(RNS) — In mid-February, Southern Baptist Convention leaders received grim data. The denomination’s Govt Committee turn into actually broke.
Over the past four years, the committee has spent better than $13 million on lovely charges and other prices connected to a historic sexual abuse investigation by Guidepost Alternate suggestions, draining its reserves and leaving it unable to pay its funds for the next yr. Among these funds had been $3 million in extra lovely charges for the upcoming yr, with more vulnerable to cessation.
“These funds are due,” Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Govt Committee, mentioned in his speech to SBC leaders assembly at a Nashville, Tennessee, airport hotel in February. “And they ought to be paid.”
To address the monetary crisis, the Govt Committee has place its Nashville headquarters up in the market on the market, decrease workers and applied for a $3 million loan. The committee is furthermore hunting for a $3 million “priority allocation” for lovely charges from the denomination’s $190 million Cooperative Program funds, which is in overall old fashioned for missions and ministries.
Iorg mentioned the committee had accomplished with out tapping these funds for years. Now, there are no other suggestions.
“That is a controversial and complex recommendation to present,” Iorg mentioned. “No mission-centered Southern Baptist wants to rob this action. I don’t, you don’t. No one does. However we comprise exhausted other definitive suggestions.”
Jeff Iorg, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Govt Committee, speaks all the way by the committee’s annual assembly on Feb. 18, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (RNS photo/Bob Smietana)
The SBC funds, including the lovely allocation, ought to be popular all the way by the denomination’s annual assembly in June. It’s unclear what’s going to happen if the request fails.
How did the nation’s largest Protestant denomination receive in such monetary wretchedness?
One reason is Johnny Hunt.
Hunt, a old fashioned Southern Baptist Convention president and megachurch pastor, sued the denomination in 2023, after allegations he had sexually assaulted one more pastor’s wife had been printed in the Guidepost anecdote. Hunt denied the allegations in the muse, then mentioned the sexual conduct turn into consensual.
His attorneys comprise argued Hunt’s sins had been no person’s industry but God’s and comprise sought tens of thousands and thousands of bucks in damages.
As of tumble 2024, the Govt Committee had spent better than $3.1 million on lovely charges connected to the Hunt lawsuit and a 2nd swimsuit filed by David Sills, a old fashioned seminary professor named in the anecdote. Loads of the costs had been as a result of Hunt lawsuit, which goes to trial in June.
The costs from Hunt’s lawsuit comprise furthermore actually doubled since the Govt Committee agreed to pay Guidepost’s lovely charges in any lawsuit in accordance to its investigation, a route of identified as indemnification.
Pastor Johnny Hunt speaks in 2020. (Video cloak take)
Hunt furthermore performed a key characteristic in the Colossal Fee Resurgence, a 2010 initiative that decrease the Govt Committee’s funding to give more money to missions.
Hunt’s attorneys did now in the end acknowledge to a request for comment.
Govt Committee leaders furthermore spent $2 million on the Guidepost investigation and one more $2 million on an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Division of Justice.
The longer acknowledge to the fiscal woes is that the SBC is an inherently fragile group. Even though it boasts about 13 million participants and better than 46,000 church buildings — which accumulate about $10 billion a yr, most of which stays within these church buildings — the overarching SBC group is held together by a volunteer committee, a shrimp workers and a lovely minuscule funds.
In essence, SBC is a billion-buck group that spends nearly no money on administration or oversight on a nationwide stage. Completely about 3% of SBC funding goes to the Govt Committee, which runs the SBC in between its annual conferences, collects donations and handles the denomination’s lovely affairs.
A combination of inflation, lovely charges and the rising payment of inserting on the rising annual assembly has strained the Govt Committee’s funds. In 2014, the assembly drew about 5,200 messengers, and closing yr’s drew nearly 11,000.
Loads of the money donated to the SBC’s Cooperative Program — which funds theological training and mission work — goes to the SBC’s six seminaries and two main mission boards. These entities defend a entire bunch of thousands and thousands in reserves.
Messengers lend a hand the principle day of the Southern Baptist Convention annual assembly at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Heart in New Orleans on June 13, 2023. (RNS photo/Emily Kask)
When Southern Baptists popular the Guidepost investigation, they furthermore popular the muse of utilizing Cooperative Program funds for facing abuse. Alternatively, the messengers did now not approve an reliable funds for the investigation, and makes an attempt to faucet these funds stalled in 2021.
Iorg mentioned there’s no plot of incandescent what future lovely prices shall be. Alternatively, he instructed SBC leaders he hopes the $3 million allocation and the eventual sale of the Govt Committee constructing will alleviate plenty of the most as a lot as date funds woes.
Marshall Blalock, pastor of First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, mentioned the Govt Committee is in an “unenviable residing.” SBC leaders adopted the necessity of the messengers, he mentioned, and that came with a payment.
He backed the muse of a priority allocation to fund lovely funds.
“They comprise to pay these funds,” mentioned Blalock, who served on the committee that oversaw the Guidepost investigation. “When the money runs out, it has to cessation from someplace.”
Pastor Marshall Blalock, chair of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, speaks all the way by the annual assembly in New Orleans, June 14, 2023. (RNS photo/Emily Kask)
Blalock mentioned he’s heard critics blame the duty power or past Govt Committees for the most as a lot as date funds shortfall. That’s erroneous, he mentioned.
“They are blaming the injurious other folks,” he mentioned.
The funds shortfall, he mentioned, turn into triggered mainly by lawsuits from these named in the Guidepost anecdote, and that’s where the blame must lie.
“The excellent solution would be for folk to cease suing us,” he mentioned, whereas now not naming explicit names.
Blalock furthermore mentioned he worries the lawsuits comprise slowed abuse reforms in the SBC, equivalent to a proposed database that would name abusive pastors. Defending against lawsuits has dried up funds that would were old fashioned for reforms — and made Baptist leaders wary of reforms, equivalent to a database.
The Guidepost investigation turn into delayed in 2021 for weeks due to a heated debate over waiving lawyer-client privilege — actually giving investigators entry to correspondence between SBC leaders and their attorneys. After a alternative of resignations, the committee waived privilege.
Some critics of waiving privilege claimed at the time that waiving privilege would lead to monetary wretchedness for the SBC. Supporters of these critics now relate they had been lovely. A spokesman for the Govt Committee mentioned it turn into complicated to search out out what one part triggered the upward push in lovely charges.
“The waiving of privilege turn into one in all many necessary choices that comprise impacted the finances of the SBC Govt Committee,” Brandon Porter, the Govt Committee’s vice chairman for communications, mentioned in an email. “Whereas now not individually quantifiable, these mixed choices comprise resulted in substantial and continued prices.”
Tapping Cooperative Program funds could perchance near with some unintended consequences. All the way by the Govt Committee’s assembly in February, Dani Bryson, a committee member from Tennessee, mentioned doing so could perchance jeopardize funds the SBC has long sought to supply protection to in the occasion it ever loses a lawsuit.
“If we’re going to be standing sooner than a court searching for to point out them that we don’t comprise entry to all the Cooperative Program funds, this designation obvious doesn’t produce that look appropriate,” she mentioned all the way by the assembly.
In an interview, Bryson mentioned that if the proposal to faucet Cooperative Program funds fails this summer, the committee will must near up with a various near.
Bruce Frank, the North Carolina megachurch pastor who chaired the abuse job power that oversaw the Guidepost investigation, mentioned he’d abet the thought to faucet Cooperative Program funds and that paying the SBC’s lovely funds is allotment of the payment of operating a prime denomination.
“We can’t focus on how huge of an organization we’re and how we’re the biggest Protestant denomination, and then negate we will have the choice to’t manage to pay for the classic payment of operating this,” he mentioned.
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