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The Executive Board of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention approved a recommended 2.55 percent budget increase for 2011 and filled a vacancy in its minister-church relations department, hiring Jeremy Roberts of Lenoir City, Tenn., as a ministry associate.
During its summer meeting held Aug. 10 at the SBTC office in Grapevine, the board offered a thanksgiving prayer that Cooperative Program receipts through July were slightly ahead of budget.
The board also approved David Galvan, pastor of Iglesia Bautista Nueva Vida in Garland, as the 2010 recipient of the H. Paul Pressler Award, to be given during the SBTC annual meeting in November. Galvan served as SBTC first vice president in 2004.
The 2.55 percent budget increase to $25,469,987 requires approval by messengers to the SBTC annual meeting, scheduled Nov. 15-16 in Corpus Christi. The 2011 budget reflects the split of 55 percent of Cooperative Program receipts going to Southern Baptist Convention ministry with the remaining 45 percent kept for in-state ministry. Missions remains the largest SBTC budget line item at 23.6 percent of the in-state allocations.
New MCR associate
A Georgia native who spent part of his growing up years in Texas as a music minister’s son, Roberts told the board how he responded to a gospel invitation at a Plano church at age 6 and sensed a ministry calling the day he graduated high school.
“I am thankful to God that he has called me into ministry and he is the Lord and savior of my life,” Roberts told the board. He joins the SBTC staff after serving as pastor of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Lenoir City, Tenn.
As minister-church relations associate, Roberts will serve SBTC churches in congregational and pastoral care, cultivate relationships with younger pastors, and coordinate the convention’s Next Step Resume Service.
Roberts holds the bachelor of science, master of arts, and doctor of ministry degrees from Liberty University and Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Va., and the master of divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He is pursuing a doctor of philosophy from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.
CP receipts slightly ahead
Chief Financial Officer Joe Davis reported that year-to-date CP receipts through July 30 were $95,445 ahead of budget. Through July the convention had under spent by $881,928. Additionally, counting interest income, designated giving receipts and NAMB funding, the convention had a net operating income through July of $1,173,476.
CP giving receipts have not been a “linear progression,” Davis said, adding, “We’ve been down and then we get back up.”
Noting God’s financial blessing on the convention, board chairman John Meador asked fellow board member Dale Perry to offer a thanksgiving prayer.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you for being such a gracious God. In a time when people are struggling financially, Lord, you have blessed us,” Perry prayed.
Praying and seeking
SBTC Executive Director Jim Richards told the board the staff emphasis in the next year would be on “praying and listening,” which is also the theme of the upcoming annual meeting, taken from 2 Chronicles 7:14, and a ministry template for the staff as its hosts events in 2011.
Richards said the emphasis began in a staff retreat last May.
“We are praying and listening,” Richards said. “If we will listen to God from Scripture and the Holy Spirit, then we will see God move? Of course, that is true for all of us on a daily basis,” he added, and especially for preachers and teachers, “and it is a desire from your staff’s hearts that we would hear from God and honor God more.”
Describing spiritual conditions as a “spiritual dearth,” Richards said part of the praying and listening emphasis would encourage churches to pray for one another.
Richards reiterated the core values of the convention?a biblically based, confessional fellowship, kingdom focused on missions and evangelism, and missionally funded, which “means we pool our resources” through the Cooperative Program missions funding channel.
Noting the CP is the “best available method today” for cooperating in world missions, Richards quipped, “It’s not a sacred cow, but it is a sacred how.”
As part of his report, Richards called to the podium church planter Damon Halliday of Keystone Community Outreach in Fort Worth and Engage Team coordinator Garrett Wagoner.
Halliday thanked the board for its help in turning a declining inner-city church into a “re-start” that has grown from 15 people to about 225 and is committed to intentional evangelism. Halliday told of a recent outreach that drew 400 people with 25 professions of faith.
Wagoner, a master’s student at Criswell College, told the board that 14 Engage Team college students conducted revivals and outreach events in 25 churches this summer, 80 salvation decisions and “countless other things you can’t put words to.”
Wagoner said the teams also saw two young men surrender to ministry callings.
“Giving through the Cooperative Program is an investment in students’ lives, in churches ? You have a part in every person who comes to Christ through the cooperative ministries of the SBTC,” Richards told the board.
