Attendance at the SBC Annual Meeting in my active SBC lifetime has ranged from under five thousand to over forty-five thousand. We can expect less then the convention is outside of the traditional southern cities that regularly host the meeting (Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Orlando, St. Louis, Kansas City, San Antonio; more recently Louisville, Birmingham, Greensboro and others). We Baptists like to travel and it’s a boost for SBC work outside of the traditional south for the meeting to be held in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Portland, and other cities. The farther from where the churches are located and over 80% of all SBC churches are in the Southern states from Oklahoma to Virginia, Kentucky to Florida, the less attendance. We Baptists like to fight as well, so the less contested conventions, last year in Birmingham for example but not this year in Orlando, the smaller the attendance.
The populist idea that a convention of small churches should have the messengers from those small churches voting on all of our budgets, offices, elections, motions, and resolutions will never be killed. It always has appeal. I mean, if two-thirds of SBC churches are under 100 on an average Sunday why shouldn’t those churches get an allotment of messengers who can vote in person or remotely?
If readers are interested in an answer to that, and most are not, they can read this most recent article on the matter and follow links going back years on it. When we check clicks from the Voices site, there is almost never more than two or three, occasionally they will get up to ten or twelve. So, no one is much interested in actually reading whatever background and previous discussions are relevant to the question. The reflexive position (Dang straight! We ought to have remote voting so all the small church guys can vote!) is taken, reason has no place in the discussion.
Just for fun here are a few points about SBC annual meetings:
- We have the system we have always have. The messenger formula has been tweaked a time or two but we’ve never had any system of proxy or remote voting.
- We had the Conservative Resurgence, the most dramatic illustration that a grassroots movement can use the existing system and change the convention. People (I’m one of them) thought it important enough to find the funds and show up to register and vote.
- The convention messenger system is already weighted towards small churches. Those megachurches get far fewer messengers than their membership would permit if there was not a cap of 12 messengers per church. Podunk Number Two Baptist Church with an attendance of 12 could get the maximum, as could Super-Mega-Baptist Church with 12 thousand in attendance. How fair is that?
- Thus, those who think the route to whatever reform is needed by the SBC is through small churches voting might look at the current system as already favoring them. Any changes may hurt them. Unanticipated consequences abound.
- No one, even those who support remote voting (like Randy Adams candidate for SBC president) has made a concrete proposal. If all SBC churches were allotted the number of votes based on their giving (again, 12 maximum) and these votes could be voted apart from appearing physically at the Annual Meeting, then I suspect we would see the convention politicized like never before.
- And, hey, the Annual Meeting is sausage-making as it is. Imagine if the moderator had to allow for discussions, motions, or voting from remote locations.
- Besides, the Annual Meeting is an essential corporate meeting with legal requirements that prohibit remote voting.
But, we can have fun thinking, scheming, and demagoguing the idea. We do it every year.
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A deal for my populist brethren/sistren: You make a concrete proposal and I’ll either post it here or use it in an article of my own here.
Remote voting is a stupid and unworkable idea – plain and simple.
Sorry, I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
#StillTrueThough
Seems to me, it could be possible to have a remote location locally during the annual meeting for voting, but only allow the local meeting to vote on the office of SBC president.
But the local voting could be limited to that one vote only.
All other votes, policies, and procedures would then be left up to the messengers that took the time to make the trip in person.
I don’t see how that would hamstring the actual proceedings in let’s say Orlando this year.
It would quite possibly give a much more broader view of the views held by members convention wide. The local meetings help in voting for the next president, then they’re done, and if
you/ they want more say in sbc matters, come off the hip, and schedule the time to actually attend.
When I checked out my hotel last year in Birmingham, ( I went with one other deacon from my local church) I thought they had put both rooms on my credit card, with all the city taxes, convention taxes,hospitality taxes and the like, and this was in Birmingham….yikes
I mentioned having remote voting for president a few months ago on this site. I honestly do not see why it is such a big deal to have churches vote remotely for the office of SBC president.
Have every SBC church elect non-convention-attending messengers to vote for president. When the time comes to vote for president have those messengers submit their vote on a secure online voting platform. BOOM! DONE! Not that complicated.
Since it is so simple to do that process, it kinda makes you think why some folks wouldn’t be supportive of it.
Boom?. Messengers may currently register online with their church. The system uses a unique identifier for every church in friendly cooperation with the SBC and utilizes the amount of gifts from the church to SBC causes; thus, the number of messengers allowed from that church is a discrete number, up to twelve max.
The online registration accepts any name submitted by the church…but…that individual still has to show up in person at the Annual Meeting, identify him or herself, and receive be formally accepted as a messenger. If the last step is eliminated (and, in our governing documents, it’s actually the only step) in favor of relying on the online registration and names of messengers, then how are voting messengers to be verified? If some unique ID verifier is used, then how would the SBC committees in session know who is submitting a remote vote? No one would be surprised if pastors got approval to register a dozen church members, receive whatever identifier numbers necessary, and vote them as a block. After all, the church is allowed 12 votes, what business of the SBC is it if the pastor votes them all? Or a hyper aggressive associational missionary collecting unique numbers and voting a hundred or so of them.
As it is now, you show up, present your credentials, receive ballots. You are in the convention hall. You vote your ballot. Everyone sees it. Everyone is confident of the result. Boom.
The SBCAM is, in it’s primary purpose a corporate annual meeting. Corporations don’t vote online willy-nilly. You have a certain number of shares. They are identified by number. You vote them by proxy. The SBC doesn’t allow proxy voting, nor should we.
Not that complicated, you say? Then why do no corporations utilize your method? Because it’s not secure. Because the results are not able to be verified. Because other shareholders aren’t confident of the results.
Your suggestion, and I appreciate you taking the time to think about it even if it’s not an acceptable idea, is like an online vote on American Idol. Not a lot of confidence in either the process or the result.
I expect that at some point the SBC agrees to look at this again. It would be a waste of time and money but the degree of interest (and of disinformation, ignorance, and confusion) will probably force the matter.
Wait, if it’s like American Idol, then maybe we should do it…the system that gave us Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood should be good…
It gave us Clay Aiken, too.
Never mind.
Bro, it’s 2020, corporations use online voting for board meetings and shareholder meetings all the time. I graduated from business school in 2013 and they taught us that, so the concept isn’t new. A simple google search shows this as well.
Also, yes, we would need to figure out a system to verify non-attending-messengers in local churches are who they say they are. It could to be done much like online voting for shareholder meetings in the secular world, but with a SBC specific twist.
I honestly could care less if we have online voting or not, but if we wanted to do it, we could. I was just suggesting a compromise between the two sides, because this issue will only become larger as time goes by.
Bro, I’ve often voted stock shares online and have never attended a shareholders annual meeting. You figure it out and make a concrete proposal. If churches have unique and identifiable “shares” then what might change about our system?
I just said that if we wanted to vote for president online, we could, and gave a very simple example of how we could. Obviously there would have to be detailed policy and procedures in any voting system, I kinda assumed that went without saying. I was obviously wrong.
I don’t have a detailed plan, because that is not my job, also I’m busy with full-time ministry. So I am sorry that I dared to questioned the status quo by throwing an idea out.
Also, you made it sound like corporations don’t utilize online voting.
“Not that complicated, you say? Then why do no corporations utilize your method? Because it’s not secure.”
Do not get mad at me for being confused that you did not realize corporations had online voting.But I apologize for assuming you didn’t know online voting existed.
Hey, I think Iowa Democrats showed that electronic voting is a foolproof system. All you need is an app and…
Wait, never mind.
I am very appreciative that an Iowan has made this point.
😉
We just don’t need to let the DNC have a hand in designing the app.
In June 2016, the SBC held a presidential election with two candidates and neither got a majority of the votes. Do we really want to complicate our elections process?
Right – And when Frank page defeated Ronnie Floyd in Greensboro serves as another example of a close vote…
Imagine what would happen if three or more candidates were running and it ended up being a close vote and There was a problem with some of the polling places or the software… We could very well (likely) leave the convention site without a president… Yeah this seems like a great idea…
NOT.
Nope.
Not to mention the predictable and easily foreseen distrust of results this will bring.
This would also – inevitably – render the SBC actually gathering for a convention unnecessary – just do all business remotely – and thus actually end the need to conduct CONVENTION officer elections (Who, as it has been argued here on this blog many times have no official job other than moderating meetings, honorary positions on committees and making appointments.
Let’s just go ahead and do remote voting using technology, stop having a gathered convention, and just give that appointment power to, I don’t know, the executive committee chairman and be done with all of it. 😉
Seriously, This is more and more looking like a good idea how exactly, folks?
I used to think this was a good idea, but now admit it really wouldn’t work out.
The comparisons, like how you vote your proxy stuff for those 3 shares of stock you own, aren’t the same. Typically, you vote in corporate elections on board members by name from pre-done nominations, and you have maybe 1 or 2 proposals that are pre-screened to vote on.
The SBC has a lot more going on than that, and a lot more flexibility.
That being said, I’m all for studying how, when, and where we should be scheduling the annual meeting to see if there are better ways to do it, that enable more folks to attend. I would be interested to see if convention city costs have outpaced inflation since the 1980s—everybody looks back at the CR and says “Well, people made it then…”
But were they: 1) paying $40 to park? 2)$10 for bologna sandwich at the meeting location?
I know these things happened: churches in the vicinity of the annual meeting helped facilitate places to stay: church members opened homes, people slept in church buildings, etc., (at least if the stories I’m told are accurate).
There was an overall effort to get people present and involved in the meeting. Is there any way we could use the higher level of connectedness through technology to enable that type of sharing and low-cost participation? Do local associations or state conventions do anything, as simple as a Google Forms sign up sheet, that might help potential messengers share rides/costs to make the trip?
I think we have some overall apathy about attendance.
Because of this, we see this push for remote voting, etc., but the actual result of that will be more decisions made by the smaller groups, like the EC, NomCom, etc., because you’ll have less engagement in the meeting. Everything would have to be short, plainly written, unamendable, and yes/no-type votes.
I think we can find some low-cost (probably free) ways to help people attend the annual meeting. I’m not sure exactly what, and I think that the better solutions will arise in local areas–would be good to have a centralized idea-sharing point through the SBC.
Well put, Doug. I recall seeing a lot of people at the big meetings of the CR who brought their own food, had a picnic in the convention hall. The ideas about sharing rides and things looks workable to me.
I’m just thinking about some of the websites I’ve seen spring up like “TakeThemaMeal” and some others, where you can organize doing things like providing food for families–think what Sunday School classes used to do in church, this lets your Sunday School class sign up to feed the new family through the Interwebz–we should be able to construct something of that nature within the SBC.
Lower the hill to climb to participate. Actually try to help enable, and if folks still cannot (versus WILL not) participate, then maybe there’s something else to talk about.
Would a partial system of online voting be viable. I mean if the entire SBC network of members were able to have real, repeat real, input into issues to be voted on by the convention attendees at least that would be some progress. Keep in simple , have online voting done at church site with the results sent in by each church. The voting would be on what the agenda would be as far as issues the lay members of the SBC are concerned with such as
1. Here is one example. Up and down vote on complete financial disclosure of all expenses of SBC with total compensation of all employees listed including travel etc. Members could vote on this to have for attendees to vote on If the convention votes the transparency down they will in theory have to explain why?
2. What ever issue the grass roots people feel important enough to require a vote on by their representatives at the convention.
3. That would be the extent of the online voting, to give the great unwashed at least some voice in the convention without getting into a mob rule mentality. Voting would be done by attendees.
Why not? Limit the amount of issues that could be brought up online to whatever number is viable.
I suspect that people who are paid to attend the convention and who also have their travel expenses reimbursed are disproportionately more likely to favor the current system.