Randy Adams is the second person to be a declared candidate for SBC president. Baptist Press had a story on him on January 15th. I’m pleased there is more than one candidate (Al Mohler) and there are some things Adams has written that I like. The idea of remote voting for the SBC Annual Meeting bubbles up every year and is one that I don’t like. It’s a bad idea.
For a little background on the idea of remote voting take a look at
EC not going to waste missions money on remote SBC voting…
Satellite SBC meetings and remote voting: the best, terrible idea around
More about satellite SBC annual meetings
Randy Adams, manifestly, isn’t impressed with the opinion of your humble hacker and plodder blogger on the concept. He writes in My Commitment to Southern Baptists. In it he says that
…every cooperating SBC church should be valued, and strategies to increase engagement of all churches in SBC life must be employed, including the use of technology to enable remote access voting at the Annual Meeting of the SBC. We should not be satisfied with how few of our churches participate in the Annual SBC Meeting. Cooperating SBC churches must not be disenfranchised from participation in the decision-making process because they cannot afford to travel to annual meeting locations.
Adams is a state convention CEO whose constituent churches are in Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho, a long distance from sultry Orlando where the annual meeting will be held this June. Adams office is about 3,035 miles from the convention center. In a way, I don’t blame him for making this populist but bad idea about using technology to make votes at the SBCAM from, well, anywhere. A few observations and questions:
I take issue with his assertion that cooperating churches that cannot afford to send their pastor (and/other messengers) to the SBCAM have been “disenfranchised” unless you mean that every SBC church who couldn’t send messengers to the AM for the past 173 years has been deprived of what should have been their right, that is, to vote on SBC matters brought before the AM.
The SBCAM is a corporate meeting and since we do not allow proxy voting, messengers have to be present. The Executive Committee reported that “there [is] no known model for web-based constituent participation in any similarly-sized, deliberative body, nor even in any state Baptist convention…” The idea (always comes up, though Adams didn’t specify it) that all of the 1,126 SBC Associations could be voting points is silly. Even the idea that 41 state conventions could be polling locations is not workable. Now that we’re all connected with smart phones, the idea that tens of thousands of SBC messengers could conduct a meeting by phone, or even take votes by phone, is absurd. Maybe he has some actual proposal in mind. Let’s hear it.
But I get that this is an idea that always gets some traction with segments of SBC life. Two-thirds of our churches are small. It does cost to get to the annual meeting.
I suspect that those who favor the idea think it would be a route to changing a convention that they see needing change. Hey, we already did that through the Conservative Resurgence. It took time, effort, and money. Paige Patterson might be beleaguered for some things but tackling the strategy that required tens of thousands of mostly small church pastors and laypeople to get to ten or twelve consecutive annual meetings was daunting. But, it was done and here we are.
But why don’t we start here: The state convention Adams leads is quite large geographically. May I presume that he has already led his state convention to implement remote voting at his own meetings? Yes? No?
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I’m quite pleased that we have more than one candidate for SBC president and, I like some of the things Randy Adams has written. This one I don’t.
More on Adams’ candidacy later. He’s put a lot out there to think about.
Just so ya know, the Executive Committee staff said in 2018 that “The issue of annual meeting decentralization has been raised and examined by the Executive Committee many times, including in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1997, etc. and most recently in 2011, which was reported to the Convention’s messengers in 2012.” Add one more to that list. It’s like whack-a-mole, it always pops up.
How can we have a “Convention” if we do not actually “convene?”
Just sayin’ . . .
I have not read the whole thread so please do not torch me…LOL!
Exactly.
Would that be like a multi-site congregation that never congregates? 😉
How about a test run involving the Baptist Convention for Washington, Oregon and Northern Idaho? For example, break the physical meeting location into thirds so that physical meetings are held simultaneously in Portland, Seattle, and Coeur D’ Alene. Broken up this way the convention could likely physically be housed into a larger church in each state. You wouldn’t have to book a convention center.
Companies run remote meetings all the time. This is not a big deal logistically. For real time debate you could have mikes 1A, 2A, etc. in Portland and mikes 1B, 2B etc. in Seattle etc.
In this format, the concentration would be on reports and business and not setting up promotional booths for the seminaries and Lifeway, etc.
Whatever previous investigation the EC did prior to 2011 is probably moot now. With the advent of real time connectivity via the internet, remote meetings are becoming much more feasible.
You’re a corporate guy, roger. Are you aware of any corporate annual meetings where shareholders vote remotely? Or where 10k shareholders are involved in a meeting all at the same time? Corporate boards do this all the time. Then there’s the matter of participation in debates…
The EC revisited the matter recently but without a new, formal analysis.
William. With corporations most shares are held by mutual funds and institutional investors.
However, in the old days individual people held shares in their own name. They voted by way of a proxy that the shareholder mailed in — in advance of the meeting. Also, any shareholder could show up, in person, at the annual meeting if he wanted to with proxy in hand.
My wife and I did this several times and voted our shares, in person, at the meeting by turning in our proxy cards at the meeting as we entered the room. If the SBC had a proviso that nominations for offices, such as president, would be announced ahead of time, then it would be feasible to have remote meetings going on simultaneously since preprinted ballots would be available at each meeting site as messengers walked in the room.
It would still be possible to pass resolutions or debate issues that came up real- time if each site had “voting forms” just like the type currently used at the SBC meeting today. For example, say the SBC annual meeting in 2024 was split between Dallas, Los Angeles, Richmond, and Fargo. Then if some motion from the floor came up requiring a vote then the announcement could go out to all the locations real time to “take out ballot #6”. To vote YES mark #1 to vote NO mark #2.
I agree that if people really want to go they will find a way to attend. However, I still don’t think it is a big logistical hurdle to break up the meeting place across multiple cities. But this has to be weighed in view of what “the convention” means. In addition to the actual convention business it is a way to meet up with old friends. It is also a way to attend the lunch put on the seminary that is your alma mater, etc.
I am not advocating groups participating in voting without being in a specific localized venue where tellers are in place and where real-time 2 way communication between all venues is in place.
Roger, I don’t assume that you didn’t but the previous articles linked (and the embedded links in them) discuss a lot of this. You have a lot of good thoughts and more knowledge than I of the tech stuff that might be relevant to this. Here’s what I see in these discussions:
1. The general idea that the SBC “disenfranchises” churches by not providing a way for them to participate and/or vote is one that sells well. There’s always a market for it. Details don’t matter.
2. It’s reflexive to get demagogic with this. After all, what kind of sorry SBCer wouldn’t want more people to participate and vote? Again, details don’t matter.
3. Are proponents looking for a way to fully participate, or just vote on balloted issues, or just vote on the elections?
4. The most important votes (budget, Committee on Committee report, Committee on Nominations report) are rarely balloted. Remote participating would seem to demand that the house be divided on all of these.
5. Our “world’s largest participatory meeting” (we like to brag) is itself cut down in size so far as participation and parliamentary actions by the number of mics on the floor of the convention hall. That limits it to a couple of dozen potential speakers. A remote location system would include possibility of dozens, hundreds, thousands more?
6. Would results from unseen points and people be trusted?
7. Any system that involved remote certifications would be highly politicized. People would “collect” these virtual ballots and vote them. Some DOMs, some official remote tellers, would aggressively push to get attendees and their votes. I wouldn’t presume that remote locations would be mere passive sites where folks could come and vote if they wished.
8. All this ignores any legal requirements. Various laws are involved.
There are more. This is always good for a discussion. If Randy Adams has given this deep thought and has a concrete proposal, and I seriously doubt that he does, he can present it. I’m guessing this is just the usual thing of tossing an idea out that will snare some support.
I will be attending the annual meeting in Orlando. I’ve booked a flight for less than $200. A hotel near the convention center for two nights for less than $75 a night. If you share the room, the cost for that goes down too. With some free meals and a few other cheap meals, it is more than possible to attend the convention for $500 or a little more. I’m a small church pastor who has really only been a part of small churches. If a church really wants to send a messenger to the convention, almost all can come up with the money it takes to do so.
Adam Blosser I think it is more of an issue of want to. I make attending every year even though I am bivocational. Even while bringing my kiddo manage to spend less then $1000. People can attend if they want to.
I agree with you Andrew. I don’t mean to minimize the sacrifice it often requires for people to attend, but we sacrifice to attend the things we really want to attend. Thank you for your commitment to being a part of the process.
I think that’s the issue: some folks in smaller churches and bivo situations, there’s not enough ‘want to’ on the part of the church. Sometimes there’s want to on one side but not on the other–and sometimes it’s truly a “cannot.”
When I was bi-vo, the church didn’t have the ‘want to’ and I didn’t have the personal funds to make the trip–I wasn’t starting near a major airport, it would cost $300 to fly anywhere, and when that’s a week’s salary from your job, it’s getting cost prohibitive quick. The church didn’t want it as a priority, and we couldn’t do it.
And that is true: there are folks who, out of their own money, cannot do it. I couldn’t do it because I was in a job with no vacation–if I didn’t work, I didn’t get paid, so I would be spending several hundred just to make nothing that week, a double whammy for our family at that point. We took my designated “days off” from my work 1 day per week, per month (every other month), because we afford to do that.
I think there should be some consideration of travel costs and locations, but ultimately it’s one big meeting, and that’s how it should stay. Timing may need to flex–I don’t know that maybe some bi-vo pastors and laypeople might be better served to have a Saturday meeting. (This is also true in many states that hold Tuesday-Wednesday state conventions then lament lack of attendance by bi-vo and laypeople.)
I think there needs to be an admission that it truly is not possible for some folks to attend the SBC annual meeting, but remote locations would likely not solve that–when it was impossible for me to attend the SBC annual meeting, I couldn’t have gone to Little Rock for 2 days, either–it would have cost less but it still would have been an impenetrable financial barrier.
What we need to do a better job of as an organization is listening even to those who cannot attend the meetings, and of considering whether what we do has an impact that we don’t hear about. And it would probably be a good thing to make sure we are reconsidering locations/timing with an eye to the growing number of bi-vocational (and co-vocational: there’s now a cool term for having two jobs!) pastors and the declining involvement of laypeople in the annual meeting. We need to ask those questions: Why don’t they come? What can we do to make it feasible?
But I no longer think remote locations are the answer. About the time you actually tried it–something would glitch on a crucial vote and, given the age of internet agitation, we’d never get everyone believing it was an accident. Somebody would claim it was deliberate, to disenfranchise someone.
Thanks for enlightening me. I will be voting for Randy Adams.
I think the bottom line is that isn’t going to happen because the people in charge don’t want it to happen. It’s not because of logistics or technical hurdles. They are real, but they are far from insurmountable.
The bottom line is that no one who supports remote voting cares enough to gather the masses for just one time to force the issue on the floor of the convention.
There are considerable legal hurdles. Folks in charge, I grant you, like status quo.
I do not see what the big deal of giving each church the ability to vote for the SBC president if they are unable to make the annual conference. I understand about not giving them the ability to vote for resolutions and stuff, but letting each church vote for the president seems like a easy thing to do.
Raises a fair question. Churches don’t vote, messengers do. Churches are allotted a number, two to twelve. The SBC prez is a constitutional officer with legal status. I suppose the thing could be reworked so that the president is elected by proxy which would mean that candidates would have to be nominated before the meeting, churches would have to register messengers prior, committees would have to check and certify messengers before the meeting, and some locations or system for voting created. Corporations do this through evoting for stock shares and those shares voted by proxy at the annual meeting. Corporations pay third parties to create and handle the system. It would be expensive, I’d guess. As it is now, aside from software involved in pre-registering for the AM, volunteers handle approval of credentials and issuance of physical ballots.
Suppose changes were made to allow for this and the president is elected by evoting. I’d expect the process to be politicized as never before. Bundlers would be in charge of getting churches and messengers’ votes and probably a lot of things that no one has considered.
The ePresident is elected. What then? He or she makes the required appointments the most important of which is the Committee on Committees. Say the prez makes highly partisan appointments to this committee. They do their work and have a Committee on Nominations ready for the next AM, to be approved by messengers who are present at the AM. No evoting on this. Someone moves to amend the C on C report and replace people. The convened messengers approve and the evoting for president, meant to move a certain agenda forward, is thwarted. Then what? Or, evoters die before the AM. Their vote, now from the grave, still count?
There’s a whole series of complications most of which I don’t even know enough to have thought about.
If you want to vote for SBC stuff get thyself to the AM. I have some sympathy for the churches in Maine or Washington that are far distant from the half-dozen cities in the deep south where most conventions are held. Fact is, most southern baptists live within a days driving distance to these few cities. Our present system moves the site out of the site every few years (Anaheim is the site for 2022) is a good one.
I don’t have an opinion on this topic one way or another. I do challenge everyone to find some footage on the 1985 SBCAM in Dallas. We had 45,000+ messengers. This required the messengers to be divided into 2 assembly halls.
We had long periods of dead time while the moderator and recording secretary got motions and ballot results from down the hall. (Every vote would have to be ballot with remote locations, no show of hand votes.)
A hundred or so assemblies will cause issues people have never considered. This is not an easy proposition.
I could wish that every Southern Baptist had the highest level of integrity, but we know that such is not the case. There have been abuses in our system. Even though the instruction that you must be in the room to vote is made clear at every election, do we believe that such NEVER happens? I wish I believed that.
If we had remote site voting, or even worse, in-home or in-church voting, the potential for abuse would be great. That is just one factor in this, but it is a real factor.
Before any changes are made about e-participation in the annual meeting, I think a good hard look at the annual meeting as it exists now is in order. I follow along remotely but I’ve never been in person. A lot of it seems (from the outside) as superfluous. If we lost the resolutions, which are meaningless, and the celebrity cameo speeches, how much time is actually spent on real, impactful work?
It’s an essential legal meeting. Trustees, committees, budgets are formally approved. As the SBC geeks would say, ‘The SBC only exists while the convention is in session.”
Resolutions are not an essential task of the am.
The EC has done a feasibility study on this and has decided there are too many legal issues involved. In addition, the way the annual meeting works is that anyone can make a nomination for an officer on the floor of the convention without announcing it beforehand. Customarily, the announcement for president is made a few months in advance, but technically, any messenger from the floor can make a nomination on the spot. Also, it would be very difficult to have a true debate/discussion on motions, etc. with remote access. Here’s a real possibility: Let’s say that the live feed to one of the remote sites goes dead. Technically, everybody else would have to wait for the connection to come back before any more discussion or voting could occur. Let’s say it took hours to get back on line–the messengers at the physical location for the annual meeting would have to suspend all activity until the entire voting body is back. With technology, you can never know what could go wrong. This idea has been brought up in my own state of Colorado since there is a great geographical distance over the mountains for those on the Western slope to come to Denver/Colorado Springs. Our state convention president asked for advice from the EC and they told him about all the legal hurdles that would we would have to go through to make it work. I don’t foresee this remote access happening at all. It’s a good question that has a good motive behind it to have maximum participation on the national level, but I don’t agree with it and probably won’t ever happen.
Bill – I love your thoughts here. The resolutions are totally meaningless and I could not care less about the celebrity cameo speeches. The reports and the business are important. They’ve decreased the time spent, which is good, but it could probably be streamlined even more.