NASHVILLE (BP) — Year-to-date contributions to Southern Baptist national and international missions and ministries received by the SBC Executive Committee have exceeded $153 million dollars according to a news release from SBC Executive Committee President and Chief Executive Officer Frank S. Page.

The $153,914,489.52 received by the Executive Committee for ten months of the fiscal year, October 1 through July 31, for distribution through the SBC’s Cooperative Program Allocation Budget represents 96.45 percent of the $159,583,333.33 year-to-date budgeted CP projections to support Southern Baptist ministries globally and across North America. 

The year-to-date total includes money received by the Executive Committee by the close of the last business day of July. July’s total includes gifts from 39 of the SBC’s 42 cooperating state Baptist conventions as well as contributions from churches and individuals for distribution according to the 2013-14 SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget. 

Month-to-month swings reflect a number of factors, including the timing of when the state conventions forward the national portion of Cooperative Program contributions to the Executive Committee, the day of the month churches forward their CP contributions to their state conventions, the number of Sundays in a given month, and the percentage of CP contributions forwarded to the SBC by the state conventions after shared ministry expenses are deducted.

The total is $2,350,374.53, or 1.50 percent, less than the $156,264,864.05 received through the end of July 2013, and is 3.55 percent less than the SBC Cooperative Program Allocation Budget projection for the current year. 

Designated giving of $184,465,103.22 for the same year-to-date period is 0.22 percent, or $397,480.46, above the $184,067,622.76 received at this point last year. This total includes only those gifts received and distributed by the Executive Committee through close of business on July 31 and does not reflect designated gifts contributed directly to SBC entities. Designated contributions include the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, Southern Baptist Global Hunger Relief and other special gifts.

July’s CP allocation receipts for SBC work totaled $12,616,043.92. Designated gifts received last month amounted to $11,091,581.85.

The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ channel of giving through which a local church is able to contribute to the ministries of its state convention and to the missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention with a single contribution to its state convention. 

State conventions retain a portion of church contributions to the Cooperative Program to support work in their respective states and forward a percentage to Southern Baptist national and international causes. The percentage of distribution from the states is at the discretion of the messengers of each state convention through the adoption of the state convention’s annual budget.

The adopted SBC allocation budget projection for 2013-2014 is $191,500,000, an increase of 1.86 percent over the $188,000,000 budgeted goal for the previous year, and is distributed as follows: 50.41 percent to support more than 4,800 overseas personnel with the IMB, 22.79 percent to help fuel North American evangelism and church planting through NAMB, 22.16 percent to help underwrite low-cost ministerial preparation and theological education through six SBC seminaries, 2.99 percent to the SBC operating budget and 1.65 percent to promote biblical morality and religious freedom through the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. 

CP allocation budget receipts received by the Executive Committee are reported monthly to the executives of the entities of the convention, to the state convention offices, to the state Baptist papers and are posted online at www.cpmissions.net/CPReports.