In 2008, as enrollment was declining and expenses were skyrocketing, trustees of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary gave Paige Patterson a gift for his fifth anniversary as president.
That gift was a $25,000 “vacation fund” to be used at the discretion of Patterson and his wife, Dorothy.
Seminary records obtained by Baptist News Global show the Pattersons spent those funds over the next three years on trips to Ireland and Africa, with the largest single reported expense being “trophy fee and wire transfer fee” for an African “hunting trip.” Another $2,848 was spent on a “deposit for taxidermy work on African mounts.” Additional funds were spent on air flights, ground transportation, lodging and massages at a hotel spa.
Paige Patterson was well-known as a big-game hunter and filled his seminary office with the animals he had slain.
Paige Patterson’s office at Southwestern Seminary, 2005 (Blake White via Twitter)
The Pattersons also operated — then and now — a private foundation first called Patmos Evangelistic Association and later renamed Sandy Creek Foundation. This foundation played a key role in several controversies after Paige Patterson was fired as seminary president.
First, the Pattersons were accused by seminary officials of taking seminary property with them when they vacated the president’s home on campus and moved to a mansion owned by the Sandy Creek Foundation. Second, Patterson was accused of attempting to coerce a seminary donor to redirect a $5 million pledge to Southwestern to his foundation.
Even while he was president of the seminary, Paige Patterson used his private foundation for some expenses that were reimbursed by the seminary. That pattern shows up in documentation of the $25,000 anniversary gift. Of 10 line items shown on an accounting of the expenditures, half were paid to Patmos Evangelistic Association.
Of 10 line items shown on an accounting of the expenditures, half were paid to Patmos Evangelistic Association.
Even though the expenditures were related to the seminary trustees’ personal gift to the Pattersons, some of the expenses were run through the foundation as an intermediary.
In the year trustees gave the president and his wife a $25,000 anniversary gift — for five years of service — the school operated at a $9 million deficit.
The seminary’s current board of trustees has apologized to Southern Baptists for past lack of financial oversight by Patterson and his successor, Adam Greenway, but the record shows trustees also were enabling the extraordinary spending.
Some Southern Baptists — including some board members — believe trustees have not done enough to give full account of all that went wrong over a 21-year period that created a cumulative deficit of $140 million. They want a forensic audit.
While trustees and the current administration took the unprecedented step of releasing 21 years of audited financial statements, critics believe the details behind those audits ought to come to light as well. Many of those concerns relate to spending by Patterson and Greenway on themselves, their family members and the president’s home.
Aaron Sligar
Earlier this summer, trustee officers gave examples of what they considered inappropriate expenditures by Greenway on the president’s home, but even those are contested.
One former trustee who sounded the alarm on this — while oddly justifying Greenway’s purchase of an $11,000 espresso machine — is Aaron Sligar. A recent interview Sligar gave to Religion News Service caused the current seminary trustee chairman to issue a rare public rebuttal of the story.
Jonathan Richard, pastor of First Baptist Church in Estancia, N.M., issued a lengthy statement Aug. 8 rebutting “Sligar’s irresponsible and false claims.”
Jonathan Richard
Richard explained the full trustee board in late May voted to investigate Sligar and fellow trustee Andrew Bunnell — both of whom now have resigned from the board — “to determine if they engaged in misconduct as trustees.”
However, “Sligar continued his pattern of making reckless and false claims about the board, especially its leadership,” Richard continued. “Our mandate as trustees is to hold the institution in trust on behalf of churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, guided by truth and facts. Sligar failed to uphold this mandate, noticeably changing some of his conclusions about the former president — in coordination with at least one former seminary employee close to the former president — and trafficking in baseless allegations. This behavior was unanimously repudiated by the full board of trustees in the May 30 meeting — including a vote by Sligar himself to repudiate his own actions.”
Embedded in Richard’s statememt is an affirmation of some palace intrigue related to Greenway’s departure. As told by seminary insiders, a key confidant of Greenway’s turned on him and helped force his ouster. At the same time, other Greenway allies still employed at the seminary began leaking documents in hopes of restoring Greenway’s credibility and smearing the perceived turncoat.
Trustee officers have been insistent that Sligar is not a trustworthy reporter of board actions and that Greenway’s spending was out of line — even as the seminary continued to decline in enrollment and operate with million-dollar deficits.
“It is my opinion that Sligar’s actions as a trustee — and especially now as a former trustee — disqualify him from holding any position of leadership in Southern Baptist life, and I hope that he will remember the pledge that he made in the May 30 meeting that he will apologize and fully retract his erroneous statements,” Richard said.
The chairman said it became evident that Sligar “had engaged in his own investigation beyond the scope approved by the board, and during his report targeted several other employees of the seminary in an effort to deflect attention from the former president. … As Executive Committee members pressed Sligar for information and evidence, it became clear that Sligar had no evidence to validate his allegations, only hearsay. Considering that, the EC asked him not to report his baseless allegations to the full board as it would be slanderous to the individuals named.”
Richard also addressed the now-infamous $11,000 espresso machine and the overall accounting of expenses for the president’s home.
He concluded by addressing Sligar’s claim that vital information has been withheld from trustees.
“The entire trustee board grieves the financial mismanagement of the past two decades at Southwestern Seminary,” Richard said. “For as long as I have been on the board, trustees experienced a pattern of stonewalling by previous presidents when we have sought financial information. In contrast, no trustees have ever tried to cover up or stonewall any information to fellow board members. Our desire for openness is evidenced by our release of 20 years of audited financials following the May 30 meeting. We continue to research and implement financial guardrails to ensure that SWBTS has many more financially stable years.”
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Behind the numbers: How Southwestern Seminary’s enrollment came to be the lowest it has been since World War II | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
Here’s how to force SBC entities to be accountable to people in the pew about their finances