EDITOR’S NOTE: Read more news from the latest Missouri Baptist Convention executive board meeting here: “Yeats asks MBC executive board to begin search for new executive director.”
JEFFERSON CITY – During their meeting here, March 6-7, the Missouri Baptist Convention’s (MBC) executive board recommended 2024 goals for the Cooperative Program and other statewide offerings.
The board set the 2024 CP goal at $15 million, while setting statewide offering goals as follows: $760,000 for the Missouri Missions Offering (MMO); $4 million for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering; $2.2 million for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering; and $150,000 for the World Hunger Funds.
The MBC’s 2024 allocation goals are based on a $15 million CP budget. This CP budget sets aside 5.25 percent of the total CP giving for “shared administration costs,” which funds annuity protections, CP promotion and The Pathway. From the remaining CP budget, 34.91 percent is allocated for Missouri Baptist missions and ministries.
Additionally, 21.94 percent of the total CP budget is allocated for Missouri Baptist entities, including the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home, Baptist Homes & Healthcare Ministries, the Missouri Baptist Foundation, Hannibal-LaGrange University, Missouri Baptist University and Southwest Baptist University.
The remaining 37.90 percent is allocated for Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries. Any CP receipts above the budgetary goal will be split evenly between MBC and SBC ministries.
The MBC’s executive board also amended the 2023 allocation goals, as follows: 5.75 percent for “shared administrative costs” [previously, the goal had been set at 5 percent]; 34.72 percent for MBC missions and ministries [previously, 35 percent]; 21.83 percent for Missouri Baptist entities [previously, 22 percent]; and 37.70 percent for SBC missions and ministries [previously, 38 percent]. The adjustment allows for further CP promotion, leading up to the CP’s 100th anniversary in 2025. Executive board members expressed hope that further CP promotion will ultimately benefit all of the ministries and mission efforts of Missouri Southern Baptists.
Other business
In other business, the MBC executive board:
• recommended the 2024 distribution plan for MMO funds received in 2023;
• approved exhibitors for the 2023 MBC annual meeting;
• recommended the distribution of the MBC’s underspend, including $100,000 for general reserves and the remainder for “blessing checks” to be given in May to all full-time MBC employees;
• authorized the MBC executive director to handle real estate sales, in consultation with the executive board’s properties committee chair and business services committee chair;
• authorized the executive board chairman, the executive director, or a designated representative to manage legal expenditures, in consultation with the MBC board’s business services committee;
• released funds that had been restricted for a BSU construction project in Springfield and placing those funds, instead, in the MBC’s general reserves.