Church Dollars vs. Television Dollars
There is a recent study that seems to affirm the effectiveness of this priority system by demonstrating that church dollars accomplish far more than television dollars.
Robert Polk, director of the Cooperative Program Promotion for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, came to this conclusion after analyzing the 1986 expenditures of leading TV ministries as compared to the Southern Baptist Convention. First, he studied how the $684 million given to six leading TV ministers was used. Beside paying for TV time, he discovered that the donations supported 4 schools, 1 hospital, 3 churches, 2 ministries to needy children, 1 ministry to others in need, and 1 home for unwed mothers.
He then studied how the $635 million given to the Southern Baptists was spent. The contrast is startling! For the Baptist donations supported 52 children’s homes, 48 hospitals (including 23 overseas), 67 colleges and universities (enrolling over 200,000 students), and 33 nursing homes; it also supported 3,756 foreign missionaries, 3,637 missionaries in the USA, and ministries to students on 1,100 campuses. These funds also supported six seminaries (enrolling a fifth of this country’s seminarians), and the ACTS television network carried on cable in many cities.