Personally, I would like to see a consolidation of the IMB and NAMB to one World Mission Agency, as technology has advanced and the lines of communication improved, one streamlined agency would have its advantages. The disadvantage is personnel, but this could be handled through attrition and certain hiring freezes.

With the State conventions, I see a lot of good that happens within the state structures, but I really wonder how much of what happens in the state (and associational) level is more about doing ministry for the sake of doing ministry, that ministry is the end as opposed to being a means of growing and strengthening the local church to advance the Kingdom.

Look forward to reading your part 2!

Thanks for your comments and questions. They are very good questions that will bring up a lot of complicated answers. I won’t try to be exhaustive but let me try to answer a little from my perspective.

There are some good things that state conventions can offer b/c there are things that it will take a network of churches to do (or do better) that a single church cannot. Here are some good things I think State Conventions can offer: children’s homes, campus ministries (that point students to local churches), Baptist colleges, etc.

Having said that I completely agree with your thoughts on training. This in my understanding is basically the main function of state conventions and I don’t think it is necessary to tie so many funds in it. Not only are there other ministries that can provide the training, there are also local churches that can provide the training. Instead of having a state sunday school guy why not have an actual Sunday School director in another local church walk thru how to start a Sunday School. Why not make the conventions leaner and let them coordinate linking local churches together to do training and ministry.We need to adopt a new paradigm.

Your second question is complex. That could be one way to do it. As it is now you can do that by designating and each local church needs to decide where their $ will be best spent on the mission God has given to them and go with it.

1) What are the best things state conventions have to offer? Those blog posts linked by the KY conv. guy mentioned disaster relief and missions. Better training in missions, evangelism, and pastoral work is offered by a lot of other parachurch organizations, IMO. The actual work of evangelism can be done by local churches and local associations. Disaster relief can be coordinated by local churches, as Lakeshore Baptist Church in MS has done since Katrina wrecked their community back in ’05. So what do State conventions do that somebody else can’t do almost as well or better?

2) What are the downsides to splitting “cooperative giving” into two funds – “State cooperation” and “National cooperation” and churches choose to give to one or both?

One thing I’m getting really tired of is people saying ‘we all want more money to go to the foreign mission field.’

so far it seems that anyone who says that only means it if it means MORE money for their entity. Never less.

1. Why do conventions exist? If the answer is something like, “to help plant thriving local churches who will carry out the work of making disciples and to assist established churches who may be struggling in one area or another,” the answer should strongly influence allocations. We would invest most heavily where zero or few thriving churches existed. The SE US arguably has more thriving local churches than anywhere else in the world, but 60% of CP receipts stay in those very states. This makes absolutely no theological sense. (Baptist ecclesiology would lead us to a conclusion something like the above as a response . . . disciples are made in local churches, not conventions).

2. Is an American more important to God than a person of any other country/nation? If not, why do we spend 37 times more to reach lost people in the US and Canada than we do in the rest of the world on a per capita basis?

3. By definition, if a state convention is successful (establishing/aiding thriving local churches in their state), their demand for resources should decrease over time as the thriving churches they help establish/bolster take ownership of making disciples of those in their Jerusalem and Judea. If the allocation suggested in nearly 100 years ago (1925) was 50/50, surely it should be less than 50 percent today in states with thousands of SBC churches. (This would not be true for state conventions that are not operating in states full of thriving churches).

If God loves the African as much as the American, and if we still believe disciples are made in thriving local churches, we must make some serious allocation adjustments beginning as soon as possible.

Still, I get the sense that ordinary pastors and non-denominational people believe that the 62% is too much.

The tired, overused, and unsuccessful denominational solution to this is to ask churches to just give more. Hasn’t worked for more than a generation. Won’t work now.

Time to recalibrate the divisions and for the states to keep less.