A few weeks ago, I visited the local Scout Shop to pick up some patches. Off to one side stood a clearance rack, full of female uniforms at deep discount.
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) had rolled out the red carpet to girls, starting in 2018. Its directors said the change furthered the BSA’s mission of youth character development.
But everyone knew the change was made under pressure. BSA would file for bankruptcy about a year later, under fire for thousands of sexual abuse claims that had occurred in prior decades.
I know families that signed up their daughters, preferring the BSA to the Girl Scouts. But on the whole, it alienated true believers. Membership has dropped over 50%, and key partners fled. This opened the door to more members leaving, and the plunge hasn’t halted.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)
I was reminded of the Scouts while reading Mark Wingfield’s report that SBC leaders are rethinking … well, everything. SBC President Bart Barber announced at the annual convention in 2023 that he was naming a Cooperation Committee to reconsider “the fundamental nature” of the agreement between Churches and the Convention. And now comes Wingfield’s report that The North American Mission Board, the International Mission Board, and Guidestone may divvy up the Executive Committee.
A new covenant between the churches and the Convention, combined with the removal of the “ad interim” SBC, would be the end of the Southern Baptist Convention system.
As Pastor Heath Lambert recently observed, a time of controversy is “not the time to go back to the drawing board and figure out what we believe and who must believe it.” Whatever changes are attempted, they will result in heartache.
The Cooperation Group, created at the request of former SBC Presidents, will almost certainly make recommendations couched in the “mission” of the Great Commission. Like the Scouts, though, “the mission” presented may be an abstraction away from the mission in the heart of Baptists. Were the Boy Scouts dedicated to the unique needs of boys, or the general field of character education? Do SBC institutions measure the Great Commission in terms of multiplying churches that hold to the Baptist Faith & Message, or by Cooperative Program receipts? Is our “mission” church growth for the sake of church growth (whatever that means), or does Baptist doctrine and ethics play a part in the definition of healthy church growth?
If the Cooperation group steps back from the current Baptist Faith & Message as the standard for cooperation, it will break faith with those who believe the things the statement of faith says. Maybe our current leaders have run out of ideas for evangelizing and making more Baptists. But losing the core of the convention—the rank and file Baptists—will outweigh any gains made by saving a few churches with female education pastors.
The Issue Behind the Issue
Worse, a wholesale restructuring looks like a desperation move made in light of sex abuse lawsuits. A time of legal controversy is not the time for radical restructuring to protect the money. It’s too late, and it won’t work. Those “taking over” the Executive Committee may find they are spreading the Executive Committee’s legal liabilities.
Our First Amendment protects churches in their religiously motivated conduct. Baptists truly believe in local church autonomy; Baptists truly oppose parachurch ecclesial authority. A hierarchical structure might make it easier to root out problems in local churches, but it is inconsistent with Baptist beliefs. And so, under our current structure, I would expect a Court to refuse to hold the SBC or its entities liable for local church misconduct. Even if the court thought a hierarchical system were objectively better, it cannot impose that system on the SBC. Our current structure developed consistent with our religious beliefs.
But there is not special, First Amendment protection for financial decisions made to protect cash from legal judgments. If there is the slightest hint that a decision was made for financial and not religious reasons, judges may have broad authority to substitute their judgment for the messenger’s decisions.
SBC President Bart Barber has testified that the SBC did nothing wrong in reporting sex abuse. But if he is wrong, the cold, hard fact is that the SBC may face legal claims in amounts that exceed its insurance and assets. “If the SBC winds up needing to sell nearly all its assets for the sake of providing reparations and restitution to those it has so grievously harmed,” says Christa Brown, a noted advocate, “then this would be for the good.” Like the Scouts, if statutes of limitation are expanded, and the national SBC is suddenly held responsible for decades of misconduct in local churches, then claims against the family of Southern Baptist entities would be enormous. Not even the North American Mission Board’s famously deep coffers may have enough to pay them all.
Can anyone offer a straight-faced, religious reason to dissolve the Executive Committee now, and move its duties elsewhere? Can anyone possibly say this proposal is unconnected to abuse debts and expenses? I don’t think so. The reason for the change would be to protect Cooperative Program funds from lawsuit claims. It would also set the entities free from serious oversight in between annual messenger meetings.
To everyone who is not on the platform, that looks an awful lot like a “fraudulent transfer.” That is, the money-handling would be changed partly to protect it from the expected stream of claims. The Executive Committee would be left undercapitalized. And the law says the courts have broad authority to undo such changes. It’s not much different than knowingly receiving stolen goods. If you know Plaintiffs deserve some of the money, you can’t do things to make it more difficult to collect like move it to another place. A court could treat the Cooperative Program at Guidestone like it was the Executive Committee’s money. It could “pierce the veil” and ignore the different organizations; for practical purposes, they would become one big pile of money.
Charitably, the International Mission Board, The North American Mission Board, and Guidestone might imagine they are planning to burn firebreaks to protect the rest of the Convention from a wildfire that has engulfed the Executive Committee. But to an outsider, this conduct looks like arson. It just guarantees that more entities get named in future lawsuits.
Conclusion
Of course, these legal issues are complex. There would be years of wrangling before a court decides the issues, and maybe that’s long enough for some people. They may be into retirement; the next generation may be left holding the bag. But restructuring the Cooperative Program, or the SBC, or dissolving the SBC Executive Committee now creates a substantial risk: that the Executive Committee’s wildfire spreads to other SBC entities. And in that case, the SBC’s future may look like the BSA’s: desperate for new members and asking bankruptcy courts for relief.
