The Seventy-Five Million Campaign was introduced in 1919 by the Southern Baptists. It was an
effort that was used in an effort to raise seventy-five million dollars over a period of five years.
Hence the name. In the beginning, it was an effort that was used to help strengthen the Baptist
education but as the effort continued it became a campaign to help in all Baptist events or causes.
It now was not limited to Baptist education only. I was said that the seventy-five million
campaign was one of the worst financial difficulty that the Southern Baptist endured. SBC
President J.B. Grambell challenged Southern Baptist at the 1919 Convention “to adopt a program
of work commensurate with reasonable demand upon us.” (SBS Annual, 1919) Without
opposition the vote was taken whereby the seventy-five million campaign began with every
church being asked to have their members sign pledge cards over a five-year period. However, as
time passed, it proved easier to pledge than to collect the funds. When a recession hit the South
in 1920 it caused financial hardship whereby those who pledge found it difficult to honor their
pledges as well as those who moved considered their pledges canceled. Some of the effects on
the Southern Baptists was this campaign caused them to go into debt because they began to
expand their work at once, on borrowed money – money that had not yet been collected. The
stock market crash of 1921 was another blow to this campaign which “caused mission boards to
cut their work to the bone in massive retrenchment, SBC institutions, especially the seminaries
faced imminent foreclosure and the SBC and its entire assets could probably have been thrown
into bankruptcy proceeding had the creditors desired to do so.” [1] It was said that some of the
effects of the seventy-five million campaign was bad, others were good but all in all after this
campaign the Southern Baptists would never be the same again.
The Cooperative Program was started in 1925. This program is a 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. The Cooperative Program provides a unified and comprehensive budget for
statewide, national and international missions and ministries and it provides a long-term
sustainability for the Baptist entities. Other benefits of this program include economy, balance
and perspective. The effectiveness of this program include that ministries that may work behind
the scenes are able to receive funding, the churches gain perspective by participating not just in
some but in all the denomination’s ministries and pastor’s need not worry that their pulpits will
be interrupted by traveling agents to raise money because the agencies receive funds regularly
which enable them to plan for the future and require less borrowed money.
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[1] H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, (Nashville:
Broadman Press, 1987), 620.
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