A summary of major actions indicates several significant decisions which will influence the BSC as it moves into the 21st century.

Royston

James H. Royston was elected the 13th executive director-treasurer, succeeding Roy J. Smith who served for 13 years in the post. Smith and his family were honored during the Monday evening service. After words of commendation and appreciation from several persons, the Smiths were presented a 1997 Lincoln Town Car.

Royston served in the state approximately 16 years before assuming the pastorate of the Colonial Heights Church, Kingsport, Tenn., in 1991. He will assume his new office Jan. 1, 1998.

Mac Brunson, pastor of Green Street Church, High Point, was elected president, succeeding Greg Mathis who was ineligible for another term. Brunson's election marked the third consecutive year a conservative has been chosen for the top elective position.

Serving with him will be Mike Cummings, director of missions in the Burnt Swamp Association, also viewed as a conservative. David Crocker, pastor of Snyder Memorial Church, Fayetteville, will be serving as second vice president. He is considered a moderate, although all three men regard themselves as theological conservatives.

Ray Benfield, a retired pastor and foreign missionary living in Winston-Salem, was elected recording secretary after a decision to abolish the office was reversed by the Constitution and Bylaws Committee, chaired by Tom Dimmock, Raleigh.

Assistant recording secretary is Mavis Bissette, a member of Ardmore Church, Winston-Salem. The two secretaries will certify the minutes of the annual meeting after they have been processed by employees of the General Board at the Baptist Building. The secretaries will no longer be responsible for processing the proceedings.

A record budget of $31 million was adopted, with a challenge goal of an additional $36;1 million. Gifts to world missions through the Cooperative Program for 1997 have been the highest in the history of the BSC, according to executive director-treasurer Roy J. Smith.

Corts

C. Mark Corts, pastor of Calvary Church, Winston-Salem, and a former president of the BSC, had a motion approved which called for the consideration of a "Plan D" in the 1999 budget. Corts' proposal would divide Cooperative Program funds from the churches on a 50/50 basis between the BSC and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

There are presently three plans -- A, B, and C -- all of which provide 68 percent of the funds for North Carolina. Plan A sends 32 percent to the SBC; Plan B sends 10 percent to the SBC and the remaining 22 percent to various mission and educational causes. Plan C is identical to Plan B except that the 10 percent is sent to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship instead of the SBC.

Meredith College will no longer receive Cooperative Program funds and its trustees will not longer be elected by the BSC. The governing board of the Raleigh school will be self-perpetuating. The college budget for this fiscal year was developed without the approximately $1 million from the BSC.

Trustees of Baptist Hospital, Winston-Salem, will be elected 50-50 by the BSC and the hospital's board. A new arrangement with the Bowman-Gray School of Medicine and Wake Forest University will keep the hospital competitive and flexible for the changes in health care.

The changes for Meredith College and Baptist Hospital were unopposed by messengers and passed unanimously and quickly.

The proposal to set a new formula for messenger determination from the churches failed to receive the necessary two-thirds majority for implementation, but it did receive a strong majority ã 62 percent. The new arrangement would have retained two messengers for every affiliated church regardless of membership, but for each additional messenger, the church would be required to send 1 percent of its undesignated receipts to the Cooperative Program of the BSC.

In supporting the recommendation, Dimmock pointed out that some of the larger churches gave very small amounts to the BSC Cooperative Program, but were allowed to send a full complement of 10 messengers. M. Ray Davis, pastor and a messenger from the Green Meadows Church, Mocksville, made a motion requesting the General Board and its Executive Committee to investigate and request that Wake Forest University desist from selling alcohol on campus. Davis had earlier indicated that if Wake Forest did not stop the sale of alcohol on campus, all references to the university should be deleted from BSC documents and programs. The motion was approved and the report is to be made at the 1998 convention.

For the most part, the convention was characterized by peace, harmony and a focus on cooperation. BSC president Mathis and General Board president Mike Queen were frequently praised for their efforts to develop trust and proper relationships between the so- called "moderates" and "conservatives" in the state. Candidates for the three presidencies agreed that there would be no negative comments about one another.

Bordeaux

During the Wednesday morning session, C.J. Bordeaux sought to have the rules suspended so he could offer a resolution of protest about the nominating speeches. The messengers refused to suspend the rules.

Likewise, F. Hubert Garner, a member of the Flat Springs Church, Sanford, questioned the propriety of a current officer nominating a person for one of the presidencies. He referred to Phillip Davis, first vice president, who nominated Allan Blume for the second vice presidency. The rules were not suspended for Garner either.

Beddingfield

The ad hoc committee of the Executive Committee, chaired by Ed Beddingfield and appointed to study the declining circulation of the Biblical Recorder, presented its report Tuesday morning. A printed copy of the report was given to messengers and it was printed in the Nov. 8 issue of the paper. After extensive study and several surveys, the committee concluded there were three reasons for the decline:

1. Change in reading habits of society in general as the electronic media is growing,
2. Tight financial situations in churches which canceled the Every Home Plan in preference to the Club Plan where the members pay all or part of the subscription costs, and
3. The controversy in the denomination. The report stated that it did not matter whether the editor and the stance of the paper were conservative, moderate or neutral, circulation at all state papers in the larger, older state conventions had declined. The study revealed that the decline of the Recorder's subscriptions fell about the middle of the spectrum compared with other state papers' declines. During the budget discussion, a motion was made to place in escrow the $375,000 allocated to the Recorder for 1998, until such time the editor and directors offered to the General Board a plan of increasing subscriptions. The motion was made by Tony Hardin, pastor of the Kellum Church, Jacksonville. No one else spoke in favor of his motion; several spoke against the motion and it was defeated about 3-1, according to observers attending the meeting. Another motion was made to delete the increase of $25,000 for the paper. After discussion, that motion was defeated also.

   The Beddingfield committee's report noted that the directors of the Biblical Recorder had addressed the problem more than 10 years ago with a professionally done survey. The directors had implemented all but one of the recommendations coming out of 1988 study -- that of creating regional versions within the state. The Biblical Recorder established a Web site in September in the hopes of attracting younger readers of the paper. Also, the Web site will enable missionaries around the world to get the paper within a few hours.

   During the first six weeks on the Web site, there were an average of 500 hits per day -- between 15,000 and 20,000 per month. Hits are files on a Web site that are accessed by Internet users. With the Recorder updating daily the activities of the annual convention, the hits rose to 1,000 per day -- 13,625 in the first 13 days of November.

   Critics of the paper insist it should be more profitable and circulation of the print version should be increasing. Supporters of the paper insist that the paper already is on the cutting edge of a changing society and the Baptist world through its ministry of disseminating information, as evidenced by the huge success of the Web site.

   The general conclusion of messengers seemed to be that while some major changes took place, the "watershed year" did not materialize as much as anticipated before the annual convention.