As all informed SBCers know, the Southern Baptist Convention employs no one, fires no one, has no CEO, and doesn’t exist except for a couple of days each year when in annual session. The SBC has, though, a number of entities: mission boards, seminaries, Executive Committee, ERLC, etc. that are governed by separate trustee bodies. If the ERLC wants to hire or fire a CEO, their trustees do it, not the Executive Committee, not the SBC in annual session.
What’s complicated is how the various entities arrive at their trustee body makeup. A recent Baptist Press story, IMB study to examine trustee fluctuations, waded into the high weeds of trustee selection and representation. Read the story and then tell me if it makes good sense to you, that is, is it easy to follow and understand? I’m guessing that maybe one in 500 pastors has an understanding of the things written about in the article.
The gist of it is that state conventions, or territories, have to reach a certain threshold of church membership to qualify to have trustee or committee representation on the various committees or entities. The threshold varies by committee or entity. Some require 15,000 members, some 20,000 members, some 25,000 members. The membership number comes from the Annual Church Profile.
So when the ACP is published, if a state convention or territory falls under the threshold no replacement trustee is appointed. The state or area loses a seat. According to the article, the Alaska, Utah-Idaho and the Hawaii-Pacific region have lost trustee slots on the IMB because of membership drops (and someone will have to explain the difference between a “territory” and a “region” because I’m not clear if the terms used are legal terms or just chosen by the writer of the article…and I don’t want to get that deep into it).
The larger state conventions also get a limited number of additional trustee slots for higher membership levels.
The Executive Committee discussed the matter and these questions were reported to have been raised:
- Could waiver of an objective numerical standard for representation set an unhelpful precedent?
- Should states with large numbers of Southern Baptists have their representation reduced to keep the committee at its current size?
- To what extent should the cost of additional members factor into consideration of expanding the EC?
I’d answer, “yes,” “not sure,” and “to a great extent.” I’m glad there are some smart people on the EC.
A few high-weeds observations:
- Spreading trusteeships around should give a broader base of support for the entity. I’m not certain how necessary this is in the 21st century.
- Trustees are expensive to manage. Some years ago IMB was spending sums in six figures just to pay trustee travel and expenses. This may be money well spent although I have often heard entity people complain about waste on this.
- Any expansion of trustee boards should be closely scrutinized. In the past IMB had almost 100 trustees, a body considerably larger than the median SBC church and larger than tens of thousands of SBC churches.
- The ACP is less and less popular and return rates are declining. I think about 20% of SBC churches don’t file it at all. In some cases LifeWay just carries over numbers from the last reporting year for a church that fails to file. How reliable the membership numbers are is a good question.
- There are situations where membership numbers are incentivized for a state convention or territory and it pays to finagle the figures upward. Some SBC entities have had to tighten the figures they accept from the states and territories because of questionable numbers reported.
- My editorial observation is that states and territories that lose a trustee slot ought to be more concerned with declining membership that with keeping plum trustee slots.
On a slow SBC news day, this kind of thing might be worth thinking about even though it isn’t sexy or worth fighting over.
Perhaps some of the brethren or sistren can further educate me on these things.
It is rare that boards with more than 15 members can effectively fulfill the governance role. I suspect that this is one of the major causes of issues at IMB and ERLC. Effective governance is critical to organizational success. Maybe we need have 15 regions with one Trustee each.
There may be something to the idea of a smaller board structure being more effective. I don’t know enough details about how the trustee boards are structured (I believe there are sub-committees and I don’t know how much work is shared among the members that a larger group may be helpful in some cases).
I disagree that that has anything to do with the situations you mentioned and don’t think it would be helpful to rehash those issues here.
2 points:
1) From my limited experience of serving as a trustee at one of our seminaries, there is really only a small number of trustees that guide the decision making process anyway, so to downsize the number of trustees across the board would probably have minimal impact on how things get done.
2) If we are using membership as the metric for representation on the boards, should we not have a definitive, across-the-board understanding of what membership is in any given church? At some churches, baptism makes you a member. At others, covenants are required to be signed. At others, a certain standard of attendance has to be met. At others, you can be dead and still be included as a member 🙂 Hyperbole is intended, but some churches will have a larger attendance than they have membership, but most will have larger memberships than attendance. Do we want to “punish” those with either more restrictive membership standards/more accurate reporting?
Off the top of my head… 15 is probably too few -100 may be too many.
“Fixing” it would certainly be a fight though, imo.
The concept of spreading trustee appointments throughout the SBC is sound. Who doesn’t believe that if IMB or NAMB had just a couple dozen trustees each that they would all be megachurch pastors, megaspouses, oligarchs and insiders all save for a token few? Forgive my cynicism.
But expanding a board that already has several dozen should be scrutinized, which is what is being done.
“Megaspouses” almost made me spew Mt. Dew all over my computer screen.
Yeah, that was funny.
How much is spent on travel and expenses for trustees? Who are they accountable to? Who monitors the monitors, is there any outside audits?
Eric, I’m not aware of anyone here at SBC Voices that’s equipped to answer that question. If you’re really interested, why don’t you do some research to find out? As it stands it seems more like a question designed to discredit or cast aspersions.
Brent, Sent certified letter to SBC on Commerce Street in Nashville, got back referral to website and information on convention. Called was told to refer website or email. In any event is that the true problem? This is not top secret info that could harm anyone or shame anyone. Would anyone on this forum go to a church that would not disclose their finances including payments to leadership executives? Is it a fair question to ask what happened to IMB trustee oversight when the IMB went boom due to mismanagement of resources. No public held company or government agency would be allowed to not make public the operational cost of its organization in regards to personnel cost. I know no one on this site can answer this question because it is not available to the people who fund the SBC. If no one in any public forum can answer these simple questions it because the information is not available to the public by design. Why?
Eric, if you’re asking the SBC Executive Committee questions about concerns internal to any of the entities, you’re asking the wrong people. I commend you for asking someone something, though.
William Thornton, Who do I ask ?
Eric, ask each one or the ones you are interested in (IMB, NAMB, specific seminaries, etc.). You might identify yourself, declare that you and your church are CP, LM, etc., SBC supporting, and ask your question.
Part of your problem is that you have been supplying your own made up answers and sound like a tire slasher rather than someone with honest questions. Nothing personal…I’ve just read a lot of your comments.
But…write one or more with some honest questions. I’d be interested in the answers.
1. For a large board, there are substantial expenses. I’m sure it’s millions. But, if the Boards aren’t window dressing, and if you want agencies to be accountable, that’s not a wasted expense. I’d rather pay to have Trustees on the ground four times a year for meaningful work than “save” money with a pointless conference call once a year.
2. Trustees are accountable to the Southern Baptist Convention as laid out in the SBC’s documents and the agency’s documents. The Convention is the sole member of each agency. It’s not ‘direct,’ in that the Convention does not instruct on day-to-day affairs at an annual meeting, but it can exert steady influence through methods like budgets, trustee elections, and requests.
3. Most directly, you monitor the monitors — at least as messengers at the Annual Meeting. The Business & Financial Plan requires annual audits by outside CPA firms, and there are some matters coordinated by the Executive Committee. But the Convention is more than a free Olan Mills portrait; you get a big stack of financial reports and eight microphones for a reason.
I’d be somewhat less optimistic about the value of the expenses. The slots are sometimes just perks. Some trustee failures, both state convention and national, have been quite spectacular.
Even making mild statements like these or asking pertinent questions often, quite often, brands one a troublemaker. There is little that trustees do that couldn’t be made open to those who pay the bills but we’d rather stay dark than do that.
Oh, I won’t deny there have been bad boards. You *can* waste money on travel. But you can’t separate good and bad boards based just on cheap travel budgets.
It costs a lot of money to get sixty folks from all corners of Baptistdom to a meeting, even if they work themselves to death and sleep at a Motel 3. If the Trustees don’t provide value, we could save money cutting the board down to three, and buying them lunch in bed at the Ritz for a day or two. But cheaper, shorter meetings aren’t a sign necessarily a better board.
I’m just saying that if Eric’s goal is for there to be effective oversight of the Convention agencies and its boards, the way to measure that isn’t absolute cost.
I attended the Board of Trustees meeting of the IMB in November 2009. That was when the board was very dysfunctional due to infighting. By the time the November trustee meeting happened the warring factions were gone.
To answer the question regarding IMB trustee meetings I can say this. Anyone can attend the trustee meetings of the IMB. You have to pay your own way. For me this was about $2000 including hotel for 4 days, air fare, car rental etc.
If you make proper arrangements you may be able to visit some of the committee meetings of the Board such as: Administrative Committee, Church and Partner Services Committee, Finance Committee, Logistics Committee, Personal Committee, and Strategy Committee.
Since all of these committees meet at the same time you could only attend, at most, one of them. But you have to get permission from the Chairman of the Committee ahead of time to attend. In my case the chairman asked that I not disclose any of the committee’s deliberations because some of them are extremely sensitive such as personnel matters.
The trustees forum is a private meeting that only trustees can attend.
The plenary session is open to the public. It lasts for several hours and includes: (a) IMB President’s report; (b) Chairman of the Board of Trustees report; (c) Report from the Chairman of each committee; (d) Report from key staff members of the IMB
For the year 2010 the IMB budgeted $500,000 for the line item “TRAVEL – TRUSTEE MEETINGS”
I have a list of all the trustees as of November 2009. I have not gone back to count them but there are about 95 trustees. Also there are about a dozen staff people from Richmond [and a few IMB personnel from overseas] that attend selected trustee meetings. The total number of people at the IBM trustee meetings is probably about 120. This includes reporters from Baptist Press and/or state papers whose travel expenses are not charged to the IMB.
From what I could tell it is exceedingly rare, but not unprecedented, for a layman WHO IS NOT A TRUSTEE or AN EMPLOYEE OF THE IMB to attend the trustee meetings on his own dime.
The budget for 2010 is as follows [this was published in Nov 2009]:
Total Receipts = $310,100,000; Total Expenditures = $317,586,507
Roger OKC
This comment is directed Eric C:
The information you are asking for is available. It is summarized in the SBC annuals. Look in Part 4 of the SBC annual for the year of interest. These annuals are up on the website of the Executive Committee. I just went up there and downloaded the most recent SBC annual. Anyone can do this. There are audited financial statements for each of the entities in Part 4. These financial statements are audited and conform to GAAP.
[1] the SBC annual has tons of information. For the IMB the latest PART 4 stuff in the SBC Annual runs from page 281 to 295.
[2] If you need more detail you have to interact with the specific agency at issue such as the mission board or seminary of interest. My experience is that this takes some work such as attending trustee meetings in person.
The SBC agencies are fairly large operations. The IMB is an operation with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars annually. You can’t just drill down into what is happening in five minutes.
I have found senior management of the IMB to be very open. They will talk to you one-on-one at the trustee meetings. They have budget documents showing fully burdened costs for missionary operations which includes salary, benefits, training, travel, retirement, etc. Some of the per-missionary expenses fall in various categories such as Office of Global Personnel and Office of Global Logistics Support, etc. Disclaimer: This info is based upon an old budget from 2010. The IMB has undergone some consolidation in Richmond, as well as the field, so the budget document now will be organized differently.
I happen to know the salaries a few IMB missionaries. I can tell you this. From Dr. Platt down to the President’s secretary — no one is rich at the IMB.
Roger OKC
Jon Whitehead, we do not know the cost of anything and that is the problem. The lack of transparency is appalling. I have tried by the official SBC website via their e mail question section to ask questions posed here and I get referrals and general info not specific information. I have tried a letter, I get general referral info. I do not think I am asking unreasonable information but basic info that is readily available in almost any public or private business. If the secrecy is okay with everyone then that is the way it is but I do not understand the secrecy. Why this is considered a tire slasher , bomb thrower mentality I do know , that are just questions posed to an organization supported by money given in good faith who do not question their leadership.
Eric, plenty of people have explained to you there are ways of getting the information, it is available. You just haven’t looked in the right places or asked the right people. The SBC is not a centralized company.
Until you’re ready to take some time to figure out how to get the information (which several people here have already helped with), I don’t really want to hear any more complaining that it’s not available.
If I had the time and care to find out almost any of the info you’re asking for, I am confident I would be able to.
Eric, this comes up often, and it’s a fine question. Thornton called you a tire slasher, not me. 🙂
It’s not fair to say we don’t know the cost of *anything.* A lot of the financial accountability system is laid out in the Business and Financial Plan. Especially after the Carnes Defalcation, there was more and more financial reporting, coordinated by the Executive Committee (which is often offered on the chopping block of false economy, but that’s another post). So you get a big annual report every year with financial and accounting information required by Article XIII of the Plan, including the required statements by Trustees about Christian stewardship in Article XIII B 6. All of those things don’t prevent waste, or guarantee theological purity — but if material amounts of money are spent, you can be pretty sure it wasn’t spent without the approval of several people. So we know some things, and you can figure out quite a bit with it.
If you still have questions, Article XIV says “Members of cooperating Southern Baptist churches shall have access to information from the records of Southern Baptist Convention entities regarding income, expenditures, debts, reserves, operating balances, and salary structures.”
In 2004? 2005? Ben Cole sent certified letters to all of the agencies, citing that provision, and asking information about total compensation for agency heads. I can’t find it right now, but it is my recollection that he received direct answers from most, and indirect answers from a few with reasonable explanations.
If you get stiffed at that point, you can take it to the Trustees. If the Trustees stiff you (or the agency stiffs Trustees) on a reasonable request, you’re likely to find a lot of sympathetic Baptists. You could then make your case to the Convention, and you’d have a lot of ways to do it. And if the majority agrees, they’ll eventually get it. But I don’t think the majority will force the answer to questions it does not find necessary or helpful.
Several years ago Southern Baptist Seminary reduced the number of its trustees to save money.
I’m fairly certain I recall IMB doing the same, either reducing the numbers or the frequency of meetings.
Roger, it sounds like you have provided substantial information and resources to find out the answers to the questions that have been asked. Hopefully we can put to rest the straw man complaints about accountability and transparency.
In past years, I’ve actually spent hours on the phone and emailing with people to get answers to specific, obscure questions on different topics. People have been more than willing to help when I’ve gone into those situations with a cooperative attitude (not combative) and be patient that the first 2 or 5 people I talk with may not know the answer. Each time I get closer to finding out what I need to know and in the process I’ve seen that the vast majority of people who answer phones and email are genuinely glad to help.
Jon, thanks for your informative reply. I just goggled to find out the pay of top charity CEO’s and it took no time to find out info such as American Cancer Society CEO paid 2.1 million, Boys and Girls Club CEO 1.8 million and on down the line. This is only their base salary but it is pretty easy, fast and there to look at, all public charities seem to fully reveal executive pay in a transparent manner. That is because of the negative press that got generated by large salaries hidden in the past by a lot of charities. I only reference to again ask why does it take a Columbo style investigation to find out financial arrangements at the SBC leadership level.