Things don't seem to be going so well for the Southern Baptist Convention - in fact, things have reached the point where the leaders are talking seriously about a financial crisis in the near future. What's going on?
Baptist Press News explains:
The report by the SBC Funding Study Committee lists seven recommendations to reverse what it found to be a gradual decline in both the money given to churches by Southern Baptists and the percentage of a church's offerings passed along to the Cooperative Program. ... The report finds that churches have been sending less and less to the Cooperative Program since the 1980s, during which they set aside an average of 10.5 percent. That figure fell to 7.39 percent last year. Additionally, giving by church members as a percentage of income has declined steadily in the last 30 years and stands at 2.03 percent -- far below the biblical standard of the tithe.
It was during the 1980s when right-wing extremists took over the Southern Baptist Convention and took it on a more conservative course than it had been on previously. Around the same time, giving to individual churches started to decline and giving by churches to the larger organization began to decline. Coincidence? Perhaps - but perhaps not.
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The SBC has more than money problems. People are shrinking away from Christianity in general in this country and from the fundy extremists in particular (which includes the SBC). They only make matters worse for themselves by pushing the wrong buttons.
Right now, in a desparate attempt to stop the slide away from “the faith” they are pushing, in particular, for pastors to lean on “inerrancy” to anyone who’ll listen. The problem with that is anyone who does listen, throws the subject right back into the SBC’s collective face. Biblical Errancy is the easiest pillar to knock away when it comes to proof that the Bible is just a collection of books by not such great scribblers.