You may want to read the Constitution and Bylaws of the SBC before commenting.
1) Every SBC affiliated church- regardless of size is entitled to two messengers.
2) Every SBC affiliated church is entitle to one additional messenger for each full percent of the church's undesignated receipts
3) Every SBC affiliated church is entitled to one additional messenger for each $6,000 given to the SBC
4) NO SBC affiliated church shall be entitled to more than 12 messengers.
If a church can only have 12 messengers - that is a very small influence at a SBC meeting,where there are thousands of messengers.
Sounds very reasonable to me.
What came first - the co-op pgem or the SBC.
The SBC came first - in 1845 - because they want to appoint certian missionaries that the Tri-annual board would not.
The Co-op was formally formed in 1925.
From the SBC pages:
- It presents a unified and comprehensive budget, throwing a funding blanket over statewide, national and international missions and ministries.
- It provides a long‐term sustainability for our entities. When a church makes their missions giving as a percentage of their church budgets, it provide consistency and stability.
- It adheres to our long term Baptist principle that "we can do more together than alone."
- The Cooperative Program mitigates competition between entities thereby allowing a balanced Acts 1:8Strategy.
- It levels the playing field, and makes a place at the table for small and ethnic churches. Every church can stand hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, on level ground, as partners in the gospel (large churches, small churches, new churches, growing churches, graying churches, and ethnic churches)
And yes - we can vote ourselves out of the SBC any time we want - we just dont want to.
Is the SBC perfect - of course not,
but neither is the GARBC, the ABC, the BBF or the thousands of unaffiliated churches.
And one more thing about the SBC co-op
When a missionary from IBF churches is over seas - and one of his supported churches disbands, decides to lower their monthly giving -
and ect, the missionary is caught short.
Not so, with a SBC - foreign missionary - when he is overseas, he does not have to worry about loosing any of his suppot.
and one other thing - we have met several of our SBC missionaries. Our churches do have mission conferences and our local association
often has a missionary as a guest speaker.
