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HONORING COMMITMENTS — Richard Cothern, pastor of Enterprise Church in Clarke County, helped lead the church in being faithful to fulfill its obligations to the Cooperative Program. “Jesus gets the glory for what He’s doing in our church,” he said. (Photo by Tony Martin)
By Tony Martin Associate Editor
Enterprise may be a sleepy little community in Clarke County, but Enterprise Church is anything but sleepy. Rather, it is amodel of commitment to a cause greater than itself.
Richard Cothern is pastor of Enterprise Church, which was established in 1847 and has a history of being faithful to support missions both through the Cooperative Program (CP) and local and associational work. It has been in its present location for many years, and its current sanctuary was built in 1947. Prior to that, the older sanctuary was built in 1909, and stained glass windows and pews from that era are still in use.
According to Cothern, Taylor Wallace pastored the church for 26 years, from 1962 to 1988. “He had retired,” said Cothern, “but he was interim pastor at the church right before I came. The church had been working on a building project — a family life center — before I got there. The month before I began, Taylor led the church to vote to build the building, and started taking funds in 1996.”
Work continued on the building during Cothern’s early years. “We were able to take the keys to the building in February of 1999. The building cost $852,000, and we owed $500,000 on it.”
The church had financed the project with a seven-year balloon note. In the period from 1999-2001, any funds received over $15,000 were placed on the principal and the note was paid off by the eighth year.
There were challenges, however. “Along the way, we weren’t always able to put extra money on the principal,” said Cothern. “We had an economic downturn in Clarke County — some businesses closed, and it affected our church. We had been faithful to pay our missions offerings and projects, but when the downturn came, it became difficult. It happened all at once, and it wasn’t something we could see coming.”
Cothern had a member of the church, Sonny Turnage, who had assisted him in an unofficial capacity with church finances and how money was disbursed.
“I remember when he looked at me one day and said, ‘We won’t be able to pay our Cooperative Program this month.’” At the time, the church paid a fixed CP amount, rather than a percentage of undesignated income. The church based its 20% CP offering on the projected budget income instead of actual offerings.
“It was a shock,” said Cothern. “I look at the CP as an obligation, not just an expense.”
Being careful to state clearly that God got all the glory for what happened, Cothern continued, “Before we vote on the budget, we pray about missions and our budget. We don’t put our missions line items down with other expenses. We vote together to ask God to show us what His will is. We accept that vote as the will of God for us. So whether it’s the Children’s Village, the Seaman’s Center, associational gifts, or the CP, it all becomes an obligation.”
2009 COOPERATIVE PROGRAM MISSION BUDGET
GRAND TOTAL = $34,940,629
Cothern told Turnage, “It’s important that we help the church understand that this is an obligation. It’s not if we’re going to pay, it’s when we’re going to pay.” At the next deacons’ meeting, Turnage told the deacons that the church would not be able to pay their Cooperative Program gifts that month.
“We were so disappointed,” Cothern noted. “The church is so strongly mission minded. It wasn’t a bad choice we’d made — I just think God was putting us to the test.”
After a few moments of quiet, Cothern told the deacons, “We need to really make sure that when our church can, we need to be committed to pay all our missions obligations.”
The deacons understood that this was not optional. “The figure we’d decided upon was like a vow,” Cothern continued. “So we ended up about $50,000 behind in CP gifts. When we made the last payment on our building note, someone asked, ‘Are we going to have a note burning?’” I told them no, because we have to pay our CP obligations, and we aren’t going to celebrate paying the building off until we pay our CP.”
With Cothern still making clear that God was to get the glory for what happened, the church had a “Celebrate Cooperative Program Day” in April 2008. “We owed about $10,000 at the time, and we wanted to rally around the Cooperative Program. The next Wednesday — three days later — we paid that last amount, $10,245.”
Many churches would have just “blown off” being behind in Cooperative Program giving.
“We wouldn’t do that for two reasons,” Cothern said. “First, we can’t treat the lifeline of our missionaries that lightly. Church staff people wouldn’t want that done with their salaries! It’s just not right to treat the CP like that. Second, either our process of understanding the will of God together has credibility or it doesn’t. If we vote on missions, we are to ask that God’s will be done, and how we discover that together is what is important. The process can break down, but if it maintains its integrity, then that is the will of God as we understand it to be. So we obligate ourselves, and not satisfying that is not an option. I would have felt like we were not obeying the will of God.”
Currently, the church gives 20% of its undesignated gifts to the Cooperative Program, in addition to its other mission gifts.
Church Offering Categories are based on church offering reported on the 2007-2008 Annual Church Profile. Cooperative Program Gifts are actual receipts posted by the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board from October 2007 - September 2008.
“The operation of Blue Mountain College is dependent upon the resources provided through the Cooperative Program, making cost of attendance more affordable. The effectiveness of the CP has demonstrated that collective efforts of Baptists make it possible to influence Kingdom’s work in positive and enduring ways. Thanks be to God!”
Bettye Rogers Coward President, Blue Mountain College
“Katie Caves, the daughter of a Baptist preacher, is fulfilling her dreams of becoming a medical missionary overseas. A Cooperative Program scholarship pays for much of her Mississippi College education. ‘Without the Cooperative Program, I’d definitely not be here,’ said the 18-year-old freshman from Bogue Chitto.”
Lee Royce President, Mississippi College
“As president of William Carey University I am grateful for the monies channeled through the Cooperative Program. This support enables us to provide a challenging academic program in a caring, Christian environment as students grow in scholarship, leadership, and service. Thank you, friends of Carey, for your unfailing support of Christian education.”
Tommy King President, William Carey University
MISSIONS ALLOCATIONS
GRAND TOTAL
$34,940,629
Van Camp
QUEEN CREEK, Az. (BP) — Home prices in metro Phoenix are down dramatically, multitudes of homes are in foreclosure, and thousands of people are unemployed.
The Phoenix-area Queen Creek suburb, where San Tan Heights [Southern Baptist] Church is located, is among the hardest-hit communities in the nation.
“A lot of people have called me who are at the brink. A few people have come up to me at church who are at the point of crisis — bankruptcy, losing their home,” said Billy Van Camp, founding pastor of the church that started with five people at its first service Easter Sunday in 2004. More than 250 now attend.
While reaching out to help those in financial distress and helping others stave off distress, San Tan Heights [Southern Baptist] Church is seeking to maintain a biblically based, outward-focused, forward-moving perspective.
The congregation continues to give 10% of its offerings to missions through the Cooperative Program, which supports missions and ministries of state Baptist conventions and the Southern Baptist Convention.
The church also bought 12 acres last summer next to the high school where it currently meets, with plans to erect a Sprung —similar to a tent — later this year.
“I have been trying to make sense of all that is going on in this world,” Van Camp wrote in his February letter to San Tan Heights members. “It seems we are in a time of unprecedented chaos in our generation… The drastic change in the economy has people living in fear and holding on to money.”
Van Camp listed six ways the church could respond to economic uncertainty:
“Run to God, honoring Him with at least one-tenth of all you have,” Van Camp wrote, reflecting the commitment San Tan Heights has maintained to the Cooperative Program since it started.
“I just think it’s a principle,” the pastor told Baptist Press. “If I am going to ask my church members to give 10%, it would be sort of blasphemous if the church didn’t, and besides… why not give to thousands of missionaries, rather than just one or two? It’s just such a great tool for global evangelization.
“I believe a church that is not globally minded will never be locally effective. Matthew 28:19-20. If you look at Jesus’ periscope, His contextual emphasis, you have to start here locally, but the Kingdom is global. We need to be about our neighbors, but we need to be about people on the other side of the world too.”
Missions at San Tan Heights includes short-term trips to Ecuador and the Virgin Islands, and the sending of a volunteer research team to Ghana, Africa.
It starts with meeting people, Van Camp said. At least 35 people have been baptized each year of the church’s existence; 47 the first year. “From the beginning, we’ve prayed hard and we’ve worked hard at meeting people. We knock on doors; we advertise. My main thing is meeting people where they’re at — grocery store, restaurant, parking lot. Put a smile on your face and invite them to church.”
Van Camp was a successful building contractor and businessman with a concrete company when he said yes to God’s call on his life five years ago.
“I was teaching Sunday School and felt I wasn’t doing enough for God,” he recounted. “I prayed about it and God said, ‘If you knock on the door of a school [to find a meeting place], I’ll do the rest.’”
When Van Camp knocked at an elementary school, the principal told him, “Absolutely not. You’ll never be able to use this building.” A month later, the principal called and offered the building.
“God did what I couldn’t,” Van Camp said. “First Samuel 14:6. I said, ‘It might work or it might not work.’ My role is just to be obedient.”
Acknowledging that he’s a fairly driven person, Van Camp jumped with both feet into the church planter role but about a year later at the dinner table after prayer for the meal, his gregarious teenage daughter screamed at the top of her lungs, “Daddy, I hate you’re a pastor.”
“That woke me up,” Van Camp said. “I think it’s the most important thing as a witness and a pastor to care properly for your family. 1 Timothy 5:8. The church is important but our family comes first. We pray together… we encourage each other.”
His daughter Paige now is a sophomore at California Baptist University. His son Trey was licensed to preach at age 16 and led 60 teens to make professions of faith in Jesus in the last year. Completing the family: Shea, in the fourth grade at a Christian school where her pastor’s wife/mom, Lisa, teaches kindergarten.
“Things are changing; it’s the cycle of the Bible,” Van Camp reflected. “God supplies us with the information and we just need to let the Holy Spirit show it to us. John 16:13. I believe the church is going to change. Ephesians 3, the mystery of Christ. We need to get ready and be more like what God intended church to be.”
The church is to help the hurting as Jesus did; church members need to realize that their mission is to carry on Jesus’ work rather than just to sit and soak, Van Camp said.
“When you get on a bus, the church being the bus, you first look for the destination of that bus,” Van Camp said. “We want people to realize exactly where our bus is going. Its destination is outward — to reach the lost — and although we accept and love everyone, our hope is that people will find a church that they can stay with.”
Van Camp’s church planting method is to reach people with God’s love, to teach others to do the same and to disciple those who respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
“The Bible is our guide to know and understand what God wants us to do individually, as well as collectively as His church,” Van Camp said. “We believe that God must do great things in us before He can do great things through us.
“It’s meeting people and teaching people how to be a conversationalist,” the pastor continued. “John 6:44. The person is only going to be saved as the Holy Spirit will move them…. We have to love people and show them Jesus.”
San Tan Heights this year locally is focusing on helping the hurting in Queen Creek. The church is providing financial instruction for people in the community — Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University — and preaching stewardship from the pulpit. In addition, while money isn’t always the best answer, a substantial benevolence ministry helps those in crisis.
“With the economy, there’s not a lot going on,” Van Camp said. “The church worldwide is in a new situation. We have to help people through their finances and through their hurts. The church needs to step up significantly in that. If people are ever, ever, ever going to see Jesus, it’s going to be through the church.”
