GREENSBORO, N.C. (ABP) — Although Wade Burleson got no resolution to alleged abuses by trustees of the International Mission Board, he left the Southern Baptist Convention June 13-14 with a dogged sense of optimism that those problems would be resolved peacefully.
That optimism is surprising, considering Burleson's request for an outside investigation of the IMB was denied, a bylaw change to eliminate nepotism and cronyism on SBC trustee boards was gutted, and Burleson himself failed to regain full privileges as an IMB trustee.
In fact, if convention messengers wanted answers to the charges leveled by Burleson and others, they got little more than silence and denial.
In one of the first motions at the annual meeting, Burleson asked SBC messengers to authorize the convention's Executive Committee to create a special panel to study conflict at the mission board.
The panel would have been charged with investigating possible 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.
Messengers instead affirmed the SBC order-of-business committee's proposal to refer the issue back to the IMB trustees themselves. The committee argued that traditional convention practice indicates an entity impacted by a motion has “first authority” to respond.
After the ruling, Burleson said he'd return to the IMB and “wait for direction.”
“I do believe [order-of-business committee chairman] Allan Blume treated me very fairly and did what he believed what is best for the convention,” Burleson told Associated Baptist Press. “As a result, out of my respect for him as chairman of the committee, I chose not to fight the decision.” Blume is pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Boone, N.C.
Burleson said that, before he called for the ad-hoc committee to be formed, he tried to address the entire IMB board about his five concerns. “Last December, I made it very clearly known that I would like to address the board,” he said. His request, which was denied, came before trustees tried to remove him from the board.
He said he hopes the issue can be cleared up before the agency reports back at the 2007 SBC meeting in San Antonio.
“If my concerns are dealt with internally, where they should be dealt with — and that's key — then the report will simply say we have worked through the concerns…. If I can sign off on that, then this issue is over. That's all I want. That can happen. I believe it will happen.”
The conflict surfaced last fall, when IMB trustees narrowed the qualifications for appointment as missionaries. They disallowed candidates who practice “private prayer language” and candidates who have not received “biblical baptism” as defined by the trustees.
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.
“If I can be shown, number one, that there is statistical evidence that those policies were needed because of problems on the [mission] field, and number two, that administration and staff worked with the trustees in support of these policies, I will be satisfied,” Burleson told ABP. “If that is not shown to me, I must be given answers to why those policies were implemented.”
Some observers say the policy on “prayer languages,” a form of tongues-speaking, was pushed through by trustees intent on embarrassing IMB President Jerry Rankin, who acknowledges using the practice.
Burleson, on his blog, also criticized some IMB trustees for conducting secret caucuses to orchestrate the board's formal sessions. Trustees, in turn, accused him of violating confidentiality rules, leading to the failed attempt to remove him.
During the IMB's report to the convention, some messengers indicated they share Burleson's concerns. John Floyd, the new IMB chairman, drew criticism from a messenger who asked about “the executive sessions which have continued for months and months” and which were not “giving the people the full understanding of what's taking place behind closed doors.”
Floyd responded that there were times when the board needs to meet and discuss things internally with “the press out of the way,” but he said that at the last meeting the board did not call any such session.
“I'm not sure in whose minds these executive sessions have existed,” Floyd told messengers.
At several recent IMB meetings, trustees have held private, off-the-record “forums” in which they briefed their colleagues on confidential issues. Board members have been barred from disclosing what was said in the meetings.
In a similar exchange, Richard Peoples, pastor of Scotts Creek Baptist Church in Sylva, N.C., voiced concern about IMB trustees not being allowed to participate fully in board meetings — an apparent reference to Burleson's one-year expulsion from committee meetings — or to voice dissent about board decisions.
“I'm not aware of restriction of trustee rights,” Floyd responded.
During their dispute with Burleson earlier this year, trustee leaders asked that he be removed from the board. The action would have been the first impeachment of a trustee in the SBC's 161-year history. But trustees backed down, instead placing limitations on Burleson's involvement with the board, barring him from executive sessions and committee meetings.
Floyd called for Southern Baptists to “trust these 87 men and women [trustees], who represent a cross-section of our convention, to do the right thing when it needs to be done.”
Earlier during the convention, Burleson asked SBC messengers to create an ad hoc study committee to break the IMB stalemate. “The only reason we are at this point [of conflict] is there was an impasse over selection of [an IMB] committee” that would seek resolution to the dispute, Burleson said.
In the first public acknowledgement of that effort, Burleson said he and outgoing IMB chairman Tom Hatley were to have appointed a committee but could not agree on its composition. Burleson said Hatley gave him a short list of names from which to choose, but he declined. Then Hatley declined to choose names from a list Burleson submitted to him through an attorney.
Messengers debated if the SBC or IMB should now investigate.
Steve Jacobson of Jonesboro, Ark., said the committee should use outside help to achieve reconciliation. “It's clear that, regardless of motives, the trustees have had six months to deal with this, and they have not,” Jacobson said. “It does not seem that they have been particularly forthcoming.”
Robin Hadaway, a missions professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., said the policies Burleson protested are necessary and proper.
“International Mission Board trustees deserve commendation, not investigation,” he said. Eventually, messengers agreed with the order-of-business committee to give IMB another chance to address Burleson's concerns.
Also during the convention, Clif Cummings, pastor of First Baptist Church in Duncan, Okla., proposed that messengers request new IMB Chairman John Floyd restore Burleson to the “full duties and responsibilities of a duly elected trustee of the International Mission Board,” saying he and other Oklahoma Southern Baptists deserve to have representation on the board.
Cummings' motion was ruled out of order because the IMB study committee is expected to address Burleson's involvement on the trustee board.
The IMB dispute surfaced again during debate of an SBC bylaw change that would have excluded anyone who was employed by an SBC entity, and their spouses, from later serving on its trustee board.
At least three current IMB trustees are former employees — including chairman Floyd — and some have been critical of Rankin. The bylaw could have prevented Floyd and others from being re-elected after their current terms expire.
When the bylaw change was approved by the SBC Executive Committee a day earlier, Burleson praised the proposal, which he said would go a long way toward resolving the IMB dispute.
But the next day, IMB trustee Bill Sanderson later led a successful attempt to water it down.
Sanderson, a conservative leader and pastor from Wendell, N.C., said the proposed bylaw could prevent young Baptists — such as seminary students and their spouses — from serving on agency boards 20 or 30 years after holding minor jobs for the same entity.
Messengers overwhelmingly voted to strike the conflict-of-interest language from the proposal.
“Bill Sanderson knew exactly what the implications of the bylaw were,” Burleson said. “The intent of the bylaw was to avoid any conflict of interest of administrators of agencies being put back on the board. I think that was the intent of the Executive Committee. If the people in the coliseum understood the implications, I think the vote would have been different. Nobody made clear what the issues were.”
Burleson said the SBC should refrain from corporate practices secular businesses routinely avoid. He said it is not appropriate for a former administrator to be on the board of trustees, saying “there are conflicts-of-interest policies across the nation regarding this.”
A seemingly unrelated item — a resolution urging that SBC trustees' refrain from alcohol use — was interpreted by some bloggers as another slap at Burleson.
The resolution, which declares the SBC's “total opposition to the…consuming of alcoholic beverages,” was amended to urge that only teetotalers be allowed to serve as SBC trustees. Jim Richards, executive director of the conservative Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, proposed the amendment.
In an open letter prior to the convention, an IMB trustee called for an investigation of Burleson's views on alcohol use. Burleson has said that, although he does not drink, he does not believe consuming beverage alcohol is inherently sinful.
In his blog after the convention, Burleson declined to “speak to the motives of people,” but he said “some of my blogging friends believe the resolution on alcohol use … is an attempt to embarrass me, or possibly remove me” as an International Mission Board trustee.
Despite the disappointing results at the convention, Burleson said he is optimistic about the SBC and the IMB.
“I am very positive about our future,” he said. “As far as my fellow trustees at the IMB, there are some great godly men and women there who are beginning to know me for who I really am. The small handful of people, and they know who they are, who oppose me asking questions now understand that until my questions are answered, I will not stop fulfilling my duties as a trustee.”
— Marv Knox and Greg Warner contributed to this story.
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