by Sandy » Mon Feb 20, 2017 9:49 pm
I know the SBC made some changes regarding how it counts CP giving, in order to allow designated gifts to "count", at least with the SBC, if it is contributed directly. The most recent annual of the SBTC that I have shows the 2015 statistical table, and reports Prestonwood's undesignated CP giving at $75,000. The article says the amount could be up to $1 million, but if they're giving most of their SBC contribution through designated channels, it doesn't seem they'd need to escrow the whole amount just to punish the ERLC. If I'm not mistaken, William, can't a church designate everything it gives and still count the dollar amounts now? So why not just pluck out the amount that the ERLC gets, and take them off the list?
Prestonwood has done this before, with the BGCT. They were going to escrow their CP contributions to force a particular issue, don't remember exactly what it was, but as it turned out, their entire annual contribution to the BGCT wasn't even enough to get them the full compliment of messengers.
I would say, given the way the bylaws are now worded, that a church which decides to escrow its CP gifts because it is protesting the actions of one of the agencies, has established itself as no longer being in friendly cooperation with the denomination. There's a way to do this, following the rules, and this isn't it.