By Robert Dilday
A key committee has taken the Baptist General Association of Virginia a step closer to what will be the most significant change in the 1,400-church denomination’s governance in nearly 100 years.
The executive committee of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board — which functions as the BGAV’s governing body between the convention’s annual meetings — approved Sept. 9 a long list of constitutional and bylaw changes necessary to implement the shift in governance, which was adopted in principle by the BGAV in November 2013 after a yearlong study by a governance study committee.
The executive committee will recommend the changes to the Mission Board in October, which, if approved, will then be proposed to the BGAV for final action.
The plan — the most significant governance change since the 1920s for the nearly 200-year-old BGAV — shifts policy-making authority from the 97-member Virginia Baptist Mission Board to a new 20-member Executive Board, while creating a Mission Council of up to 120 members to function in a consultative role.
In addition, the Executive Board will develop annual budgets to be recommended to the BGAV, replacing the existing budget committee, which has functioned separately from the Mission Board.
Unlike the existing Mission Board, 75 percent of whose members are recommended by district associations, most of the Executive Board’s members will be elected on an at-large basis.
An ad hoc committee has been at work for the past year to revise BGAV governing documents and to combine the convention’s constitution and bylaws — an increasingly common organizational practice.
“Our job was to take the report of the governance study committee and put it in a form we can adopt as constitution and bylaws,” said Darrell Foster, a member of the constitution and bylaws committee who presented the completed product to the executive committee.
Two additions
Foster, a Virginia Beach, Va., attorney and former BGAV president, said the committee had made two additions to the proposal adopted last year — both with the approval of the governance study committee.
One change adds the immediate past BGAV president to the Executive Board as an ex officio member. The other grants voting rights to both the BGAV executive director and treasurer, who already were slated to serve in an ex officio capacity on the Executive Board. Under the existing arrangement, those two top staffers are members of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board but may not vote.
Foster said that in most organizations, if the chief executive and chief financial officers are members of the board of directors, they are given voting privileges. “When you allow them to vote on the Executive Board it gives them ownership of what has been done. They’re not just following instructions.”
The executive committee also adopted new articles of incorporation, which makes “Baptist General Association of Virginia” the legal title of the organization. Though the network of churches has been called the BGAV since it was organized in 1823, the legal entity — with authority to own property, for instance — has been the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. The revised articles also will be recommended to the Mission Board in October and the BGAV in November.
Once changes have been approved, the new system is expected to be in place by the beginning of 2015.