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New trustee boards, endowment, CP hike approved by Ill. Baptists

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ROCKFORD, Ill. (BP)–Illinois Baptists created two new “boards of trustees” and approved a fund-raising drive to begin a “New Work Endowment Fund” during their Nov. 4-5 annual meeting in Rockford, Ill.
Five recommendations regarding financial matters coming from the IBSA board of directors gained approval from messengers. One of the items hiked the percentage of Cooperative Program money that will be sent to the Southern Baptist Convention for national and international ministries. In 1999, IBSA will forward 41.25 percent of CP receipts to the SBC, up from 40.75 this year. The 1999 CP goal is $5.88 million dollars.
They also elected two pastors and two laypersons as officers of the Illinois Baptist State Association — Roger Marshall, president; Tim Lewis, vice president; and Wilma Booth, recording secretary.
The new president is pastor of Effingham First Baptist Church. Lewis, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Troy, was the only new officer who faced a second nominee, receiving 184 votes over Willie Jordan, pastor of St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, Harvey, 124. Booth is a member of Larkin Avenue Baptist Church in Elgin.
Marshall, who completed a second year as IBSA vice president, presided over the meeting in the absence of President Eugene Gibson Sr., a Chicago pastor who died March 10.
The two-day meeting attracted 492 messengers and 90 visitors for a total attendance of 582, Marshall announced in the final session at Rockford’s Clock Tower Resort.
Messengers approved constitution changes creating the new boards and thus separating governance of the Baptist Children’s Home and the Baptist Foundation of Illinois from IBSA’s other ministries. By a show-of-hands vote, the vast majority of messengers supported the changes, with only a few voting against.
The 72-member IBSA board of directors will “direct all affairs of the Association between annual meetings except the affairs of entities set apart by the Association to function under the direction of separate Boards of Trustees,” the constitution now says.
Approval of the fund-raising drive for “new work” came through a Baptist Foundation proposal. Messengers, without opposition, approved the two-year effort to begin the Foundation’s New Work Endowment Fund. “The goal is to raise $200,000 by Dec. 31, 2000,” the motion stated.
The most widely debated issue of the annual meeting was a proposed resolution dealing with “Church Discipline.” Messengers eventually voted to “postpone indefinitely” consideration of the proposal.
The proposed resolution encouraged churches to “reinstitute the Biblical practice of church discipline, which entails the members of a church watching over one another in love … for the purpose of encouraging holiness … and discouraging disorderly behavior in each member … and in the church as a whole.”
It also stated “… [w]hen less drastic measures have failed, … those members of the church who refuse to repent of sin and submit to the church … ought to be expelled from the church … and turned over to Satan.”
Messengers approved five other resolutions without discussion. The topics included sanctity of marriage, homelessness/hunger and school prayer.
The association’s 1999 meeting will be Nov. 3-4 at the Holiday Inn in Decatur.