The SBC's International Mission Board will get a chance to resolve its own trustee dispute, despite a plea for outside arbitration.
Trustee Wade Burleson asked SBC messengers to authorize the convention's Executive Committee to create a special committee to study conflict at the mission board. The panel would have been charged with reporting its findings and proposing steps to “effect reconciliation” among IMB trustees.
But messengers instead affirmed the SBC order-of-business committee's proposal to refer the issue to the board's trustees themselves.
The conflict surfaced last fall, when IMB trustees narrowed the qualification for appointment as missionaries. They disallowed candidates who practice “private prayer language” and candidates who have not received “biblical baptism.”
Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., protested, claiming the board shouldn't impose requirements more stringent than the SBC's Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement. On his web log, he also criticized some IMB trustees for conducting secret caucuses to orchestrate the board's formal sessions. Other trustees accused him of violating confidentiality rules.
As he announced prior to the annual meeting, Burleson called for the Executive Committee to create an committee to report back to the convention in 2007.
He asked the committee to investigate several concerns. They included manipulation of the IMB trustee-appointment process, attempts by heads of other SBC agencies to “influence and/or coerce IMB trustees, staff and administration,” secret trustee actions, implementation of narrow doctrinal requirements for missionary service, and suppression of dissent by trustees who take a minority position on board matters.
The order of business committee countered that traditional convention practice indicates an entity impacted by a motion has “first authority” to respond, noted Allan Blume, the committee's chair.
The IMB is to report its actions on the issue at the 2007 SBC annual meeting.