Just imagine you are an elected trustee of a $300 million denominational entity whose outgoing president lobs verbal grenades toward the trustees and corporate culture on his way out the door. And then you show up a week later for a regular trustee meeting. What might you expect to be the headline out of such a meeting?
Here’s the exact headline on a Baptist Press article about this week’s meeting of trustees of Lifeway Christian Resources in Nashville: “Lifeway Trustees Hear Reports of Strong Culture and New Innovations, Adopt Budget.”
Y’all, the fact that BP would publish such institutional drivel is why Baptist News Global exists today. We were founded in 1990 as Associated Baptist Press because the pedophile Paul Pressler demanded the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee fire the two top editors of Baptist Press — for the sin of telling the truth and not slanting the “news” to Pressler’s liking.
Mark Wingfield
Does this remind you of anyone you know in an oval-shaped gilded office these days? Yeah, the parallels are eerie.
As my “Stuck in the Middle with You” podcast co-host Benjamin Cole so expertly wrote for us this week, outgoing Lifeway President Ben Mandrell threw multiple stink bombs at the trustees for a culture that wouldn’t allow him to hire his wife to help run the place. What he had to say about Lifeway’s culture and his own view of the world is just downright bizarre. Shocking, even.
So what did Lifeway trustees do at this meeting? They invited Mandrell to come speak to them one last time. And only about half the trustees showed up at the dinner to hear him.
You’d think maybe the trustees would have spent some time discussing Mandrell’s weird exit and his public airing of grievances. But if they did, it’s not included in the Baptist Press story written by a Lifeway communications employee. Not a word about any of that.
“You’d think maybe the trustees would have spent some time discussing Mandrell’s weird exit and his public airing of grievances.”
Instead, the story leads with Interim President Joe Walker declaring: “The next Lifeway president will inherit a healthy organization from both a financial and cultural perspective.”
Say what?
You just had a president denounce the corporate culture as he walked out the door, and at this very same meeting you adopted an annual budget of $307 million, which is $12 million below the current year’s budget of $319.4 million. You have been hemorrhaging money for decades. Then BP explains this: “Cossy Pachares, senior vice president and chief financial officer, said the organization will likely fall slightly short of its 2025 fiscal year revenue budget but should end the year with a positive bottom line.”
Well, saints be praised for a positive bottom line.
Let me remind you, dear readers, that this is the same board of trustees that either approved or ignored Mandrell instigating and signing an amicus brief in a Kentucky court case against the side of a known sexual abuse survivor. That’s right: Lifeway and several other SBC entities took the side of protecting institutions like theirs from legitimate sexual abuse claims.
And then when BNG and other national figures attempted to shame Mandrell or the trustee leadership into explaining this odd action, they said precisely nothing. It’s like the lawyers strapped duct tape on all their mouths.
“There is no real accountability to the convention or the churches or the people in the pew.”
As Ben and I have discussed on the podcast before, and as I have written before, the SBC’s trustee system is broken. There is no real accountability to the convention or the churches or the people in the pew. What’s happening at Lifeway right now is Exhibit Z in a parade of examples we could cite.
We’ve got a new podcast episode out today, all dealing with the history and culture of Lifeway. Listen to it here.
In the meantime, if you’re concerned about trustees choosing wisely on their next president, BP reports search committee Chair Billy Stewart said the committee is in the information gathering phase of the process. “We’ve already received valuable feedback from both employees and trustees and are using that feedback to help build a comprehensive candidate profile,” he said. And then BP added: Earlier this month, Lifeway employees and trustees were asked to complete a questionnaire about potential characteristics of the next president.
I’m doubtful a trustee board that can’t address the obvious elephants in the room will be able to conduct a decent search for a new leader on its own. But I can guarantee this one thing: None of us will know what happens behind those closed doors because Lifeway’s trustees aren’t about to tell us a thing.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global and is the author of five books, including Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves. He is co-host with Benjamin Cole of the podcast “Stuck in the Middle with You.”