Proposed 2007 Cooperative Program Budget

“Board sends record budget to messengers”

By William H. Perkins Jr.
Editor

The Mississippi Baptist Convention Board (MBCB) will send another record Cooperative Program (CP) budget proposal to messengers for fiscal 2007, after holding steady with the same budget amount from 2005 to 2006 to allow for recovery from the financial effects of Hurricane Katrina.

The proposed 2007 CP budget approved on August 29 by the convention board’s executive committee and later by the full board, is $33,188,934 — $1,874,433, or 5.99%, higher than the twin 2005 and 2006 budget totals of $31,314,491.

The convention board also set challenge portion percentages for CP gifts after the budget is met at 50% for Christian education, 30% for Southern Baptist missions, and 20% for new church starts in Mississippi.

The proposed budget will be submitted to messengers to the 2006 Mississippi Baptist Convention on October 31-November 1 at First Church, Jackson. Messengers are selected from cooperating member churches of the Mississippi Baptist Convention.

In other business, Larry Otis, chairman of the Conference Ministries Study Committee, presented a preliminary report on the work of the committee which is charged with studying the condition of Gulfshore Assembly near Pass Christian and to explore all possibilities related to Mississippi Baptist conference ministries.

Gulfshore Assembly, owned by MBCB and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, is one of three Mississippi Baptist camping/conference facilities. The committee is charged with positioning the state’s Baptist conference ministries for the 21st century.

“The committee has met several times with numerous public officials, engineers, and architects to determine the extent of damage to Gulfshore,” said Otis, a member of Calvary Church, Tupelo, and former mayor of Tupelo.

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has established a ‘cumulative damage level’ of 50% on structures in the flood zone where Gulfshore is located. That means if a structure sustains more than 50% damage, FEMA requires that it be completely demolished and rebuilt to the new standards in order to qualify for flood insurance,” he explained.

“Kelly Auditorium and the staff housing were destroyed, and have been torn down. They’re gone. Gulfshore’s main building sustained 48.9% damage, meaning any future small damage would require that entire structure to also be torn down and rebuilt, just to qualify for flood insurance,” he said.

That’s not all, Otis pointed out.

“The proposed FEMA guidelines, which set ‘storm surge levels’ at 24 feet above mean sea level at Gulfshore’s location, would render the first and second floors of the Gulfshore main building unusable for any enclosed purpose such as guest rooms, office space, class rooms, etc,” he said.

Otis stressed that the nine-member committee is still collecting information and is not prepared at present to offer any predictions on how the committee’s final report will turn out.

“It has been affirmed to the Conference Ministries Study Committee that Mississippi Baptists need and will use a conference facility to equip and train laypeople to serve the Lord,” he said.

For more information on the committee and to submit input for the committee’s consideration, visit www.mbcb.org and click on the Conference Ministries Study Committee icon on the left side of the page.