Money Monday: BGCO's OBU Subsidy Dwarfs All Oklahoma BCM Budgets Combined

This is a theme to which we'll return again and again on this blog, but it must be repeated: The BGCO spends more money on OBU than on collegiate ministries at all the other Oklahoma colleges combined.  The 2011 BGCO financial plan allotted more than $2.5 million to OBU (a whopping 17.6% of its Oklahoma Cooperative Program allocation).  In contrast, the BGCO spends barely $2 million on collegiate ministries at 32 other colleges in the state.

What does this mean?  If the BGCO relinquished its control of OBU and spent its CP dollars more efficiently, it could more than double the amount it spends on collegiate ministries in Oklahoma.  And it could still expand the size of its OBU BCM.  Even after all that, there would still be hundreds of thousands of CP dollars left to allocate to vital ministry areas.

There are 207,000 students enrolled in Oklahoma colleges and universities, 205,000 of whom are not at OBU.  Yet BGCO elites so value owning and controlling OBU that they are willing to spend more money on fewer than 1% of Oklahoma college students than on the remaining 99% combined.  What does that tell us about ministry and mission priorities?  It tells us a few things:

• BGCO spending on OBU is clearly about controlling an institution, not about ministry
• Oklahoma Baptist messengers, laypeople, clergy, and BCM directors/staff/supporters should question this shocking disparity
• The BGCO could easily double its investment in more than 200,000 young, mostly unsaved people from whom tomorrow's clergy, lay leaders, and missionaries will emerge.  Instead, it spends lavishly on an institution populated almost exclusively by people who are already saved and baptized, many of whom will go on to non-SBC seminaries, make their homes and careers in other states, and bring the BGCO little return on its investment.
• Baptist state conventions that have relinquished control over Baptist colleges have been able to dramatically expand the scope of their collegiate ministries.
• We already know that Baptist youth who go to state schools actually emerge more doctrinally orthodox than Baptist youth who attend Baptist colleges.  So, clearly BCM programs are better at keeping Baptists within the fold than OBU (see Table 5.2).

So, Oklahoma Baptists and BCM leaders, do you value your ministry enough to fight for the funds you could so obviously use to better effect than the BGCO's $2.5 million institutional welfare check to OBU?  Or are you satisfied with the BGCO's explanation -- that the prestige of controlling an institution is more important than expanding your ministry?  Please consider joining the Oklahoma Baptists who have already joined our effort.

Money Monday

Most of the time, tensions between institutions are about some combination of power, ideology, control, and politics.  But all the time, they are about money.  The OBU-BGCO relationship is no different.  On Mondays, this blog will examine the financial implications of the BGCO's $2.5 million annual subsidy for OBU.

Frankly, I am most intrigued and upset by the non-financial parts of this arrangement: the cheapening of OBU's great liberal arts tradition, the shameful treatment of insufficiently fundamentalist faculty, the authoritarian culture, etc.  But in many ways, the heart of the matter is financial.  I am open to suggestions about where my logic and rhetoric on this issue could be improved.  The argument I want to make is two-fold.  First, the BGCO could be a lot more efficient, effective, and smart if it spent the $2.5 million in other ways.  And second, OBU could find ways to get by without the annual cash infusion from the BGCO.

According to BGCO financial projections, the Cooperative Program sends 40% of receipts to the SBC to fund missionaries, the six SBC seminaries, and the religious right Richard Land's office.  Sixty percent of CP receipts stay in Oklahoma.  Of that amount, 17% goes to OBU.  OBU receives 3.5 times more than both the Baptist Village Communities and the Oklahoma Baptist Homes for Children.  It receives more than the Baptist Collegiate Ministries at every other Oklahoma university combined.  It receives nearly three times the total church planting budget.  OBU represents a huge financial strain on the BGCO and cripples its ability to fund vital missions and ministries.  Every year, students don't get evangelized, churches don't get planted, and orphans and seniors aren't adequately housed because OBU's subsidy eats up such a huge portion of the Cooperative Program's budget.

Maybe this would be okay if OBU desperately needed the funds.  But it doesn't.  OBU has an endowment of $80 million.  It raises $40 million a year on its own.  Whereas other CP ministries would have to shut down without CP funds, OBU would go right on operating.  Sure, it would have to restructure its finances, but OBU is not nearly as dependent on CP funds as the BGCO's other mission and ministry areas.

How could OBU operate without the BGCO's millions?  Well, since enrollment allegedly now exceeds 1,850, a tuition increase in the neighborhood of $1,300 would close the gap all by itself.  (And OBU would still be a "best value" college by the national magazines that rate such things.)  Short of that, OBU could temporarily dip into its endowment during the transition period.  It could seek funding from other Baptist bodies that are not so blatantly at odds with liberal arts education.  Sure, I concede that replacing 6% of any institution's revenue stream is a challenge.  But in the present economic climate, public and private universities all over the nation are doing it every day.

Baptist Building elites love controlling OBU.  But unless messengers really care more about maintaing power over an institution than doing actual ministry, they will easily find ways to spend the $2.5 million.  Our challenge will be to figure out how OBU can make up this lost revenue, especially since the BGCO owns the buildings and grounds.  Over time, we'll study what other institutions have done and we'll develop creative solutions of our own.  Until then, we'll have to cash that annual BGCO check... and sell our soul in the process.