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	Home GGBTS Story CP Story CP History CP Purpose CP Scope CP Effectiveness CP Giving CP Demo		The Beginning The SBC was founded in 1845 to organize churches and various other Christian ministries in the southern United States around a plan for "eliciting, combining, and directing" its energies toward "the propagation of the gospel" (preamble to the current SBC Constitution). The original constitution described this endeavor as "one sacred effort for the Redeemer's Kingdom." From its beginning, then, the SBC has been focused on bringing together singular entities for Kingdom purposes, enabling those groups to do more in cooperation than they could in isolation. The original SBC scheme to accomplish such purposes involved the "society" method of ministry. Modeled after the successful Baptist Missionary Society of England, this approach involved individual ministries, such as denominational mission boards, soliciting funds from individual SBC churches. However, this proved to be an unsuccessful fundraising method. Churches were bombarded continuously by multiple ministries seeking support. The agents, or solicitors, of the boards had to live off of the money they collected, which required them to keep legally about twenty percent of what the churches had given. Between 1845 and 1907, various other methods of denominational ministry fundraising were attempted. These involved not only individual churches, but associations and state Baptist conventions as well. And none of them was successful. A New Approach By the second decade of the twentieth century the denomination began moving toward a fundraising solution. At the 1919 annual meeting, the Committee on the Financial Aspect of the Enlarged Program, despite its cumbersome name, made a dramatic recommendation to the SBC: Raise $75 million over the next five years! This massive amount of money would fund everything SBC, including not only the Convention mission and Sunday school boards but even state Baptist ministries such as colleges and hospitals. Though initially successful (over twelve million dollars was raised in its first year), the campaign fell short of its goal. By 1925 - six years after the five-year effort began - less than fifty-nine million dollars had been collected. However, though the ambitious Seventy-Five Million Campaign failed financially, it blazed a trail that would lead to denominational fundraising success. As a result of the Campaign thousands more churches began giving to denominational causes, churches began adopting the unified church budget in managing their own money, and individual church members were awakened to a new sense of responsibility to fund Kingdom work. The greatest success of the Campaign, though, was that it served as a prototype for what would become the Cooperative Program. Principles established for the Seventy-Five Million Campaign became foundational for the CP. These included the emphases on advanced budget planning, annual promotion, church financial autonomy, and state conventions as collectors of the money. In 1924, the SBC made multiple recommendations for funding its next year of ministry. These recommendations were grounded in a simple, two-pronged strategy whereby (1) churches would obtain financial pledges from each of their members, then (2) the pledges would be used to formulate the budgets of state conventions as well as the SBC. This approach was the essence of the new Co-operative (later, Cooperative) Program. Chad Owen Brand explains it all. How It Works "The Cooperative Program [CP] was remarkably simple in principle. Churches were to canvass members for pledge giving for the following year in the fall. Based on those commitments, churches set their own annual budgets. Out of those budgets they would commit a percentage of their total revenue to give to the new [CP]. This financial commitment would stand in the stead of previous special offerings made to individual causes every time an agent showed up at the church with his plea for funds for state or national convention concerns. There would be no more such visits. That percentage of revenue would be sent on to the state convention office, preferably on a monthly basis. Each state convention would also formulate a budget for its programs, based on expectations of revenues from the churches and would live within those financial boundaries. "State conventions each sent a percentage of [CP] receipts on to the SBC. The goal was for a fifty-fifty split, with the state convention keeping half and the SBC receiving the other half. The SBC, based on its expectation of annual receipts, would then set its own budget. The Executive Committee of the Convention would determine just how the total amount was to be apportioned to the various agencies, with the lion's share of the resources always to go to missions, especially foreign missions (Chad Owen Brand and David E. Hankins, One Sacred Effort, 97)." That extended but concise explanation reveals several facts. First, this original 1925 plan is still the way the CP operates. Second, though many churches do not believe in asking members for pledges, they still craft their budgets and determine CP contributions based on anticipated giving by their members. Third, the "fifty-fifty split" was but a dream; no state convention has ever forwarded any more than 39% to the CP. Fourth, the Executive Committee of the SBC still determines the percentage of CP money allocated to each Convention ministry. The SBC took about four years to iron out the kinks in this new system. By 1929 the Convention was running its business efficiently, thanks to streamlining initiated by the Business Efficiency Committee (yet another SBC committee, but a good one, working from 1925 to 1927). Also by this time most of the Convention boards were onboard with the CP, the state conventions were warming to the new way of doing business, and most importantly the money was beginning to flow smoothly from church members all the way to Nashville, via the members' respective churches and state conventions. Though the Great Depression hit the United States and, thus, the SBC in that same year - 1929 - its effect on the Convention would have been even worse had the CP not been in place. Monroe Elmer Dodd (more famously and understandably known as M. E. Dodd) served as chairman of the Committee on Future Program as well as articulator and advocate of the CP. He wrote, "Not only is the New Program a kingdom necessity, it is also our Program. We made it. It is the result of the best thinking of our denomination, led as we believe by the Spirit of God" (quoted in Brand & Hankins, One Sacred Effort, 96).