Former employees may be banned from trustee service

By Steve DeVane

BR Managing Editor

GREENSBORO - The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee voted Monday to change qualifications for trustees of SBC entities.

If approved by messengers to the SBC meeting this week, former employees would not be able to serve as trustees of the agency that employed them and spouses would no longer be able to serve as trustees at the same time. The measure would also require trustees to have been a member of an SBC church for three years before their service and increase the length of time between tenures of service from one year to two years.

Messengers would have to approve the changes by a two-thirds majority. Present trustees would be "grandfathered in" and would not have to relinquish their posts.

The International Mission Board presently has at least three former employees serving as trustees, including two who were dismissed. The chairman, John Floyd, is a former administrator for the IMB. Floyd, who is now administrative vice president at the independent Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary in Germantown, Tenn., defeated Wayne Marshall of Mississippi in a 39-34 for the position in May.

Some have questioned if former employees holding such a position might be considered a conflict of interest.

The Executive Committee approved the move with a few votes against.

A motion to amend a report the Executive Committee approved in February passed by a closer margin. The committee voted 35-28 to change the report as recommended by its officers.

The changes remove a 10 percent target for churches to give to the Cooperative Program (CP).

An ad committee's report that was approved in February recommended that churches be encouraged to forward at least 10 percent of undesignated receipts for Cooperative Program (CP) use. The report also encouraged the election of state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent to CP.

The changes made Monday remove the 10 percent figures and instead encourages churches to increase their giving and calls for officers who support CP giving.

Executive Committee chairman Rob Zinn said the specific amount was being perceived as a mandate to churches. Also, churches who give more than 10 percent were considering decreasing their gifts to that level, he said.

"We don't like either of those," he said.

Southern Baptist leaders who worked on the report said the percentage of funds sent to state conventions by churches in the last 30 years has decreased from nearly 11 percent to less than 7 percent.

The report also encourages the election of state and national convention officers whose churches give at least 10 percent to CP.

The committee that wrote the report was made up of state convention executive directors and Executive Committee leaders.

The report's recommendations have led to scrutiny of candidates running for SBC offices this year.