nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

RELIEF AND ANNUITY BOARD 439
The Age Security Plan was inaugurated January 1, 1936. This plan was
provided for pastors who desired to contribute dues equivalent to 3% of their
monthly salaries, the same to be matched by a like amount from their churches.
Lay workers were also eligible to provide age or disability annuities through
this plan.
The Age Security Plan was later revised (1940) and is now primarily
operated for church employees who are not eligible to participate in the Ministers
Retirement Plan, and for other denominational employees who do not
participate in some other group plan. Membership in this plan is increasing,
and churches are showing greater readiness to aid their lay workers by contributing
3% of their salaries or wages. The plan is open to every lay employee
who serves a church on a regular salary basis.
The Baptist Boards Employees' Retirement Plan is a group plan consisting
of employees of our state boards, managerial employees and staff workers of
our colleges, seminaries, and hospitals, the Home Mission Board employees
(including missionaries), the executive committee of the Southern Baptist
Convention, Woman's Missionary Union, auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention
and of all the states of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Baptist
Brotherhood of the South, Relief and Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist
Convention, employees of Baptist papers, etc. The employees of 55 boards,
agencies, and institutions are being served by this excellent plan.
This plan is serving our ever increasing number of board and agency employees.
The minimum benefit in the plan where twenty-five years of service
have been rendered is $600 per annum for life upon retirement after 65, payable
in monthly installments. The maximum benefit is $2,000 per annum payable
in monthly installments. There is a very considerable turnover of members
in this plan; and while the dues of members leaving denominational service
are usually returned to the members with interest, the contributions of the
employing board or agency remain in the pooled reserve. Should the pooled
reserve of the contributing employing agencies be at any time exhausted,
additional contributions are to be made on a pro rata basis by them. This is
contractually provided for in the agreement entered into by and between the
several cooperating agencies and the Relief and Annuity Board.
The Institutional Employees Retirement Plan for colleges and seminaries
was begun on July 1, 1937. It represents an effort on the part of the Relief
and Annuity Board to provide retirement benefits for the professors in our
denominationally owned educational institutions. The plan was developed after
full conference discussion at Birmingham, Alabama, between the secretary and
the actuary of the Relief and Annuity Board and^ a considerable group of
representative college heads and other interested persons. The plan has been
adopted by nineteen of our colleges and seminaries.
The Institutional Employees Retirement Plan is not a general group plan.
The college heads in the Birmingham conference preferred an individual college
group plan. However, the provisions of the plan are generous and the
yield in benefits will prove highly satisfactory.
Before discussing the rapid expansion of the work of the Relief and Annuity
Board through its seventh and major contributory annuity plan, known
as the Ministers Retirement Plan, attention is called to three individual plans
which are serving a considerable number of ministers and other eligible persons
in ways highly satisfactory to them. These are:
Special Annuity—requiring lump sum premiums. This plan was started in
1929. It is a completely funded plan. This form of certificate should meet
the requirements of such ministers and denominational employees (lay) as
desire to make lump sum payments of from $1,000 to $5,000 or more and
receive specified annuities beginning at once or at any deferred date.
Special Deferred Annuity—inaugurated in 1935—requiring monthly, quarterly
or semi-annual payment of premiums with earned annuities beginning
at the end of any year, but preferably in old age. The plan has loan privileges,
and cash surrender values. It provides for easy payments on the basis of
one-half unit or $50 per annum, one unit or $100 per annum, or as many as
five units, or $500 per annum. This plan is operated on a regular reserve
basis. Some ministers and laymen already participating in the Ministers Retirementment
appealing the Plan regular to young or annuities other men group and which plans women.
they will are find to receive, this plan and a feasible it should way be to especially supple