present.

Imagine if the trivial were set aside and 41,000 churches of 250 or less became around 20,000 churches of 500 or so. Instead of the average church having 20 or so laypeople/church doing serious ministry, you'd probably have 50 or more. This would free up laypeople to disciple other laypeople and preachers to be better preachers.

I do know that such a thing is not going to happen because of the number of personal kingdoms that would have to be destroyed, but it is an interesting thought.

In the end, my point that a church that is unable to sustain its local ministries on 90% of its undesignated offerings is a church that has far greater problems.