Bagdad—Kentucky Baptist Convention Mission Board members voted last week to endorse the details of a $24 million Cooperative Program budget for 2008-2009.

Meeting May 5-6 at Cedarmore Camp and Conference Center in Shelby County, board members also appointed Alan Witham as church development team leader and approved additional annual funding for the Kentucky Baptist Foundation.

The CP budget goal, approved by KBC messengers last November, reflects no change over the current budget. It includes 62.96 percent for Kentucky Baptist ministries and 37.04 percent for Southern Baptist Convention causes.

The budget proposal came amid a report that Cooperative Program giving in the month of April exceeded $2.3 million. According to Cathi Roy-Sanders, director of the KBC’s accounting services, CP receipts remain 0.6 percent behind budget, but more than $825,000 ahead of last year’s pace eight months into the fiscal year.

In addition to endorsing the budget, Mission Board members appointed Alan Witham as team leader of the KBC’s church development team. He has served as interim team leader since last November.

Witham previously served as regional church development strategist and strategist coordinator for the KBC. He joined the convention in 2000 as an associate in church planting and multi-housing ministries.

“I greatly appreciate the opportunity to serve Kentucky Baptists in this role,” Witham noted. “I feel my ministry will be one of leading the church development team in its mission of helping equip (KBC) churches to experience increasing levels of health and growth.”

Witham acknowledged the challenge Kentucky Baptist churches face in turning around congregations that are in decline, but expressed excitement about the forthcoming Comeback Churches Process, a program based on “common key factors among healthy churches in our state and across the nation,” he said.

“I want to teach, promote and model these key factors and see them become reality in the churches in our state,” he added.

Witham is a graduate of Campbellsville University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

Mission Board members also approved a recommendation to grant Kentucky Baptist Foundation access to two new sources of funding. The action was in response to a request made by the Foundation last November for an increased funding base. It was proposed by the Kentucky Baptist Foundation Study Committee, which was appointed to research and respond to the KBF’s appeal.

The recommendation did not meet the initial request for an annual increase of $372,000, instead granting KBF authority to retain 25 percent of any undesignated bequest to the Fondation with the balance going to the Cooperative Program endowment fund. The funds previously were allocated by the Mission Board to the CP endowment fund.

The Mission Board also will make available up to $40,000 in additional year-end funds from sources other than excess CP and Restricted Kentucky Only funds for the current fiscal year. Beginning with the 2009-2010 fiscal year, the additional funds will be included in the annual budget, distributed proportionately from all other CP recipients.

In other action, board members:

• Approved a new structure for the KBC’s partnership missions department that will enable it to mobilize churches for missions efforts throughout the world rather than through targeted partnerships with select countries or regions. The new structure is designed to better complement the strategies of the SBC’s International Mission Board and North American Mission Board.
  
  
• Approved a recommendation to adopt the SBC’s definition of the Cooperative Program, along with an additional statement of clarification defining a CP gift. Both definitions will be presented to Kentucky Baptist messengers at the annual meeting in November.
  
  
• Approved the administrative committee’s recommendation to dissolve the Kentucky Baptist Archives Advisory Board and simultaneously recognized the creation of a new independent organization—to be known as the J.H. Spencer Historical Society—that will continue to preserve Kentucky Baptist history.
  
  
• Approved nine new Mission Board members to fill unexpired terms. New board members include Larry Baker of Russellville, Gary Brooks of Pineville, Jimmy Brown of Water Valley, Tommy Floyd of Monticello, Tom McKim of Fredonia, Douglas Simpson of Versailles, Jason Sipes of Hickman, Susie Stivers of Shelbyville and Wayne Walters of Pineville.
  
  
• Approved Rusty Ellison of Louisville to serve an unexpired term on the board of trustees of the Kentucky Baptist Assemblies; Lester Watson of Cadiz to serve an unexpired term on the board of trustees of the Kentucky Ethics League; and Dean Warren of Bowling Green to serve an unexpired term on the board of directors of the Kentucky Baptist Foundation.

Compiled from reporting by News Director Drew Nichter and KBC Media Relations Associate Kristie Randolph