Journal: Journal for Baptist Theology & Ministry
Volume: JBTM 22:2 (Fall 2025)
Article: The Centennial Anniversary Of The Cooperative Program
Author: Chris Shaffer

The Centennial Anniversary Of The Cooperative Program

Chris Shaffer

Chris Shaffer serves as Chief of Staff and Assistant Professor of Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

The Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention was a stroke of genius when it was formulated and approved one hundred years ago. “The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ unified plan of giving through which cooperating Southern Baptist churches give a percentage of their undesignated receipts in support of their respective state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries.”1 Stated another way, the Cooperative Program is the mechanism through which the cooperating churches of the SBC support the missionaries serving on the mission field, support church planters, train men and women for the ministry that have been called to serve, care for collegiate students through Baptist Collegiate Ministries, support the work of local churches, and a multitude of other ministry opportunities.

The CP is the way Southern Baptists have determined to work together to support the work of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel to a world in desperate need of the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. A portion of your tithes and offerings to your local church is forwarded to the local association and the state convention. Then your state convention sends a percentage, determined by the messengers at the state convention, to the Southern Baptist Convention to support the work of missions and ministries.

The CP is also one marker by which a local church is determined to be in friendly cooperation with a local Baptist association, a state Baptist convention, and the Southern Baptist Convention. The amount of Great Commission giving, including Cooperative Program giving by a church, determines the number of messengers,

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or voting representatives, your church can send to meetings of the convention of your state and the SBC. These messengers determine, among a host of other business items, the percentage of Cooperative Program dollars sent to the SBC by the state convention or the amount of funds that will be received by the various entities of the SBC each year. At the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas June 10–11, 2025, messengers approved a CP allocation budget of $190 million. Cooperative Program giving to the national SBC is no small amount.

With such a large funding source (that does not include giving to the local church, associations, state conventions, or other giving to Great Commission causes within the SBC), why did the messengers determine this sort of funding source was necessary? Today, SBC-aff...