RICHMOND, Va. — Proposed changes in the staff of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board are prompted in part by reduced funding but will have the effect of making the organization more strategic, the board’s executive director said Dec. 9.
John Upton said several staff realignments will make it unnecessary to lay off personnel, even though the board’s 2012 budget will be more than $490,000 less than it was in 2011.
John Upton
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“We knew this was coming,” said Upton, citing data over the past three years from the Annual Church Profile, a statistical tool used by the board. “We knew we would see significant reductions so we began to make adjustments last year and into this year.”
But the changes — which were shared with the board’s governing directors in November and will be considered for final approval Jan. 10 by its executive committee — “will make us more effective,” he said.
“Necessity has caused us to be more strategic,” the executive director said.
He acknowledged, however, that a “tipping point” could be reached if contributions to the Baptist General Association of Virginia — which provides about 85 percent of the Mission Board’s funding — continue to decline. The BGAV reduced its 2012 budget from this year’s $13,350,000 to $12.4 million.
“Future reductions on that scale would be a problem for us,” Upton said.
The proposed changes:
• Leslie Straw, adult ministry strategist with the emerging leaders team, will become the board’s chief accounting officer, filling a position left open by the resignation of Kay McMeniman. Straw also has been named team leader of the support ministries team. She will report to board treasurer Eddie Stratton, but Upton said the move will give Stratton more freedom to engage his additional roles as the board’s director of development and coordinator of its capital stewardship services.
Straw is a “superb organizer” who developed the emerging leaders team’s scholarship program, and maintained financial records for the board’s Camp Piankatank, said Upton.
• The adult ministry strategist position will not be filled, nor will the position left vacant by the Dec. 16 retirement of Diane Smith, children’s ministry strategist with the emerging leaders team. Instead, one new position will be created as part of a developing strategy of youth and children’s ministries which will include Ken Dibble, the team’s youth ministry strategist.
“We are definitely going to continue to provide resources for youth and children’s ministries,” said Upton. “And we’ll definitely continue the certification programs [in those ministries].”
• Chris Backert, coordinator of Fresh Expressions US, a board-backed church revitalization and discipleship movement, will move from the emerging leaders team to the courageous churches team, though his Fresh Expressions assignment will be unchanged.
• The campus ministries at both Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., and the University of Virginia’s College at Wise will move from part-time to full-time status. Upton said collegiate ministry leaders are exploring the possibility of making the same change at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
• Don Campbell, who has been both a field strategist for the board’s Southside region and a stewardship specialist, will relinquish his field strategist role to focus on stewardship. That will entail a move from the empowering leaders team to the support ministries team, where he also will assist with capital stewardship services. The other six field strategists will share responsibilities for the Southside region, Upton said.
• Faysal Sharif, the board’s Kingdom Advance ambassador for Muslim ministries, will move from full-time to part-time employment.
• Mike Jones, pastor of Shockoe Baptist Church in Chatham, Va., who also has coordinated the board’s ministries for the hearing-impaired on a contract basis, will no longer do so, though the board will refer him to churches seeking assistance in deaf ministry. Planning for the annual deaf ministry conference will be assumed by First Baptist Church of Richmond.
• John Tadlock, a retired board staffer, will no longer provide mediation services on a contract basis to churches embroiled in conflict, though he will continue to be the board’s primary referral to churches, said Upton.
• The positions of several contract workers in Latino ministry have been consolidated under the leadership of Daniel Carro and Greg and Sue Smith, all Kingdom Advance ambassadors for Latino ministries.
Robert Dilday (rdilday@religiousherald.org) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.