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440 SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION
Savings Annuity—inaugurated in 1930—is a plan designed to aid our
ministers, missionaries, and other salaried denominational workers or their
widows and minor orphans to conserve their savings, increase them by interest
additions for use in later months or years, for hospitalization, for the education
of children or for the purchase of life annuities.
The seventh and last of the contributory group annuity plans to be inaugurated
by the Board was the CONVENTION MINISTERS RETIREMENT
PLAN. This is a state unit plan, but it is also, and preeminently, a Southern
Baptist retirement system. It was inaugurated first in South Carolina on
July 1, 1938, and between that year and 1942 the plan, with slight variations in
three states, was inaugurated by all the other states of the Southern Baptist
Convention and the District of Columbia.
It is a state unit plan in the sense that it is sponsored, promoted, and financially
fostered by each of the several states. The enlistment of pastors and
churches has been accomplished by means of the collaboration of state secretaries
and their staffs with the Relief and Annuity Board, with the greatest
emphasis on the state organization. The dues, with only one exception, are
channeled to the Relief and Annuity Board through the state secretaries and
treasurers. The benefits by means of monthly checks to retired members on
account of age or disability are channeled to these beneficiaries through the
state offices.
It is a Southern Baptist system in the sense that members of the plan may
move from one state to another without the loss of retirement annuity credits,
and the administration of the plan is by the Relief and Annuity Board which
is in effect the fiscal agent of the several states. Furthermore, the Relief and
Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention is one of the contracting
parties and is legally liable to the state conventions or boards for the faithful
administration of the reserves placed in its custody and for the faithful payments
of all retirement benefits to individual certificate holders according to
the terms of the certificate of participation, which is an agreement on the part
of the Relief and Annuity Board issued under its Charter privileges by the
State of Texas and by authority of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The genius of the Convention Ministers Retirement Plan resides in the
fact that it commands the whole-hearted approval of state conventions, state
boards, and state leaders. This, in turn, has secured with great rapidity the
active participation m the plan on the part of more than 12,000 Southern
Baptist churches and their pastors.
The Convention Ministers Retirement Plan differs in its method of operation
from all other previous plans of the Board, yet it is essentially like all of them
in its underlying principle. It is in reality the flowering of the original plan,
namely, the (Old) Annuity Fund. It is a modification in method, but not in
principle, of the Service Annuity and other contributory annuity plans which
preceded it. The plan provides for contributions from three sources: first,
from the ministers 3% of annual salaries—maximum $120; second, from the
churches they serve 3% of annual salary—maximum $120; third, from the
funds of the Convention, 2% of the total salaries of the participating members.
The churches are remitting their monthly contributions with remarkable
regularity. In fact, more money is paid by the churches into the plan than the
preachers are sending in from year to year. Of course, these contributions
should be exactly balanced as between preachers and churches.
RENEWED EMPHASIS ON OUR RELIEF MINISTRY
The amazing growth of the Ministers Retirement Plan, promising a new
day for thousands of our Southern Baptist preachers, has not led us to the
conclusion that there is no longer a need for our relief department Such a
conclusion would be not only erroneous, but greatly disastrous, for 'there are
other thousands who are today, or will become in after years dependent on
the relief grants of this Board for even a modicum of comfort and ease.
It was the desire to provide for the aged minister and the widow that moti- '
vated the pioneers, who, prior to 1918, established relief agencies in the several
states and amassed in the aggregate an endowment approximating $300 000
It was that same motive that gave such feeling and force to Dr Lunsford'^
message before the Pastor's Conference in Nashville in the fall of 191 fi And