Randy Adams is one of four announced candidates for SBC president. Baptist Press covers his announcement with links to the other three (Al Mohler, Ed Litton, and Mike Stone) in this article. Adams was to be nominated this past year but the virus gave the SBC JD Greear for another year.
I doubt I would vote for Adams but his strong stance on SBC openness and transparency tempts me even though I disagree with some of his other views. More on those at another time.
Here’s what he says about openness and transparency, from his blog, A Path to Reforming the SBC
SBC entities must submit to measures producing transparency in finances and accountability for how money is spent. Periodic forensic audits must be conducted of every entity, with the results made available to every SBC church. God’s money, given by God’s people, requires the highest level of accountability and transparency. There must not be secret financial arrangements, and money must not be used to purchase support for a leader or a program. Policies against conflicts of interest must be established and enforced. Non-Disparagement Agreements (NDAs) are used far too frequently in the SBC to purchase the silence of possible truth-tellers and whistle blowers. This is wrong and it must cease as a standard practice.
He employs several examples, including the recent retirement of LifeWay’s leader and some actions by NAMB (Adams is a strident NAMB critic). Read the blog for details. They have all been reported in relevant news outlets.
Adams is dead right on the odious practices in the SBC of trustee secrecy, conflicts of interest, opaqueness, and public disclosure of entity head salaries. Here’s a recent Tweet:
Financial transparency essential for ministry leaders. NWBC has budget on website business services page. We’ll be posting additional financials. We answer every question posed by NWBC pastors/churches, my salary included. More to come. #sbc21
I’ve checked. Adams has extensive financial information available on the Northwest Baptist Convention site – budget, his salary, etc. This should be done across the board in the SBC, including:
- Full disclosure (without having to ask for the figures) of all SBC entity leader salaries, including housing allowance and other compensation. Follow the same practice as required for public corporations which would, I believe, include disclosure of family members who are employed by the entity or who have other financial interests.
- Disclosure of employment contracts for entity heads. If the entity guarantees paying a retired, fired, or resigned leader health insurance for life, a new car every two years, paid expenses for the leader and his wife to the Annual Meeting for life, whatever else, these should be known. In some cases, not even entity trustees know these things. Appalling.
- Expansion and strengthening of the SBC Business and Financial Plan. Some entities, seems to me in my lay opinion, have finessed these requirements. Smoke and mirrors abound in the SBC. They should not.
- The SBC should start putting watchdog trustees on entity boards, not sychophants, those who are looking for a sinecure or some financial reward, or who are happy to get expenses paid and some enhancement for their resume. Most trustees are good and decent people. How is it that we have managed so poorly? Systemic failure.
- Trustee boards should have, and follow, conflict of interest policies.
There are more and the these are a mix of my own and Adam’s.
The SBC trustee system is a disgrace with multiple, utter failures over the past decades. Our philosophy seems to be “no failure is too great for us to say, ‘let’s just move on and not hurt missions’.” Nothing changes. The past is repeated.
My opinion, rank conjecture from the SBC hinterlands, is that Randy Adams doesn’t have much of a chance to be elected. Regardless, his stance on openness and transparency is one that should heard and followed by whomever is elected.
Let’s be candid here. We have four candidates. Two are denominational employees, Adams and Mohler. One, Litton, has a spouse employed by one of our entities. Only one, Mike Stone, is just an ordinary SBCer not on the payroll. I’m not implying wrongdoing by anyone, just noting the facts.
The SBC’s system is sufficiently diffused that direct action by the president is impossible…except for persuasion. I hope Adams is persuasive on this subject.
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Photo from Adam’s blog site. Nice picture.
A commenter asked if SBC Voices was going to cover the three candidates other than Ed Litton. Sure. I’ve written on Adams before. Mike Stone has been the subject of a few pieces here, and Mohler is ubiquitous in SBC life. There are 138 days to the Annual Meeting. We can’t write about SEC football all the time. Look for many. The Voices team disagrees on the best candidate, I’d speculate.
Maybe I’ll be in Nashville. Maybe not.
If one of these four men are elected, the SBC will have a non-megachurch individual as president (I’m not sure about the size of Litton’s church; Stone is a large church pastor, not megachurch). I have said that it would be nice to leave the parade of megapastors-as-SBC-president. Looks like we will.
Depends on how you define mega church…..when compared with other SBC churches, 350+ in regular attendance is what, I think, Lifeway used at one point.
Both Litton and Stone’s churches, I would think, exceed that.
I still say no to salary announcment’s for reasons discussed with you before. 😉
2000 in attendance is the standard
2000? Wow. Does that include campus/satellite churches attendance as well as thise “church plants” that are merely extensions? 😉
According to wiki – thare about +/- 70 mega churches (2000+) in the SBC.
The conflicts of interest policies are deeply necessary… For example, Perhaps a person who is currently taking classes or on staff at a particular seminary should not be on the board of the sane seminary while taking classes.
Also, if layperson is heavy donor to a particular seminary/entity – perhaps he/she should not serve in the board of that particular seminary.
Also, perhaps our seminary presidents should not serve on boards of other seminaries/Bible colleges.
Lastly, no entity head be allowed to build a competing side hustle ministry while serving as an entity head that he retires to and then competes against the entity he had just led.
Thanks for the story. I always enjoy your articles. ps GO DAWGS
I have known Randy for over thirty years. He formerly pastored a church I served in the early nineties while in seminary. He had planted a mission nearby and I was privileged to attend the service in which it formally constituted as a church. Missions and church planting is his passion. Randy is genuine, honest, and nice the way Richie Cunningham was nice in Happy Days. He has a scholar’s mind and a Pastor’s heart. He understands how the SBC has been going adrift lately and is proposing solutions to make it better. I can promise you this—if elected, Randy Adams will use his influence to improve the SBC.
I really like his stance on transparency in our agencies. I hope this will get addressed regardless of who becomes the next SBC president.
Let’s be honest. Randy Adams is, in my opinion the best of the announced candidates. As a trustee of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (2017 – current) and a survivor of sering as a trustee at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (1993-2003) – yes, I have no clue how I have ended up serving two different seminaries – I would agree that the trustee system needs some adjustment – particularly training for new trustees. I also recognize as a long time observer (and not really a participant) of SBC politics that small churches, while the bulk of our denomination, really have little or no leverage or influence over the utlimate direction of our denomination. So, here in the Northwest (I serve in a small, rural community in Southern Oregon) we just keep our focus on serving the Lord.
This is an excellent article on a very important topic. I wish the SBC Executive Committee would conduct trustee training right before our annual convention. All new trustees could be trained and then watch the messengers in action. Some trustees have never been to an annual meeting. There is an inherent conflict of interest in entity heads training their own trustees about how to keep themselves accountable.
I am afraid that the compensation would appall and dismay the average SBC member
Maybe. The organizations they run are large, some are complex. I wouldn’t presume that they are overpaid but don’t disagree that some folks in the pews might be surprised.
I believe people should be well compensated and taken care of but I agree if the salaries of these execs and others were released it will further sink the ship of cp giving. There was a guy years ago in the early days of baptist blogging that pushed for all seminary presidents to release their compensation. Can not remember his name but remember him through Burleson stuff. What ever happened to that guy.
I agree on the overall transparency issues and salary disclosures. I used to think that would cause too much dissension/jealousy, but I think it’s necessary now. At least wouldn’t hurt worse than anything else. And the NDAs have to go.
Not sure about NDA’s (not all of them cover up alleged wrongdoing, some are necessary to protect sensetive material and non competes sure are) but certainly golden parachutess oughta go.
There may be a narrow window where I would be OK with them, but in general they come off as buying secrecy. In the SBTS case, it certainly did. Give severance or don’t, but don’t tie it to an NDA.
Mike stone is the man for the job
Can anyone give a rationale , reasonable defense for all the non transparency at the leadership level of the SBC? Why would this not be public knowledge as well as any settlements made for what ever reason. I think all will be shocked with the total benefit packages and travel expenses, book sales deals and work schedule of SBC leaders. I can think of no rational reason not to have full transparency in any non profit agency. This would not be tolerated in almost any public secular non profit organization. The sleeping membership of the SBC will wake up one day and find out how much they have paid for not holding leaders accountable. It will not be at Kenneth Copeland levels but it will stagger the average SBC pew sitters mind. If you have a good explanation of the need for being so secret in SBC finances , please let us know . Thank you.
Good for Randy Adams. This could be a winning issue if people are paying attention, but of course they are not.
Randy Adams is godly and brilliant.
It’s 2021 and the SBC is just now starting to discuss transparency and accountability of how funds are spent, disclosing salaries of those who are employed and get benefits off the denomination’s dime? And oh, by the way, let’s talk about conflict of interest and the fact that it might not be a good idea for a prominent pastor who serves on NAMB’s board to have his wife and two children employed at other entities where his friends, or maybe his brother-in-law, is the chairman of trustees. And you’re also saying that the only candidate among the current field of four who is talking about this doesn’t really stand a chance of getting elected?
That’s my guess.
Among the four candidates, mohler has argued for sealing records and has used ndas at sbts. I don’t recall his saying that anything needs reforming. Stone did not demonstrate openness and transparency as ec chair. Litton hasn’t commented on the subject. There’s plenty time for all candidates to address the matter.
Mike Stone did a great job of speaking to the problems once all the facts were gathered
It’s a big organization sometimes when things are happening at the helm we are unaware of all the facts and so are they
As a church pastor there is probably a lot going on everyday I have no context to make a ruling on mike did a good job of explaining things once the dust settled
Any statement connecting Mike Stone to transparency and openness exhibits a severe detachment from reality.
Ha
Mike stone gave a complete explanation of his actions
I hope you guys that feel this way never find your selves in a back room
Mike Stone is the king of secrecy, of the back room deal.
Again. If we release for public examination and scrutiny the entity president(s) and other executive staff salaries – we ought to be consistent and publish all salaries top to bottom. Do it every year at the convention in a book including every salary paid in any part of the SBC structure. .
Some have argued that execs should be transparently available while others are entitled to privacy. If a secretary or janitor is entitled to privacy, except on a need to know and among those educated with the nuances and responsible for determining pay, then I would argue so are the execs.
Do state conventions share thier execs salaries – I have served in churches within three state conventions and I’m pretty confident in saying none of them have and don’t remember such being demanded on any large scale.
Does Adams’ state convention share all details of his remuneration? They may – just asking.
No, it doesn’t follow that if executive pay should be public then all employee pay should be public. I’d point to requirements for public corporations, officers have to disclose, publicly, annually, compensation.
You, an SBC pastor whose church pays the bills for the SBC, are entitled to make an argument here. I’d like to see any of the entity heads make your argument that if their pay is public then the janitor’s pay should be public. Southern Baptists who pay the bills are entitled to demand from their entities and employees what they think best, not what the paid leaders think best.
Some state conventions do and some don’t. Randy Adams’ NWBC does. Good for them.
William is correct. If you look at public companies and other major non profits, they show the salaries for execs, but then show a lump some for all salaries (or SGA)… They do not post the salaries of the little guy.
But the argument you’re making is regarding the use of cooperative program funds… Cooperative program funds pays the janitor too.
I think the reluctance to require janitors but require execs reveals what I expect are the real reason(s) behind the request – and I think it may be imore about baser curiousity than a noble desire for accountability.
CP monies are providing both – why not make them public?
Btw, what accountability do you hope to provide once you know how much so and so exec makes??
Ah, the dude who believes he knows my state of mind. Not quite. Don’t always know it myself.
Public information brings its own accountability. It may cause nothing but a small ripple. Maybe compensation levels are in line with similar organizations. Let the trustees shoulder whatever praise or displeasure comes from the southern Baptists who pay the bills.
So Dave, are there any suggestions being made that the janitors are overpaid and underworked, and have relatives receiving salaries for very little (or no) work?
Additionally, the entities are autonomous and responsible only to the trustees – whom we, as messengers, elect every year – tasking them with responsibility and making these types of decsions.
Again, as I always say, we Southern Baptists love our sacrosanct autonomy… Until we don’t.
It could be made a part of the Business and financial plan which requires extensive reporting by entities. No issue with autonomy.
Who will require it by designing, accumulating and enforcing this extensive report via a business and financial plan? The EC?
The EC already does this, which is why we have all those tables in the SBC annual report. Morris Chapman made a motion in Birmingham for the ec to study strengthening of that. No action on it that I know of. Maybe the disposition of the motion will be made this year in Nashville.
“Well, people like that ree-form. Maybe we should get us some”–Junior O’Daniel.
How we gonna run ree-form when we’re the incumbent?”
I like guys who like that movie, especially well enough to quote it!
I think you hit the nail on the head that it is more than salaries, but also all of the other ways they or their family make money off the convention (especially when they are already receiving a salary from the convention).
One correction, and maybe it is semantics, but Adams is not a denominational employee per se. Unlike Mohler who is an employee of the SBC through SBTS, Adams is only an employee of the NWBC because the NWBC is not an entity of the SBC…. Just a small clarification.
Use of “denominational” is general. I’m well aware of SBC structures and relationships. Adams doesn’t get his paycheck from a church like Stone or Litton.
Sorry I didn’t mean to say you did not know that, but for the average southern Baptist, sometimes that’s confusing. The Mohler situation is unique because his is already a paid SBC employee. Adams, although not a pastor, is not an SBC employee.
You are not wrong for using denominational, but it might be confusing for others.
Again I appreciate you and your analysis even if I don’t always agree with you on some.
“We can’t write about SEC football all the time.”
Because you don’t does not mean you shouldn’t.
Read and learn.
ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!!!!! We’re on the hunt for number 19! That’s right, 19!!
What National Championship is IOWA looking for? Not Number 19.
What National Championship is UNC looking for? Not number 19.
Who is looking for number 19? Not any other football team in the entire Football Universe except the one and only CRIMSON TIDE of ALABAMA!
ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!!!
See how easy it is, William Thornton, to write about SEC football all the time? Get Dave Miller to help you. Y’all can do it. 😉 😉 😉
Amen, CB!