That Ronnie Floyd was the Executive Committee’s nominee for CEO was the worst kept secret in the entire Southern Baptist Convention. If you didn’t know, consider yourself dangerously (or, delightfully) unconnected.
Chuck Kelley looks bad because of statements he is said to have made about race and the NOBTS’ presidential search. Multiple, credible, anonymous sources related his statement.
The IMB search process included an agreement to hire a longtime IMB worker as executive staff for the new IMB CEO. The agreement, perhaps tacit rather than formal, bounced around the SBC even before they hired the new CEO.
But the records for the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force are sealed, kept secred, for years to come lest we find out what some of the mighty brethren said. Ridiculous.
The state of transparency, openness, truth-telling, and integrity for trustees and other board members is, seems to me, in a pathetic state. If this were the Army, some of our trustees would be arrested for treason.
Why can’t you people keep your mouth shut?
And, conversely, why can’t you people jettison most of the unnecessary secrecy about the work that we pay for?
No need to bring me up to speed on why. It’s because some sychophant trustees talk to their leiges. It’s because others who lack stature think that by gossiping closely held information their reputation as an insider will be burnished.
A few things might help.
- Reduce the amount of trustee executive sessions. Let the SBC at large observe trustee meetings except for a very narrow slice of matters.
- Elect trustees who have more integrity.
- Elect trustees who will object to unnecessary secrecy and work for changes in trustee board policy.
- Reduce the size of trustee boards. The Executive Committee, for example, has over eighty members, larger than the median size SBC church.
- This is a stray addendum, but let trustee publicly state what their CEO is being paid. Start with Ronnie Floyd. It’s our money, not the trustees.
You may have better ideas than I. Virtually any change will be a positive change in the area of openness, accountability, and transparency.
But, this is only the Army of the Almighty, not the United States Army, and we seem not to be too concerned with integrity.
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Someone will ask but I have mixed feelings about the anonymous sources who outed Chuck Kelley on his racial remarks. If the statement was that egregious then seems the Christian thing to do would be to object and that publicly. But, I get it, we would rather whisper in the hallway than make a plain statement in public, just like some of our church members.
