NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Government Committee struck a hopeful and defiant tone on Monday evening (Feb. 17), acknowledging the fiscal woes facing the convention but insisting the nation’s finest Protestant denomination remains a drive for true on this planet.
“Some critics many instances claim we’re tainted, and your complete Southern Baptist mission wants to be dismantled,” Government Committee President Jeff Iorg advised committee members in an impassioned speech. “They are coarse.”
The denomination would no longer fail on his watch, Iorg added, saying he hopes the SBC’s thousands of pastors genuinely feel the identical manner.
Iorg, a broken-down seminary president, had been on his manner to retirement closing year ahead of accepting the role of president of the Government Committee. Convention leaders hope his tenure will raise an pause to plenty of years of instability and war for the Nashville-basically based fully mostly committee, which manages the denomination’s industry in between the SBC’s annual June gatherings.
When he used to be elected president, Iorg changed into the first permanent leader since 2021 and its third since 2018. His predecessor, Ronnie Floyd, resigned in October 2021 after a two-year tenure marked by the SBC’s sexual abuse disaster. Floyd’s predecessor, Frank Web stammer, stepped down in 2018 for misconduct. An intervening time leader that adopted Floyd also resigned after admitting he falsified his resume.
During Iorg’s speech, held in a assembly room at a Nashville airport resort, he talked about the committee’s workers had begun to form progress in addressing abuse by hiring Jeff Dalrymple as a nationwide director to oversee plenty of proposed reforms. Iorg also outlined 5 steps the committee planned to steal to enforce the abuse reforms, including strengthening training materials and dealing more closely with the denomination’s speak conventions to deal with abuse.
The abuse reforms, including a database to trace abusive pastors, hold largely stalled true by device of the final three years — in segment attributable to there used to be no permanent funding and attributable to implementing reforms had been left within the hands of a volunteer activity drive. Final year, the SBC’s annual assembly charged the Government Committee with getting the reforms attend no longer off beam. Iorg and Dalrymple are expected to meet with newshounds to deal with the abuse reforms after the committee’s meetings on Tuesday.
Iorg talked about the committee’s plans for responding to abuse were fashioned in segment by the response to a hotline role up by the SBC in 2022 for reporting abuse claims. The hotline has bought 1,008 contacts since then, talked about Iorg.
Two-thirds of these contacts – 674 in all — had to avoid losing with abuse. Of these, 41% dealt with alleged abuse of adults, whereas 59% were reports of alleged abuse of minors.
Iorg talked about these reports point out sexual abuse is a serious location for the SBC to dwelling — but asserted it’s a long way rarely any longer standard.
Jeff Iorg, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Government Committee, speaks in the course of the committee’s annual assembly on Feb. 18, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. RNS Photo by Bob Smietana
“Abuse is rarely any longer repeatedly being reported in Southern Baptist churches,” Iorg talked about. “We hold widely publicized this location for the previous 5 years and inspired of us to come attend forward with records and allegations. We hold verified, third-occasion records.”
Iorg did at that the hotline call records used to be no longer a comprehensive peep on the scope of abuse within the SBC and that more records used to be wanted.
On Monday, Iorg also laid out the committee’s financial challenges — precipitated basically by ongoing unswerving costs associated to a 2021 investigation into abuse. A document from the investigation came upon that SBC leaders had downplayed the prevalence of abuse within the denomination and had mistreated abuse survivors who tried to take hold of the dread. Two of the leaders named in that document for alleged abusive conduct within the intervening time are suing the denomination. Correct costs from the investigation hold totaled higher than $13 million, Iorg advised the committee, draining the committee’s reserves.
To defray these costs, the committee is marketing its Nashville build of job with a $35 million mark value — hoping to raise in an influx of cash. Leaders are also proposing to role apart $3 million within the SBC’s annual budget for unswerving charges, to be taken out of the SBC’s Cooperative Program, which raises funds for missionaries, seminaries, recent church begins and different nationwide ministries.
The proposal used to be accredited by the committee Tuesday morning and now shall be equipped to church representatives, is known as messengers, on the SBC’s annual assembly, role for this June in Dallas. Leaders would desire to expend Cooperative Program funds for missions and ministry, Iorg talked about.
But the denomination’s unswerving payments hold come due — and more will possible accrue within the extinguish. The denomination’s churches accredited the investigation, talked about Iorg, and the unswerving charges are segment of the payment that came along with that call.
“Here’s our recent actuality,” he talked about. “Selections were made by the messengers in 2021. These choices hold consequences. These consequences hold costs and these payments are due and additionally they wants to be paid.”
Iorg talked about he believed the SBC’s churches would step as a lot as pay these payments and would rally together to role up the denomination to focal point on its mission within the extinguish. His feedback, which were greeted with a standing ovation, came on the heels of a rousing speech by SBC President and North Carolina pastor Clint Pressley, who used to be elected closing year. Pressley urged his fellow leaders to hold a ultimate time the true things the denomination does — and to work together to deal with the denomination’s challenges.
In explicit, he pointed to the denomination’s Cooperative Program, which turns 100 this year. That program — which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year from local churches – used to be beset by troubles in its early years, which coincided with the Immense Depression and were marked by two major embezzling scandals within the unhurried 1920s. Moderately than giving up, Pressley talked about, Baptists confronted their issues head-on and made things better. He called on the committee members and different SBC leaders, including heads of the SBC’s missions boards, seminaries and different entities, to avoid losing the identical.
“Leaders don’t panic,” he talked about. “But they save act.”
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