I’d just like to jump in alongside Dave’s series on criticizing the SBC and offer some niche thoughts, fresh and relevant, perhaps. I’d entitle this one: “How to express directly to trustees your criticism of their actions or to deliver to trustees your opinion about an unresolved matter presently before a board of trustees.”
Before proceeding, let me say this: What follows are in no way whatsoever a set of “rules” to follow for communicating with trustees. If you are a member of a Southern Baptist church, you can communicate with trustees any way you like. There are no rules. And it may be that you’re out to accomplish nothing more than getting something off of your chest. OK. Fire away.
But, if you are seeking to persuade trustees and accomplish some particular outcome that you think would be best, what follows are one trustee’s suggestions for how you can maximize the effectiveness of your communication.
DOs and DON’Ts for Writing Trustees |
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DO offer your opinion in terms related to the health of the institution. For any good trustee, the productivity of the institution for the kingdom of God will be the primary focus of work. Actually, even a BAD trustee will generally at least listen to arguments made for the health of the institution. Make your appeal in those terms. |
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GOODI read in Baptist Press that the IMB has had to reduce its missionary force, although the needs of world evangelization are as great as they have ever been. I want our mission board to succeed in her mission. Here’s one idea that might help:… |
LESS PERSUASIVEMy good friend is a missionary, and this is going to be bad for them… This is really going to look bad in the press… Our church contributed $x,xxx.xx last year, and we want _______ to happen… |
| DO NOT devote yourself to the making of threats. If it is a matter of any significance at all, just assume that people with a greater threat-capacity than you possess have already made threats on all sides of the question at hand. Consider that job well-done already and look for another basis for your communique. Threats are not very persuasive when aimed at trustees, by the way. | |
GOODSo long as the seminary is upholding our statement of faith and sending out God-called men and women into the work of the kingdom, I’m here to support her, but I would be so pleased if we could find a way to… |
LESS PERSUASIVEDo what I say or you’ll never get another dime from me… We’re going to the convention floor, and you’ll answer for what you’ve done… |
| DO NOT presume upon friendships or other relationships. If you are buddies with a trustee, don’t expect that to mean that you will be able to sway the way that trustee votes. If the matter is controversial at all, then your trustee-buddy probably has other buddies who hold the opposite opinion from yours. The trustee isn’t stupid and has already done the math to know that angry friends will be the result of this no matter how it unfolds. Might as well just do the right thing, as best as it can be determined. | |
GOODI certainly have opinions about what’s unfolding, and if you ever want or need to know them, just ask, but I’m contacting you today to let you know that you can count on my prayers and my friendship no matter what may be the outcome of all of this… |
LESS PERSUASIVEAs one friend to another, let me give you some unsolicited advice as to what you should do.… |
| DO offer any first-hand information you might possess about the issues at hand. This is probably not you. For most controversial matters unfolding in the SBC, this will not be you, unless you have achieved omnipresence. But if trustees are deliberating over a matter about which you yourself were present, having heard with your own ears and seen with your own eyes the unfolding of relevant events, then by all means, share that with trustees so that they might be informed better for the making of decisions. | |
GOODWhen I walked in, I was startled to find one of our employees in the intimate company of a woman who was not his wife.… |
LESS PERSUASIVELet me recount for you what my buddies and I have discussed in our Facebook group chat in which we hashed out all of this… |
| DO NOT necessarily expect a reply. The scale of communication made possible by the Internet will rapidly outstrip the communications capacity of most trustees. They have jobs and families. We go out of our way (as we should) to include people from smaller churches among our trustees, and pastors from such churches will have even less time available to dedicate to communications for their volunteer post serving as a trustee. Also, in some cases, they will have been forbidden to reply in any detail by institutional staff or legal counsel. | |
GOODI’m sure you’re swamped with emails right now. No reply is necessary, although if you’d like to follow up, I’m happy to correspond with you further.… |
LESS PERSUASIVEI emailed you yesterday and you haven’t had the decency to reply, which just goes to show how evil you are and that you can’t even come up any justification at all for your actions… |
| DO be who you’d want your church members to be if your congregation was embroiled in controversy, assuming that you are a pastor of a local church. When your church members show out, do they persuade you? If you want to be effective in communicating with trustees, try to be persuasive. | |
GOODI just want God’s will to be done. If it goes one way, yes, I’m going to be sad and disappointed. If it goes the other way, I’ll be elated. But that’s really not what matters in the long run, is it? What matters is that God would show you His will clearly, and I’m praying for that to happen… |
LESS PERSUASIVEI’ve been calling all of my friends, alerting them to the nefarious things you are doing, and we’re organizing and coming after you… |
| DO NOT assume that you even know what are the relevant issues that the trustees are deliberating. Consider that, while my inbox was filling up with people’s opinions about #MeToo, I (as I said on the floor of the SBC Annual Meeting) was wrestling with issues about the proper relationship between an institutional head and his board of trustees. Because of that mismatch, a lot of very carefully worded emails sent to me were actually not nearly as relevant to my deliberations as the senders thought they would be. The most helpful messages came from people who acknowledged on the front end that their knowledge of the situation was limited and who were measured in what they asserted and demanded. | |
GOODOnline and in talking with friends, I’ve heard that one of the significant factors you may be considering is…. If that is so, then you can take my opinion for what it is worth as the voice of one Southern Baptist who is praying for you…. I’m sure there is more to the story, but I hope that what I have written to you can make some positive contribution as you are seeking God’s will. |
LESS PERSUASIVEI spoke with a very influential Southern Baptist just the other day, and he told me what was really going on. So I know all about it, and I’m telling you that this is what you must do…. |
| DO sign your name. This summer I receive a number of emails from a self-professed “Southern Baptist insider” who anonymously informed me that I should fire Dr. Patterson forthwith. I read half of the first one. I trashed all of the rest of them unread immediately upon their arrival. The stakes are likely no higher for you as a correspondent than they are for the employees and trustees of the entity that you are discussing. Their names are going to be attached to this business, so you can probably stick your neck out and put your name on your messages. | |
You might think I’m lashing out at people who wrote me things that I didn’t like this year. Actually, a good bit of the “LESS PERSUASIVE” phraseology that I’ve critique in this post is modeled after MY OWN earlier attempts to make my opinions known to our boards. I still want to offer my opinions on the issues that confront Southern Baptists, and I think communication between individual Southern Baptists and the trustees who govern our entities can be an important and helpful part of that. But ALL of our attempts to communicate with trustees are made more difficult by the “less persuasive” attempts of some Southern Baptists. After a trustee has read ten of those, she or he comes to your well-written message perhaps with a negative mindset toward the entire enterprise. That doesn’t serve anyone. So, let us all endeavor to communicate in more helpful and persuasive ways when we offer opinion, direction, or even critique for those who serve us as trustees.
Finally, let me say that a lot of Southern Baptists actually handled this very well during my journeys through SBC controversy. To all of you on either side who did so, although you may not have received a reply directly from me, I thank you.
Hmmm…. It sounds like Trustees ought only be tweaked. I agree there are polite and impolite ways to ask questions and make points. But the bottom line appears to be ‘like it or leave it’. When major change is needed minor tweak suggestions do not really get the job done.
I can’t speak for other trustees, but I can say that this past summer when I reached out to Bart (who I don’t know personally) he responded and was very kind and humble. I wish there were more like him.
Hunter, cannot imagine how it pains me to agree with you (publicl). The SBC needs more like Bart.
Now, back to insulting Bart.
I almost did not post because I did not want to hurt his reputation by publicly praising him!
If that is what you are getting from Bart’s article I do not think you are reading it correctly.
He is explaining, from his very public experience, how to do so effectively. Ought that not to be the goal?
“Like it or leave it” could mean more than one thing.
On the one hand, it could mean, “Don’t bother expressing your opinion, because it is inconsequential. Listen to my opinion instead, and then like it or leave it.” If that’s what you have in mind, then I struggle to comprehend how a post completely dedicated to helping people be more persuasive in communicating their points of view to trustees could reasonably be linked to that approach.
On the other hand, “like it or leave it” may be the way someone characterizes a situation in which, although they have ample opportunity offer input, a trustee has access to information they themselves do not have and has decision-making authority that they themselves do not have. The person is therefore frustrated that, although they think that they might make a different decision if they had the authority to do so, they do not have that level of access or authority. Essentially, this is frustration with the idea that it is even necessary at all to try to persuade a trustee in order to implement one’s own private agenda.
If that’s what you have in mind, then I guess there’s some “like it or leave it” quality to the nature of any system of governance other than autocracy in which you, personally, happen to be the autocrat.
PS: I’ve no idea why this got my name wrong.
Great post, Bart. This will be really helpful for future reference, both for myself and to share with others if/when future issues arise.
And let me say thank you again for serving and persevering through a really difficult time.
Dr. Barber:
I can understand how most trustees couldn’t possibly take time to engage in extensive written communications since many of them are pastors in small churches and they don’t have secretaries.
Would most trustees agree to talk with someone if the person with the concern came, in person, to where the trustee was? For example, say I wanted to discuss item X regarding the operation of entity Z, would most trustees be open do this? Say the nearest trustee for entity Z to me here in Oklahoma City was in Tulsa, and I wanted to setup a meeting with him/her in Tulsa, would most trustees be willing to do that. Maybe it would help if I offered to take him to his favorite BBQ joint!
On a related note, I can say anecdotally that going to trustee meetings in person is certainly possible, because I did this myself. I paid my own roundtrip airfare from OKC to Jacksonville along with hotel bill and car rental etc. The expense to do this would limit the extent that this might be an option for a person wanting to see what is happening at one of the agencies.
It seems to me like making phone calls to trustees is not the best approach.
It depends. I think most trustees would try to find a way to accommodate such a request. Now, with that having been said, if you had put that request before me in early June, you would not have succeeded, simply because trustee service was already taking far more than its share of my time, and as a result, family and church were making sacrifices. But for the preponderance of my decade of trustee service, I would have done my best to accommodate your request.
It also depends on the nature of the “can you meet with me?” statement.
For example: “Is there a time that I can come and meet with you face-to-face and talk about this?” vs. “I’m coming to your area on X date and I will be at your church to get answers from you.”
I’ve gotten the latter as a trustee of a state entity and it’s not well-received.
Another, not actually related to the inimitable Dr. Barber’s post, is this: while you may be deeply aggrieved by something, the phone call that indicates you have done nothing for months but stew over your irritation does not lend itself to someone being a good audience. Yes, you may be frustrated that you took this to person A, and they did nothing, so you went to B (or not to B), and so forth, and finally you’re calling a trustee out of frustration. But realize that it’s possibly the first time the trustee has heard about the situation, they are responsible to get facts before acting, and they will not commit to a decision. You’ve thought about for months. The trustee has known about it for minutes. We really do not want trustees that act on most things within minutes–obviously, definite proven misconduct is an exception, call a trustee with the guilty verdict in a trial and they should be willing to fire pretty darn quick–we want trustees to think, consider, and take counsel with their fellow trustees before acting.
Good additions, all.
“Do sign your name.”
I consider the entire post as valuable, but “Do sign your name” brings back the most memories for me. When I served as a trustee was before emails, texts, PM, FB, or Twitter. Social Media was not what it is today. Therefore, I got letters. Due to the time period in the history of the SBC, I received hundreds of letters.
I learned quickly to throw those without names in the trash can. So did most of my fellow trustees. As a matter of fact, we had one bold chairman who would not allow a letter read by a trustee in our meetings that was sent by an anonymous source. I think his decision to not allow unsigned letters to be read in our meetings saved a lot of grief and certainly a lot of time and needless discussion.
Thank you for writing this post, Dr. Barber.
Thanks, CB. Most pastors ought to understand this, right?
Bart, thanks for this helpful post. Over the years I’ve discussed matters with several SBC trustees. I always found then open to dialogue and interested in receiving feedback. They were quite willing to explain their actions and perspectives on the agency/institution.
I think that’s generally the case. Thanks!
Operative word: “Generally”
This is good information on how to communicate with anyone anywhere like a mature adult.
I believe that the prior post about criticism and this post are great and have good info. However, in my opinion it is not the issue per say as the above comments illustrate, the “typical” SBC is not going to go to the steps above to convey their concerns. They depend on the trustees and leadership to do the right thing and trust them to do so. Most SBC members are unaware of the resolutions , the entity heads , the various duties and functions of the state and local organizations and the everyday workings.
There should be a top to bottom way to answer questions and concerns that is fairly easy and plain. One of my main concerns and it is a growing concern is the lack of transparency in fianances, concerning total compensation on the state and national level. I know, I can write a letter, appeal to a trustee, bring it upo on the convention floor, ask my Pastor to bring it up and perhaps there are other cumbersome ways to get the information. Why is this information so gurarded and hard get . I have heard the answerw , that I consider non answers before but they are not reasonable answers to me. Am I being un Biblical in my question or too critical.
What if a concerned “typical” SBC was worried about IMB finances before the crisis and wanted to get some valid answers, Would he have gotten them from the trustees, who oversaw the IMB ? How would his “criticism” or concerns really be addressed? A result of lack of transparency.
Am I being wrongly critical when I express my concern about the lack of transparency but the truth is there is no inputus in the SBC for the leadership to be transparent. I think this will lead to major problems one day if the “average” SBC member is aware of the situation.
Again the points in the article are well stated on a local and intimate one on one level but I do not think them relevant on a marco scale.
Forget about yearly personal compenhension how much on travel expenses, per diem and related expenses does the SBC expend each year for all the entities? Would that be a fair question, certainly one that should be easy and quick to answer.
I’m a fan of greater transparency in our convention.
And dare we say a practitioner as well…
On some issues, I think there was transparency to a point and then questions weren’t asked. If you are reporting, annually, that you are spending more than you are taking in but balancing it by the sale of assets–and nobody asks questions at the SBC, no one follows up with a request for more information through trustees or through Baptist Press or anywhere else, then why follow up with more information?
The IMB leadership told us they were short of money in those days, they reported what they were doing…and we seem to have just kind of hummed along as if it wasn’t a problem.
I do think we need to have a section on the websites of each of the entities that has less “pretty” information: rather than an infographic giving a fundraising pitch, a straightforward financial report, and so forth. Rather than blurry “FTEs” at seminaries and mixtures of on-campus, off-campus, etc.., a straight up “X number of students on main campus, with this percent full-time, ” and so on…
Again, have the pretty website but at somewhere like SBCThisWeek’s website, have the links to the “Dull, low-graphic, high-text, robust information” website sections for each entity. That way, if you want the information, it’s there and accessible…
I can see why we don’t just email the line-by-line budgets around the SBC: some data without context is worse than no data at all, but there should be a way to provide the context. It just makes for boring web design.
Doug, good thoughts. My concern and I question is who is the “we that just kind of hummed along”. Was it the trustees? who went along, was it the accountants or was it the general generic SBC membership who assumed that the oversight was being done. In conveying information , simple is better. My daughter in law is a lawyer, her per diem expense for travel is $550.00 a day for expenses plus lodging provided. It is a private company but it is certainly generous to my middle class mindset but to my daughter in law it is the norm. Just an example where a little more transparency in SBC expenditures could be reported.
I just cannot figure how where the accountability lies except when there is a crisis situation that cannot be ignored. I do not think most SBC members would be comfortable in a local church that has the lack of transparency found on the national level. This should not even be an issue even the United Way puts up what their executive staff makes in annual salary but the perks are still hidden. Am I being too critical or too demanding or too suspicious? That is my question. That is why I appreciate the two related articles the past days and the good insight here.
Steve, the IMB situation is the hardest, because we can see the outcome of several incorrect judgments. There is a risk in selling assets to meet budget, but it is not usually unethical. In hindsight, there were a series of bad predictions.
But what forward-looking questions should Trustees have asked in that situation to allow both flexibility and prudence?
Jon, the job of leadership and the trustees is to reduce the risk and prevent incorrect judgements/predictions. Letting expenses exceed revenue is not that hard of a concept to grasp. I do not think anyone ever accused people of unethical behavior but I would say terrible management and leadership. As there was no avenue for someone from the outside to monitor the actions of the SBC that is the role of the trustees and the fiduciary duty of management.
Trustees should have asked for an accounting of expenditures vs. revenue. Can you follow the money trail on the state and national level in regards to many areas with any confidence. Would any private/public organization in the secular world get away with not making public the compensation of their top management staff, they use to hide it until the ;public demanded it. C Keeping in line with the theme of the articles is this an unfair , to critical and unwarranted criticism? I do think that someday the lack of transparency will have dire effects on the SBC.
BONUS: (Bart approved! 😀 )
DO follow up after any decisions or changes are implemented and let the trustee know, whether you agree or disagree with the change, you fully support the institution and its mission, and are actively praying for God to be glorified in all that it does.
Great suggestions and they work very well with those trustees who understand their position, what it means to be a “trust”ee, and who see themselves as stewards of a Christian organization with a mission and purpose rooted in the belief that the outcomes are dedicated to pleasing and honoring the Lord. From my own experience in contacting trustees regarding an issue or situation at an SBC institution, I ran into a cotton-padded stone wall put up by agenda driven sycophants. And what I’ve observed is that getting the ear of some trustees is a matter of who you are and your relationship to them. I’ve known several people whose pastoral ministry involved lobbying trustees with lunch meetings and golf dates (at their expense) during a time when I couldn’t get a trustee to return a phone call.
To balance things out, I think there should be a list of how trustees can better communicate their decisions and findings with the students, the institution, the alumni, the supporters, and the public so that press releases are better that just “trust us we are the trustees” with zero facts and reasons for their decisions or “we are investigating” but never report back any facts or findings. Communication goes both ways.