The preferred solution to any problem in the SBC, our 174 year-old convention of churches, is to create a high-profile national conference, program, or plan. In a way, that is the best solution available, since of the 47,456 SBC churches counted in the latest statistical report, every single one of them is an autonomous, independent actor, free from the least directive from Nashville. Add to that another 3,759 “church-type missions” and we’re over fifty thousand.
Every single one of these churches hires their own clergy, supervises their staff, fires their staff, decides what to pay their staff. Each of these uses lay volunteers as they see fit, supervises, trains, and dismisses their volunteers.
Churches ordain whom they wish. No one screens these at a higher level than the local church.
Churches can revoke ordinations. No one else other than the one church that ordained a minister can revoke that ordination.
There isn’t a single decision about these things that is made in Stone Mountain, Georgia (my church’s associational office) or Duluth, Georgia (my state convention HQ), or Nashville, TN where the Executive Committee of the SBC is located. Seminaries don’t dictate anything to churches. LifeWay Christian Resources doesn’t make a single church use their materials. The Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee doesn’t force any ethical standards on churches. Autonomy. Autonomy. Autonomy.
In regard to the SBC and the problem of sex abuse a lot that can be done has been done. I don’t know of an entity – state convention, seminary, mission board, ERLC or others – which doesn’t require sex abuse training for their employees or those whom they fund to plant churches. Staff for state or associational run camps have been required to undergo background training for many years even though many, sometimes most, of the workers are already part of the clergy or volunteer staff in an individual church.
No one maintains that what is in place now is all that can be done about church-based abuse or clergy criminal conduct but some of the options for action at higher levels has or is being done, The most notable exception to this is the creation of a nationally-maintained database of SBC clergy or volunteers which would include those who aren’t already in some criminal sex abuse database. There is no process or place for a credibly accused SBC minister or volunteer to be examined and blacklisted. Indications from national leaders are that such things are being examined. Nothing has been done.
The most newsworthy item from the 2019 SBC Annual Meeting in Birmingham was the “Sexual Abuse and the Southern Baptist Convention” event attended by thousands.
The future event that is gaining the most notice in the SBC is the ERLC’s national conference in Dallas on October 3-5, 2019. It is called Caring Well: Equipping Churches to Confront the Abuse Crisis. At least one of the SBC Voices team will be present as will several others whom I know. I don’t plan to attend but will follow things as I can.
There are, count -em, twenty-nine speakers listed for the conference. Included are notables like Gregory Love and Kimberlee Norris whose MinistrySafe abuse training and awareness programs are the most used in SBC churches. Rachel Denhollander, Susan Codone, and Beth Moore, all panelists who spoke in June at the Annual Meeting, will be there, as will Boz Tchividjian who has an organization G.R.A.C.E. which deals with sex abuse. Several are abuse survivors. Some of the others are convention leaders. I expect some cold reality about the SBC and abuse to be aired at the meeting.
All this to say that if SBC churches are going to do a better job with all the aspects of sexual abuse in their churches and involving their clergy, then the churches have to be persuaded to do it.
This looks like the best approach to me. We will see.
While no one dictates what my church does, at my suggestion we have been using the MinistrySafe system for a couple of years. It works well for us. It’s the standard of care that all staff and volunteer must undergo criminal background checks. This catches only a small percentage of abusers but is part of what every church should do. Incidentally, we are doing a small scale expansion. I asked for money to put in cameras all over our medium-sized church.
My view from the hinterlands is that the ERLC is doing a decent job for this. No one says it’s perfect or complete but I couldn’t have imagined five years ago seeing what we have seen recently.
I like the camera plan. I’m going to look into that myself.
Great idea. Don’t do what Newspring did. They had awesome cameras and video backup. Yet a number of small children were allegedly molested for months. However, no one was reviewing the video content! Had they been diligent in doing so, they would have caught the perp much sooner since all of it was recorded.
William, I’d love to know more about where you are placing the cameras and what the plan is for reviewing the footage. Live monitoring? Recording and storing for a period of time? How long?
At a previous church we had cameras… And they were motion activated and recorded a gig or so of data before Erasing and starting over. So in many churches that’d be quite sufficent.
All hallways and stairwells – multi angles in children, teen, and nursery wings. You can choose if any or none have audio…. make sure to remember hallways and multi angles Outside offices (we thought about non audio cameras inside offices – but never pulled trigger on that idea for various reasons – I was for that.)
Thank you for writing this William and I agree with all of it. I am glad Boz is speaking and gladder(is that a word? jk) even more glad, that he is invited. All the rest of the speakers and the fact that Caring well is beginning excites me. It’s a good first step and am still going through the course personally, but think it’s good.
“Churches can revoke ordinations. No one else other than the one church that ordained a minister can revoke that ordination.”
If this is how autonomous SBC churches are treating ordination, they should stop. I couldn’t care less whether First Baptist Nowhere USA ordained you 30 years ago or not. Our church isn’t going to recognize you as a pastor in our church unless we determine that you meet the qualifications of a pastor and decide to have you serve our church in that way. Your ordination certificate isn’t worth the paper it’s written on as far as I’m concerned.
Autonomy should mean that we won’t tell you who you can recognize as a pastor in your church, but it should also mean that you aren’t going to tell us that someone is qualified to be a pastor in our church just by ordaining them.
(The “you” in this comment is not directed at anyone.)
Who in the name of Chick-fil-A and Popeye’s has ever held a position that a person’s ordination means every church everywhere must recognize that person as “a pastor in our church?”
Did you tear your ordination up and be re-ordained when you became the pastor at Goshen?
Any church can deem a person unfit to be their pastor but the truth is, in the SBC, one church can revoke the ordination and that is the ordaining church.
Totally agree Adam. It should be based on if they meet the qualifications. More so, First Baptist Nowhere USA may be closed now with no one to confirm that the ordination is real.
I think screening prospective transfer members on their beliefs is a similar issue here, fwiw.
“Ordination” isn’t transferrable among autonomous churches, but it is seen as a sign of the ordaining church’s vetting. It would matter to me if someone was ordained by Bellevue, or CHBC, or Bethlehem Baptist.
And the revocation doesn’t bind the next church. But it should stop the formerly-ordained from claiming a deduction for their housing expense based on the revoked ordination. That’s true especially when the “ordained” are no longer at a church, but commissioned to work at a college or in a chaplaincy.
I’ve been around brethren that claim an ordination from some of the megachurches, as if that level of skill and charisma attaches to them automatically. Not so.
On ordination and the housing allowance, if a guy has a church job and sacerdotal duties it is likely that he keeps the housing allowance even if ordination is revoked. Some church traditions don’t ordain and the IRS has policy that accommodates them. In SBC life, some churches ordain ham sandwiches so getting the paper for the wall and irs isn’t a problem.
I still believe certifying pastors that get trained and educating churches to look for that certification for applicants could be a big plus. I remember when CWT was a big deal that pastor/staff candidates listed certification on their resumes. It became something churches looked for.
Adam, the matter of ordination seems to have gained some interest because of abuse scandals that involve clergy. While I’ve never had a church committee that spent much time asking me about my ordination, it has always been a presumed requirement. Stories of clergy abusers generally include the phrase “an ordained Southern Baptist minister.” It just seems like somebody oughta do something here.
All ordained prospective pastors generally include the phrase “ordained Southern Baptist Pastor” don’t they? (The vast majority of whom are not abusers, BTW)
On the use of cameras around the church, I’ve had to get a rudimentary education on the subject. Can’t say I know enough to give advice. We’re putting ten cameras around our facility. They will cover the entrances, common areas, hallways, etc. I’ve asked that all the student, children, and preschool hallways be covered. It would take too many cameras to put in each classroom. Got a quote that included some storage capacity. I’m still figuring it out.
Would welcome someone who has expertise in this area.
It’s overkill to put cameras in every classroom… If you have them (covering multi angles) in every hallway capturing the entrance to every classroom (and bathroom) you accomplish the same purpose… Because with that footage you can identify who went in to which rooms at which times and when they left what was the demeanor and all of that
Two things:
1) Many times kids don’t report abuse so having a camera on their classrooms might (a) catch such abuse sooner than later, and (b) having the camera in the room could also prevent abuse even if it was fake (not working) if it is widely reported that are wide angle lensed cameras installed.
Of course it is much better if it is working and reviewed after every user of the room esp. By children.
I’m surprised someone hasn’t called the grammar police on this article…terrible.
William, as always, you write a great post.
Did you or anyone else have any thoughts about how many churches signed the Caring Well Challenge?
My belief is that regardless of whether a church agrees to do this or that relative to the official program, there is a new day, and churches are going to be more aware of this issue and the proper way to handle abuse when it occurs.
As they should be.
Recently a few things about our “autonomy” makes me nervous. One is this sex abuse scandal, another is that the “new SBC church” is wanting to do church polity more Biblically (correctly) without often knowing what that looks like – no helpful oversight. Another concern is churches that are in the SBC and clearly have more than one foot into the prosperity (non) Gospel.