Featured Church Withholds Million Dollars from CP

Plano, Texas congregation pastored by Jack Graham, a Conservative Resurgence SBC President, temporarily halts sending funds to the Cooperative Program due to the disconnect between some of the denomination's leaders and the churches:

http://baptistmessage.com/26902-2/

"Prestonwood Baptist Church has announced its decision to escrow gifts previously forwarded to support Southern Baptist cooperative missions and ministries while the congregation discusses concerns about the direction of the Southern Baptist Convention."

 

Baptist Press - Prestonwood Escrows CP Funds, Citing ERLC Actions

"Threats to escrow CP funds have occurred periodically in SBC history. In the mid-1980s, some Southern Baptist conservatives threatened to escrow CP funds if moderates regained control of the convention presidency"

 

Who knows?

But here is a Baptist Press article from 1989 about Richard Jackson (North Phoenix Baptist) considering scaling back or ending CP support over the establishment of the precursor to the ERLC and noting Judge Paul Pressler's non-support of the CP over a period of years:

Baptist Press, March 23, 1989

"Jackson's mention of a Washington lobby was a reference to the proposed establishment by the SEC of a new Religious Liberty Commission in Washington to represent the denomination in church/state affairs. Jackson opposed the proposal while attending the February meeting of the SEC Executive Committee in Nashville. It broke his heart, he said, to see the Executive Committee approve the Religious Liberty Commission proposal after SBC Foreign Mission Board President R. Keith Parks had told them it would hurt the SEC missions program. 'They not only didn't agree with him, they didn't even listen to him," Jackson said. "They showed him no respect.'"

"'If the convention goes down the road of church interference with the state or over-concern about Washington, D.C., I am not going. I am a died-in-the-wool church/state separationist.'"

"'I hope the decision can be that we can stay as Southern Baptists and continue full cooperation and full support.' 'I don't say these things lightly,but with an aching heart,"'he said. 'This is not an idle threat, but it is not something I am going to do overnight. I pray I will never have to do it.'"

"Jackson again raised the question of the Cooperative Program support of conservative leader Paul Pressler of Houston, with whom he broached the issue during a confrontation at the Executive Committee meeting in Nashville in February. At the Executive Committee meeting and again in mid-March, Jackson questioned if Pressler had supported Southern Baptist causes during a nine-year period while he was a member and deacon of Second Baptist Church of Houston. Jackson said he knew Pressler did not support SBC causes through Second Church during the period. Pressler, contacted by the Baptist Standard, said he didn't know what he 'did or didn't do 20 years ago.'"

 

From a 1991 Baptist Press story; after the fundamentalists had consolidated power after a dozen years of mostly narrow victories for their candidates, they moved to exclude any church that tried to bypass the denominations's 'CP' unified funding scheme via designated giving:

http://media.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/7100,22-Feb-1991.PDF

 

Another article from 1990, featuring newly elected SBC President Morris Chapman and his ally former SBC President Jimmy Draper:

http://media.sbhla.org.s3.amazonaws.com/7048,26-Oct-1990.PDF