A Scandal Where There Should Be None
This summer in Nashville, 15,000 people gathered for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. Called Messengers, they elect a new president and pass resolutions designed to guide their cooperative programs and shared beliefs.
Baptists are congregationalists. Each congregation hires and fires its own pastor and sets its own procedures. But Southern Baptists share a statement of faith and mission and cooperate on a denominational basis for their common good. Together, Baptist churches pool a portion of their tithes for their cooperative programs and missions.
To steer their common purposes, the Southern Baptist Convention has an Executive Committee that exists as a corporation that continues in perpetuity even as the annual convention ends. It describes itself this way:
The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1917 and established its offices in Nashville in 1927. At that time, the Southern Baptist Convention enlarged the Committee’s scope of duties to include acting on behalf of the Convention between annual sessions.
Currently, the Executive Committee is comprised of 86 representatives chosen from qualified states and defined territories. Although the Executive Committee does not control or direct the activities of Convention agencies, it reviews their financial statements and recommends the Convention annual operating budget. In addition, it receives and distributes the moneys Southern Baptists give in support of denominational ministries, acts as the recipient and trust agency for all Convention properties, and provides public relations and news services. It also performs other tasks assigned by the SBC and promotes the general work of Southern Baptists. To carry out these duties, the Committee employs an executive and professional staff in its Nashville offices.
It is important to note that, as the Executive Committee says, “The Executive Committee is not a board, but a committee. That is, while it can make recommendations to or about entities or issue reports on entities; no entity is directly accountable to it. Each entity is directly responsible to the Convention of church messengers in annual session. This provides a direct approach to problems.”
In other words, the Executive Committee is responsible to the Convention as well. The Southern Baptists have no pope, no cardinals, and no bishops. Baptists have a bottom up approach instead of a top down approach. The Messengers convene each year and pass resolutions directing the business of the SBC and can direct the Executive Committee to do things.
In Nashville, the 15,000 Messengers directed the Executive Committee to do one very important thing — waive attorney-client privilege and allow a full, transparent investigation into allegations that members of the Executive Committee knew or should have known about or covered up allegations of sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Joe Knott, a lawyer from North Carolina who sits on the SBC Executive Committee, was quoted as describing the Southern Baptist Messengers as “15,000 people that really do not have the power to tell us to do anything.” The actions related to his claim are about to split the Southern Baptist Convention into pieces.
Historically, the Messengers can steer the Executive Committee through the passage of resolutions. The Messengers are very clear they expect the Executive Committee to waive attorney-client privilege and have an open, transparent investigation into very serious allegations relating to sexual abuse overseen by a Sexual Abuse Taskforce set up by the Messengers.
Twice now over a period of a few weeks, the Executive Committee has refused to comply with the Messengers’ demands. This is having immediate ramifications as a vast array of SBC churches and state conventions are now rapidly moving to cut off funding to the Executive Committee.
Don’t forget this other content from my radio show:
To be sure, members of the Executive Committee have a legitimate business concern about waiving attorney-client privilege. The Executive Committee is a Tennessee chartered corporation for legal purposes. If the Executive Committee or employees thereof are found culpable of legal violations, waiving privilege would most likely cause their insurance company to refuse to pay any claims. Insurance companies expect the insured to engage in risk management and mitigation. Waiving attorney-client privilege, among other issues, could be grounds for the insurance company to claim the actions were not under the insurance policy. It could open the Southern Baptist Convention to significant liability.
The Executive Committee has a fiduciary duty to the Southern Baptist Convention and that requires sometimes unpopular decisions done in the name of protecting the organization from massive financial losses.
But, and this is a big but, the Messengers have insisted and the Messengers must govern or the organizational structure of the Southern Baptist Convention will be subverted with a committee controlling the convention or operating with the Convention’s money in contravention to the Convention’s wishes.
The Southern Baptist Convention and its Executive Committee are not a business even though the latter may be incorporated. They are together a church entity under the ultimate jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord. If members of the church knew, should have known, or engaged in a cover-up related to sexual abuse, the church has a Biblical directive to find out and clean their own house.
As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:11-13, “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you.’”
Frankly, the fact that some are so dogmatically insistent there not be a fully transparent investigation is a big hint some are really nervous about what may turn up and be exposed.
Neither the SBC nor the Executive Committee are truly a business. Certainly, the Executive Committee has the worldly trappings of business. They have a President and CEO, Ronnie Floyd. They have an Executive Vice President, Greg Addison. They have a corporate charter. Though they must structure themselves as a business to navigate the secular world, they are in the business of saving souls and advancing the gospel, not overseeing a profit margin and shareholder dividends. Their money goes not to turn a profit, but to advance the Kingdom of God.
They cannot set about saving souls and advancing the gospel with scandal and credible allegation hanging over them. They will have churches leave. They will undermine their mission given by the real CEO and they will be held accountable to Him for that. The Executive Committee can not be good stewards and fiduciaries of the Kingdom if they are so committed to being good stewards and fiduciaries of Mammon.
The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee needs to honor the wishes of the Messengers. The SBC Executive Committee may have to, as Al Mohler noted, figure out how to accomplish the will of the Messengers, but it must be a matter of how they will, not whether they will.
Every day they wait is a day that looks more and more like some have something to hide and each day further in the shadows will cause the light to shine even more brightly with even more notoriety. Already, some members of the Executive Committee are being exposed as employed by some who could be implicated in the sexual abuse scandal. This is not good.
I pray they do the right thing quickly and trust God to sort out any mess.
I was baptized and raised as a Roman Catholic. I am now a member of, and officer in, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation. My only counsel for the Southern Baptist Convention, aside that they pray diligently on the matter, is that they in no way do anything which can even remotely construed as attempting to cover up these allegations. The Roman Catholic Church in America was seriously, if not fatally, damaged by its attempts to cover up its sexual abuse scandal. It faces, IMO, an uncertain future as it tries to dig itself out of the hole which it itself dug.
This is well written Erick. I read it early this morning but wanted it to "cook" for a while. I have been concerned about some of the events occurring at the national and state level of the SBC. From a theological standpoint, I have considered when events would rise to the point of my suggesting our church leave the SBC. Yet as your analysis clearly shows, this question may be moot: the Convention won't necessarily leave the Bible, they will implode. I deeply appreciate your analysis. Too many in the SBC are now choosing sides. There's only one "side"--God's. I sincerely thank you.