Past SBC Presidents' CP Giving

Unless you've just come from the Methodist Church you know that Ronnie Floyd has recently been announced as a nominee for president of the Southern Baptist Convention. His nomination has been criticized because the church he pastors, First Baptist Church—Springdale, AR reportedly gave a paltry 0.27% to the Cooperative Program last year (or 1.8% to “joint SBC causes”).

EthicsDaily.com (not my favorite site for news, especially news of the Southern Baptist Convention) had good information about our past SBC presidents’ CP giving in a February article that you can read here. Since I don’t want to pour over hard to find and probably inaccessible ACP reports, I’ll take their reporting at face value.

According to the article, current SBC president, Bobby Welch, pastor of First Baptist Church—Orlando, FL has given at least 15 percent through the Cooperative Program for the last 30 years. Other past presidents who were commended “with records of strong Cooperative Program support” included Jimmy Draper, Morris Chapman and Jim Henry.

The others who didn’t score so well are: (approximate CP percentages)

Adrian Rogers (1979,86-87) Bellevue Baptist—Memphis, TN 4%
Bailey Smith (1980-81)First Southern Baptist—Del City, OK 1.19 %
Charles Stanley (1984-85) First Baptist—Atlanta, GA 2.5%
Jerry Vines (1988-89) First Baptist—Jacksonville, Fla. 2.3%
Ed Young (1993-1994) Second Baptist—Houston, TX 0.5%
James Merritt (2001-02) First Baptist—Snellville, GA 2-3%
Jack Graham (2003-04) Prestonwood Baptist—Plano, TX 0.5%

Anthony Jordan, Executive Director of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma has an article on this. I'll try to post that later.