Virginia's largest association of Baptists has started to reverse recent downward trends in the number of member churches and its annual budget, its leaders said this week.

The Baptist General Association of Virginia held its 181st annual meeting at the Roanoke Civic Center on Tuesday and Wednesday, where more than 1,500 people from its 1,432 congregations gathered for their annual business and inspirational meeting.

"Our numbers are starting to go the other way," said Executive Director John Upton, showing a net gain in both churches and contributions for the past year.

The newly approved 2005 budget of $14.4 million is $100,000 higher than this year's, and there has been a net gain of more than 20 contributing congregations.

The association still has about 100 fewer member congregations than it had a dozen years ago. Most of those left to join the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia, a fairly new group with closer ties to the Southern Baptist Convention. Among those who have moved are a number of the state's largest congregations, including Roanoke's First Baptist Church on Third Street Southwest.

Most congregations in the Baptist General Association of Virginia also are affiliated at least tenuously with the Southern Baptist Convention. Nevertheless, it is dominated by so-called "moderate" congregations that are frequently in theological and philosophical conflict with the more conservative national denomination.

But the Virginia Baptists faced some tough budgeting decisions adapting to a determination a year ago to lower their financial expectations by about $700,000 a year to reflect the realities of member contributions.

Among other things, that meant cutting back allocations to historic Virginia Baptist partners Fork Union Military Academy, Hargrave Military Academy and Oak Hill Academy; selling Baptist Student Union centers on the campuses of the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University; and getting rid of the 500-acre Peaks of Otter camp.

The Virginia association also showed its independence from the Southern Baptist Convention by voting to send money to the Baptist World Alliance and seeking to become an independent member of that body. The SBC earlier this year cut its ties - and what had once been a $450,000 annual contribution - to the international Baptist group in a dispute over theology. Virginia Baptists will make up one-tenth of that with their contribution.

Still, the state group's essentially conservative theology was reflected in a continuing dispute with Baptist-affiliated Averett University in Danville. Virginia Baptists last year escrowed their $350,000 allocation to the university after a professor published a newspaper opinion piece supporting Episcopalians' ordination of a noncelibate gay bishop, and controversial John Spong, a retired Episcopal bishop, spoke on campus.

About half of that money was released to the college this year to cover scholarship obligations, but $170,000 remains in escrow.

This year, the association allotted only $150,000 for Averett. It also will be held back until an agreement can be reached on allocating all of the money to a proposed new program that would offer continuing theological education to ministers and lay people.

The predominantly white association made history by electing its first black officer. The Rev. Mark Croston, pastor of East End Baptist Church in Suffolk, was named second vice president.