ATLANTA – The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship announced it had received the largest amount of financial gifts in the Fellowship’s history, including the largest amount ever received for the Offering for Global Missions, at the Coordinating Council meeting Oct. 14-15 in Atlanta.

The Fellowship’s controller, Larry Hurst, presented the final, audited report for fiscal year 2003-04, which showed the Fellowship received a total of $24.26 million in revenue including $5.74 million for its annual Offering for Global Missions. Both amounts were all-time highs.

"We broke the sound barrier on each of those major items," said Bob Setzer, the Fellowship’s moderator and pastor of First Baptist Church, Macon, Ga. "I think this is a remarkable financial report."

Record revenues were due in part to anonymous gifts of $5 million and $1.8 million, both designated for Global Missions, and several estate gifts. The Fellowship also received a record amount of undesignated contributions totaling $8.87 million.

"For me, what has happened the last three to five years has been a spiritual experience, to the point that in my own life I’ve been journaling about it," Fellowship Coordinator Daniel Vestal said. "It has been acts of stewardship on the part of Christian people. When I say that to some people, they say, ‘Yeah, but tell us what really happened.’ I’m saying that’s how it really happened. More than give ourselves a round of applause, we need to hit our knees and thank God."

The Fellowship ended the year behind its modified spending plan for revenue by $708,750 but finished with $5,845 more revenue than expenditures. Cost-cutting measures ensured the Fellowship would finish the fiscal year in the black for the first time in three years.

For the first two months of fiscal year 2004-05, Hurst reported that revenue is $208,628 ahead of expenditures, but only $3,048 ahead of the budget.

In his report to the Council, Vestal announced the retirement of CBF Global Missions Co-coordinator Gary Baldridge, who is leaving to pursue a writing career. His retirement is effective Jan. 1.

"I’ve been wanting to do this for 10 years, but the timing has never been right," Baldridge said. "I’m a former journalist, and I have a lot of writing projects that I want to give full time to. This five-year experiment has been a success, and now I’m ready to move on to new challenges."

Baldridge and his wife, Barbara, have shared the coordinator role since they were selected to head the CBF Global Missions initiative in 1999, succeeding Keith Parks.

"Gary Baldridge has served with distinction as an effective coordinator in Global Missions," Vestal said. "He has helped nurture and deepen CBF’s passion for social justice and ministry to the most neglected. We will miss him."

The Council’s personnel committee and the Global Missions Initiative Team recommended that Barbara Baldridge continue serving as coordinator until the February Council meeting, at which time the personnel committee and the Global Missions Initiative Team will bring a formal recommendation.

"Barbara is a remarkably gifted, able and committed missions leader," Setzer said. "I’m looking forward to her continued leadership for years to come."

The Council also responded to the following items:

• The Council received a gift of $66,907 for Global Missions raised from the children and youth who attended summer camps through Passport Inc., the Birmingham, Ala., -based Fellowship partner that conducts summer camps focused on missions involvement. Passport president David Burroughs also announced that children participating in the first ever PassportKids camps donated 2,000 boxes of crayons for use by field personnel among the Romany people. Teenagers participating in Passport donated more than 20,000 children’s books for distribution through Partners in Hope, the Fellowship’s rural poverty initiative. "Passport is doing a good thing," said Tamara Tillman, CBF Global Missions associate coordinator for missions education. "We should be proud to be a part of it."
  
• The Council’s Global Missions Initiative Team introduced a change in the Envoy category of service for Global Missions field personnel. A new tent-making missions program called "As You Go" will be formally launched Oct. 21-23 at the We Love Missions conference at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas.
  
• Upon the recommendation of the Council’s Advisory Council, the Coordinating Council voted to authorize Coordinator for Congregational Life Bo Prosser to finalize negotiations with American Baptist Churches USA on holding a joint meeting in 2007 in Washington, D.C.
  
• The Council approved a plan that integrated the communications and development functions of the staff into a new te