Credit to the Tennessean and to the survivor for making this known.
Tullahoma pastor resigns after abuse survivor shares story
This may be behind a paywall.
The salient facts are familiar, and depressing: a youth guy has sex with a teen in his group, 16 years old. The Tennessean quotes the former youth pastor as confessing to the act but the act was determined by law enforcement people in Kentucky where the abuse occurred to not be illegal.
Would this non-illegal act have landed the guy on the SBC’s database that is being put together? I’m not sure and will have to reread some of the SATF and SBC documents. There are questions here. Maybe some of the experts have answers. I don’t.
The guy has resigned his current church, which left the SBC a short while ago when the original story came out; thus, this is not an SBC church and not an SBC related or any kind of pastor at the moment.
I’m fine with this act being a permanent disqualifier but no one can enforce it – not the SBC, not anyone. Whichever church originally ordained the guy should revoke that if he is ordained. No one can force that, either, and there is no centralized list of ordinations for the SBC. Never has been.
There are no ordained SBC pastors of any kind, only pastors who serve or served in SBC churches who were ordained by an SBC affiliated church. He can be put on a database that no SBC church has to check. He could pastor again, even an SBC church. Neither the Executive Committee, Kentucky State Convention, nor local association should bear any civil liability for this, unless facts not known are brought to light. None of these entities ordained, hired, fired, supervised or anything else in regard to this guy.
Clearly, at least in this case public exposure was the solution to this case. The story was published and a few days later the guy was gone. I don’t see this story on Baptist Press but expect to.
Suppose the case went to the database people at the SBC Executive Committee. Would the church from which he resigned be excluded from the SBC? Would the church where the non-illegal act occurred be excluded? No one knows.
There are questions, always. Credit for the survivor for speaking up and speaking out.
