nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

RELIEF AND ANNUITY BOARD 436
By May, 1925, the assets of the Board had increased to $1,964,672.06, and
the aggregate of benefits already paid was $667,363.31. The results of the
Seventy-Five Million Campaign, supplementing the munificence of Mr. Rockefeller,
and the investment returns on the monies which came into the custody
of the Board, made such an achievement possible and even explains it on the
human side.
The Board is evermore grateful for the generous hearts and helping hands
of both donors of funds and the investors of funds. For every contribution,
either large or small, we thank God! For every hour of thoughtful labor on the
part of our finance committee and of the larger executive committee, a purely
gratuitous service, we also thank God!
From the funds collected by the Southern Baptist Convention during the
Seventy-Five Million Campaign, the Relief and Annuity Board received the total
amount of $1,506,617.14. It seems needless to say that without the first gift
of $100,000 by the Sunday School Board, the organization of the Relief and
Annuity Board would not have been effected in 1918. And but for the financial
support which came through the early gifts of Mr. Rockefeller, and the large
cash receipts which came through the Seventy-Five Million Campaign, the work
of the Board, when started, would have been slow in becoming established.
Surely, the coming into being of this Board and its steady and worthy progress
has been according to His plan, and the record of its achievements up to 1925
will for all time be HIS-STORY.
Long before the close of the period 1918-1925, which we have called the
period of beginnings, it had become evident to Secretary Lunsford and to the
Boards actuary, George A. Huggins, as well as to the Board itself, that the
annuity department required structural revamping. The Annuity Fund, as it
was styled, was good, but it was quite inadequate. It was difficult to secure
a large membership. Relatively few preachers took the Board seriously. Perhaps
most of them had little faith in its future. And the Board itself knew that
a much larger membership would add greatly to its financial problem.
We would not be true to history if we failed here to recite the fact that the
l^/v money originally allocated to the Relief and Annuity Board, namely
$5,000,000 (due to the pressing needs of the mission boards and educational
institutions) was reduced in 1919 to $2,500,000; and the $2,500,000 shrank to
$1,500,000 when the Seventy-Five Million Campaign collection fell short by
multi-millions of dollars. Arid, although it was provided by the convention in
1920 that the additional $2,500,000 should be raised during the first two years
following the close of the five year Seventy-Five Million Campaign, that promise
was not fulfilled and was never possible of fulfilment because of the heavy
debts which our several general boards and institutions contracted during that
period.
In its report to the Southern Baptist Convention in 1920, the executive committee
said, "And it was specified that the remaining half of the $5,000,000
which the Convention decided to raise for ministerial relief within seven years
shall be raised at the end of the present five y£ar campaign and within the
succeeding two years." (See 1920 minutes, S.B.C. page 112.) Again in the
1920 minutes of the Southern Baptist Convention, page 113, certain actions are
recorded in behalf of our three seminaries providing for advances to them by
the mission boards and the education board, which advances were to be returned
to the mission boards and the education board from funds collected for
southwide objects beyond $75,000,000; and in case the requisite sum ($2,000,000)
was not available under that arrangement, the advances by the three boards
should be sufficiently guaranteed to them in any new plans for funds that the
convention would project at the close of the five year period without prejudice
to the needs of the three boards or to the Relief and Annuity Board owing to
previous action of the convention.
As has been shown, it was the avowed purpose of the convention to provide
$5,000,000 for the two departments of the Relief and Annuity Board, one-half
of which amount was to be made available to the Board's annuity department.
Subsequent actions of the convention, looking to the funding of all of the
obligations of the Relief and Annuity Board in connection with its annuity department
(Old) Annuity Fund, will be reviewed in chapter three.