NASHVILLE (ABP) — The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee approved Sept. 19 an amendment to convention documents that urges SBC leaders toward greater financial responsibility. Southern Baptist messengers will hear the recommendation at the June 2007 annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
The move came in the wake of a trustee investigation, and subsequent resignation, of North American Mission Board President Bob Reccord, who resigned April 17 amid allegations of financial impropriety and conflicts of interest.
The allegations surfaced in a February expose by the Christian Index newspaper. NAMB's trustees, after their own investigation, put Reccord under strict “executive-level controls” March 23. But calls for Reccord's resignation continued.
Rumors of lucrative salaries and perks for other SBC agency executives have circulated for years — none verified — partly because the convention does not require disclosure of compensation.
Then last June at the SBC annual meeting, Ernest Hallmark, a messenger from Parkview Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, asked the Executive Committee to “conduct an administrative expense analysis of all Southern Baptist agencies and institutions that receive support from the Cooperative Program.”
Hallmark's motion said the study should evaluate administrative budgets, especially reimbursable expense accounts, travel expenses, housing expenses and the “amount of Cooperative Program dollars spent, if any, to maintain the private residences and staff of those entity executives.”
With components relating specifically to executive compensation, financial reporting and conflicts of interest, the resulting document calls on trustees to remember their duty of “fiscal responsibility and good stewardship to the Lord and Southern Baptists, particularly in the areas of human resources and ministry expenses.” It doesn't target any one agency for reform.
Benjamin Cole, the pastor at Parkview Baptist and a critic of SBC executive compensation, said the Executive Committee exhibited “great wisdom” in recommending the amendment. Rather than dwelling on past abuses, he said, they chose to look forward in protecting SBC agencies from fiscal irresponsibility and graft.
“Had these measures been in place during that past few years, our convention might have been spared some of the more embarrassing ordeals of executive abuse,” he said. “I hope this amendment sends a shot across the bow of all convention trustee boards.”
The recommendation calls for SBC entities to include annual audits signed by the chief executive officer or chief financial officer of the organization. Southern Baptist agencies aren't required to report CEO salary information because they have tax status as a church.
The motion also asks agency boards to avoid appearances of impropriety so as not to diminish a “positive Christian witness.” It requires boards to certify that “the expenses and perquisites of the president are not excessive and are in keeping with biblical stewardship.”
For Cole, that stewardship should be required at the highest level.
“Southern Baptists expect the highest degree of scrutiny when it comes to the stewardship of our Cooperative Program dollars,” he said. “Anything less undermines the confidence that our churches have in our institutions and their desire to participate sacrificially in our funding mechanism.”
Along with the certification stipulations, the motion said all corporate expenses should be “reasonable and incurred to accomplish the entity's … mission statement … ministry assignments and any other responsibilities previously approved by the messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention and still in force.”
The provision was passed by the Executive Committee without dissent. It now must be approved by the SBC annual convention before becoming effective.
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