What is the Cooperative Program?

I had a church member email me today and ask me what the Cooperative Program is. If you don't know either you shouldn't be embarrassed. But I should. Sometimes as pastors we don't talk about the Cooperative Program very much, and if we do mention it we don't explain it to our people very often. After all, it's not in the Bible, although you can certainly find the principles behind it in Paul's collection from the churches of Asia Minor for the church at Jerusalem.

Here is my answer to the email.

The Cooperative Program is how Southern Baptists fund missions, Christian education (i.e. Baptist Colleges and seminaries), and other ministries of the denominations. Each church decides when they prepare their budget how much they are going to give. It can be a fixed amount, or a percentage of receipts. That money is sent to the State Convention, in our case, the Georgia Baptist Convention. Each state convention decides when it prepares its budget how much it's going to pass along to the Southern Baptist Convention.

The state conventions help pay salaries for Associational Missionaries, they help provide training and assistance to local churches, they may, in cooperation with an association, or with the North American Mission Board, or both, plant new churches, and they support the Baptist Colleges in that state. In our case that is Truett McConell, Shorter, and Brewton Parker. Formerly Mercer, Tift College, and the GA Baptist School of nursing were also Baptist Colleges. The last two are no longer in existence, and Mercer is no longer affiliated with the Georgia Baptist Convention.

The money that gets sent on from the state funds the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board, and our six seminaries and any other national agencies.

In many other denominations, missionaries have to go from church to church raising support from individual churches. When the money runs out, they have to come home on furlough to raise more money. In Southern Baptist life, missionaries come home on regularly scheduled furloughs, and they do visit churches to solicit prayer and support of our mission boards. But they aren't soliciting just for themselves, but for all of the missionaries in the board's employ. In this way all of our churches are cooperating to support our missionaries, seminaries, and other agencies, thus the cooperative program. The agencies are also cooperating, rather than competing with one another for contributions from churches. The State Conventions are cooperating with each other in supporting the Southern Baptist Convention. You might say the missionaries are also cooperating also, in that they raise money for a pool that supports everyone, rather than just their particular ministry. This system (along with the Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings) has allowed us to send out more missionaries than any other evangelical denomination.

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