SPRINGFIELD – When Rich Jenkins picked up a spring issue of The Pathway and looked at the annual Cooperative Program (CP) giving report, something didn’t look right.
Macedonia Baptist Church, where he pastors, was listed as giving $3,891.16 through CP for 2011. It was a fraction of what he knew the church that runs 350 on Sunday had budgeted.
“I thought it had to be a mistake,” he said.
After dozens of phone calls to their local association, the Missouri Baptist Convention, the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and International Mission Board (IMB), Jenkins and the church’s finance team determined that it wasn’t a mistake. The church had indeed allocated more, and the checks had been written, but they had not been mailed out or cashed in a year and a half.
“The good news is that there had been nothing criminally wrong or stealing,” he said. “It just hadn’t been sent in. Obviously, the lesson is you need to have an adequate system of checks and balances and more than one set of eyes on things.”
The church’s financial secretary, who was not a member at Macedonia, has since left the position.
It might have been tempting for a church that found that amount of money sitting in a checking account to reallocate the funds to pressing needs throughout the church, but Jenkins said the church felt very strongly that it should go where it was originally intended.
“In every meeting, the deacons, trustees and finance committee said there was no alternative opinion other than sending on like we promised,” he said. ”We felt terrible. I can understand how people might be tempted, but in our minds, that would have been worse than the original mistake. We made a commitment and it belonged to the Lord.”
Fast forward to today, Macedonia has sent in every check they originally allocated to CP, Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions and World Hunger to the tune of $127,928.61 over a 10-week span.
“It was a challenge because we found other mistakes as well,” Jenkins said. “Again, no wrong-doing, just mistakes that affected our balance and cash flow. It’s been tough financially for all churches lately, but we haven’t done without anything.”
The Cooperative Program is the funding process Southern Baptists have used since 1925 to support missions and evangelism. Through CP, the mission of one church is extended to ministries that reach the lost, hungry and hurting in Missouri, the United States and the rest of the world. In Missouri, 62.75 percent of a church’s CP giving funds ministry in the state, and 37.25 percent is passed on to be distributed among NAMB, IMB, six seminaries and other ministries.
Macedonia’s renewed support of CP is in line with what Jenkins called the heart of the church: missions.
“Missions is what we’re about,” he said, ”not only in our giving, but in our church as a whole. We have a very good Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) and a strong missions committee. We have a house for missionary families on furlough, we’re really involved in Grand Oak Mission Center through our association and we feed the homeless every week. We’re trying to be missions-minded, and CP, Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong are part of those priorities. That’s why the Lord has blessed us.”