by Sandy » Sun Oct 30, 2011 7:24 pm
A 15% shortfall, even in this economy, in one year, should be a major red flag. Comparatively, receipts in the SBC were up slightly this year, and collectively have seen a shortfall over the past five years, including the depths of the recession, of less than 5%. It should also be noted that undesignated receipts, those that CBF keeps, were down by almost 19%.
And that, as much as Vestal's retirement, and the subsequent retirement of Terry Hamrick, raises a question that, after ten pages of discussion, still hasn't really been answered yet, and that's what the immediate, and long term, future holds for CBF.
The organization claims "about 1,800" contributing churches. Dividing the receipts into that number, the approximate contribution per church averages about $8,300. I know of at least one church that gives upwards of $250,000 annually, and that's probably at the higher end of the spectrum. But even if there are 18 to 20 at that level, and perhaps a hundred core churches that have separated from the SBC and give all of their missions dollars to CBF, if you do the math, and you get beyond that inner circle of churches, the average contribution per church per year shrinks down to less than $5,000.
As it appears, even now, CBF serves as a pass through for funding to its partner institutions, and that leaves some for its global missions support. But it is obvious that changes will have to be made. Fortunately, most of the partner institutions, the schools and other agencies, raise the majority of their own funds. And while its supporters, at least on this board, don't see survival as a long term issue (and I do), certainly there must be some concern over the fact that a 20 year old organization is seeing its already small budget shrink by 15% in one budget year.
It would seem that the first priority would be to solidify the support base, because that seems to be eroding. And I can't help but think that will involve the complicated, but necessary, task of getting churches off the fence. It will also involve the eventual job of raising up a generation of churches that have CBF roots without ties to the SBC. The conservatives have controlled the SBC completely for almost thirty years now, and all of the exiting that's going to result from that has been done, at least in the direction that CBF has gone. A dozen new churches here and there over low level state and associational battles won't be the silver bullet.
So what's CBF going to do?