I was in conversation with a search committee about being their pastor. We did the usual tapdance of questioning each other. I asked what their procedure was for voting to extend a call to a new pastor. One committee member jumped the question and answered, “We require an 80% congregational vote but I moved that we add one additional point for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit.” I’m pretty good at math and that makes an 83% vote necessary. I think the size of that church was such that they might have 60 or 70 voting members present for a pastor-call vote. The 83% threshold meant that ten recalcitrant members could control the vote. Make that a single pew of mushminded, immature teens and a couple of curmudgeonly seniors.
“Pastor, we hate it but you didn’t get the vote.”
I never got that far with that church. Other issues led us away and the conversations ended. But I’d say to the well-meaning committee member who thought he was standing up for the Holy Trinity, “Brother*, let’s not do that.”
The motivation for this article is the sad case of the church in Florida who rejected a pastoral candidate because he only got 81% of the vote, slightly under the 85% required by the church constitution. The candidate was an African-American with a caucasian wife. Racism was said to be the cause of the voting shortfall. The vote was 1,552 to 365. Megachurches aren’t like your church and mine and this one got caught in the vise grip of a burdensome constitutional voting requirement. [Recent reports note that some members point to problems other than racism as the cause of the negative votes. What has been said by current church leadership doesn’t include evidence, though they may have it in abundance. I haven’t seen it.]
But churches can design their business any way they wish. Most of us have a story about strange church processes for calling a pastor. This looks like an embarrassing situation for all involved.
A few observations from an distance.
- I thought that megachurches were all functionally non-congregational. That is, that a small group of leaders controlled all the important decisions. I’d suspect that constitutional revisions are afoot in this church many SBC churches who follow these things.
- There are no prescribed SBC best practices in calling a pastor. It’s an clunky, unwieldy, frustrating, messed-up system.
- A number of SBC leaders have called out the church, or at least the part of the church that nixed the call of this pastor. The presumption is that racism is involved and should be condemned. Fine. I’m a little wary of SBC bigwigs leveling their righteous guns on any local church. Looks to me like the pastorless church is doing a good job of addressing the issues. I don’t want Nashville chiming in on decisions my church makes.
- For those who think that any church expression of racism (and some other high-profile sinful behaviors) should be quickly and summarily expelled from the national level SBC Convention, is the supermajority of this church to be punished for the actions of a decided minority? I’m not persuaded that the national convention is a great place to exercise discipline on churches. The local association and state convention are better, seems to me. We are waiting for the SBC Credentials Committee to publish rules for expelling churches over sex abuse. I’m not seeing a clear, simple path here but let’s see what they come up with.
- If you have congregational votes on important matters, then it is essential to have adequate controls on who is eligible to vote. Want to get a big crowd at church? Have a contentious vote and members who haven’t been seen in years will show up. The Baptist Faith and Message calls for “democratic processes” for the local church. Elder ruled SBC churches don’t seem to be rare and that’s not in accord with the BFM.
- Concomitant with the point above, if congregational decisions are fairly and properly made then it is troubling for church leadership to go after a minority with the goal of excluding them from the church to eliminate opposition.
There are around 50,000 local churches. About 49,000 of them have some screwball written and unwriten policies.
They teach this stuff in seminary, right? Or, do the young theologs have to pick up church administration in the hallways and from blogs and tweets? Go buy you a church admin book. Just don’t wave it around in a deacons meeting like it means anything to them.
My prayers for a speedy, harmonious, and peaceful resolution in the Florida church. Churches have a hard enough time managing things without widespread outside interference and publicity. In this case church leadership chose to publish their problems for all to see.
______________
* “Brother,” when said with fleshly gusto and maybe with a little spittle coming forth, is Southern Baptist cussin’, sorta like “You dumb *&#@*!” If you hear “My Dear Brother” that’s downright obscene cussin’. “My Sweet Brother” is just creepy. Watch out for people who talk this way.
Whatever you say, my sweet brother William.
I’m with you, William nailed this one. I’ve been waiting for a clear and concise analysis of one of these situations. Racism is a horrible blight on any organization; especially the church. But, a church that is doing it’s job will always have people who have some very wrong attitudes about some areas. Does the leadership know who these people are and did they attempt any type of internal reconciliation before sending this explanation to the whole church body. Any communication with the church body should be clear, specific, and handled as discreetly as possible. If they were that sure that racism was a big issue, they could have privately talked to each person that voted against him in an attempt to promote unity. If they didn’t know exactly who voted against him, they have no idea why they voted the way they did. If that’s the case, take a few weeks to work on the unity of the congregation and vote again.
I don’t know what “concomitant” means but point #6 is well-taken.
Concerning the alluded to situation in point 6, it’s not the opposition that is the problem but the origin and manifestation of that opposition that is sinful and needs to be addressed.
Gently, according to Galatians 6. If it’s done any other way, does it not become sinful in it’s own right?
Good article William. Sad situation in the Florida church if what has been reported is true.
You mentioned elder ruled SBC churches. I don’t know how many ER SBC churches there are, or if maybe there are more elder LED SBC churches.
In any case, I’ve been a Ruling Elder in a PCA church for years. Of course as the name makes clear, PCA churches are elder “ruled” by both teaching (pastors) and ruling elders (laymen). Yet, in all PCA churches pastors are voted on by a congregational vote just like most congregational churches. Just an FYI.
“If you have congregational votes on important matters, then it is essential to have adequate controls on who is eligible to vote. Want to get a big crowd at church? Have a contentious vote and members who haven’t been seen in years will show up.”
I wholeheartedly agree, though I haven’t yet read that it was a factor in this situation. (And they most certainly taught this at SEBTS back in the early 21st century when I was there.)
For some reason, I had it in my head that dealing with bloated, inaccurate membership rolls was not well thought of here. Glad I was wrong about that.
Don’t know that anyone other than myself here has said that a church membership roll is no one else’s business, not Tom Ascol, not Al Mohler, not Mark Dever. Generally, critics bring their own definition of bloated and inaccurate to suit their purposes. Who gets to vote and how it’s done should always be a concern for a church.
Ben
I agree with you that someone should look at and.publicly comment on what role bloated membership roles played in the record attendance on the day of the vote. Initially I lamented on the lack of information available about the details and nature of racial prejudice. I did find some social media comments about Mr. Hayes appreciation for a book that I’m not familiar with, but seemed to have something to do with social justice, but that should be expected on political grounds alone in a county that went almost 90% Trump. Maybe there was something else that we don’t know. Luckily, I did find the following article to help you clarify how bloated membership roles may have played a role.
http://www.bpnews.net/53858/fla-church-signals-discipline-over-racial-prejudices
Anyone that’s been to more than a few business meetings could have easily read the letter and interpreted the leaders to be saying that a few racists encouraged a subset of nominal members to show up; swelling attendance andsway the election. That would actually be the most generous way to view the leadership’s response. You will notice that less than 2000 members in a church with more than 10,000 voted on a day with record numbers in attendance. There is a likelihood that some nominal members cast a vote against Mr.Hayes. Were there enough to block his hiring. We don’t know the answer to this question, but we do know that there at several thousand members that could have voted to skew the election one way or the other.
In short, we know from experience that people voted in this election that shouldn’t have. We don’t know how they voted or why.
Racism has become the weaponized scarlett R amongst some who wear the white R of reconciliation as a badge of honor. Racism has no place in the heart of the individual or the fellowship of the saints, but the racial reconciliation police Puritans have no business handing out red Rs as they make judgements about real people at they micromanage the real awkwardness and growth that occur at the real intersections of reconciliation.
My wife and I have navigated a few of those intersections. Being the reserved one, I rarely expressed my insensitivites, but I’m sure they came out in other ways. My wife is not reserved and made a generalization early on about gun toting tobacco farmers that described the family of my youth perfectly. She has made many insensitive culturally oriented comments since that time and my internal insensitivites have expressed themselves many times, but love has moderated both the existence and expression of our insensitivites.
May God bless the Hayes family and may their lives not become absorbed by this drama. May God bring together Marcus with some significant number of those who voted against him and may their be reconciliation; whether racial, ideological, spiritual, or whatever.
Good article William Thornton. Thank you