The Southern Baptist Convention Is Broken. What Can Be Done?

Reasons for hope from the Baptist Children's Homes of North Carolina

I talked with an old friend last week who’s one of those committed and passionate lay leaders that every pastor loves and every church needs. A key figure in our congregation for decades, he served our people with wisdom, generosity and grace until his job moved him across the state. He was also an unfailing source of encouragment and wise counsel for me as his pastor, to the point where I’m still mad at him for moving.

Our conversation began by catching up on family news but quickly turned to a more serious topic when he asked the question that I knew had been on his mind since the last time we talked. It’s the same question that I believe is on the minds of untold numbers of others like him throughout the 47,000 churches and 13 million members of our denomination. A simple question but one hard to answer: What’s wrong with the Southern Baptist Convention? On the surface my friend’s question was in reference to the highly publicized conflicts the SBC is going through regarding women as pastors, the sexual abuse scandal, theological identity and our overall direction. But at a deeper level he was referring to the sense of instability and fragmentation that ordinary people in churches throughout our denomination feel. When he asked, “What’s going on with the Southern Baptist Convention?” what he meant was, “What’s broken in our denomination and how can it be fixed?”

That’s not an easy question to answer because the crisis we’re in—and make no mistake, we’re in a crisis—has been in the making for a long time and involves too many factors to cover in a single essay like this one. But events last month among North Carolina Baptists revealed a fundamental part of our situation as well as a possible solution. That’s where the Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina comes into the picture. The painful situation it experienced in September is both warning and hope, not just for the Baptist Convention of North Carolina but perhaps for the entire Southern Baptist Convention (the various state conventions combine to form the Southern Baptist Convention as a whole). The warning is in regards to the weaknesses of our denomination’s institutional structure as it often functions. The hope grows from the strengths of the same institutional structure when it functions as it ought.

One of the oldest and most successful children’s agencies in the country, the BCH is a vibrant and well-regarded ministry of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. It operates in 30 locations throughout the state as well as several other locations in South Carolina and Guatemala and provides for the care of thousands of children. If not the crown jewel of the North Carolina Convention, the BCH has certainly been among its most visible and celebrated ministries. Or it was until last month. That’s when longtime President Michael Blackwell had to step down following the discovery of his misuse of ministry funds. According to news reports, Blackwell was forced out

after an internal investigation found he had used almost $90,000 in charitable funds for personal expenses over the past three years. The investigation also found that 81-year-old Michael Blackwell, who had led the Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina since 1983, had diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to a special account set up for his benefit. He also bought his wife a new car using charitable funds, according to a report from forensic auditors.

When the BCH Board of Trustees was alerted last spring to suspicious spending habits by the President, it did what it was supposed to do and authorized a forensic audit. The audit took place over the summer and uncovered a pattern of misusing BCH funds that had gone on for years. But this is where the story took a different course from that which Southern Baptist trustee boards ordinarily follow. Instead of sweeping the problem under the rug, the board confronted Blackwell with the information, negotiated his retirement and required restitution of all the monies that he had taken. Then, it went further and released the audit’s findings to the public, together with the board’s subsequent actions. Placing the mission of the institution over the interests of its leader and being transparent about its decisions, the board restored confidence in its institution and set up the next leader for success. The members of the board did the job they were elected to do.

N.C. Baptist Executive Director-Treasurer Todd Unzicker later praised the trustees for their action:

It was disheartening and appalling to read a summary of actions that occurred under Dr. Blackwell’s leadership. Transparency is the currency of trust for N.C. Baptist churches, and this report clearly demonstrates that the actions of Dr. Blackwell not only represent a lack of transparency, but also a misappropriation of cherished missions dollars. As heartbreaking as these actions are, it encourages me to see BCH trustees move toward a change in executive leadership and seek full restitution.

My first thought upon learning of President Blackwell’s actions was that it was just one more example of the decline of the Southern Baptist Convention; one more Southern Baptist leader who regards an institution as his personal playground; one more nail in the coffin of a denomination that seems to have lost its way. But the more I’ve learned about about it, the more I think the courageous actions of the BCH Board of Trustees may be a sign of hope for Southern Baptists everywhere. Finally, adults may be stepping into the room.

The Southern Baptist Convention began as a dream among like-minded churches to cooperate in order to impact the world with the gospel. And in many ways that dream has come true. Our two missions boards—the International Missions Board and the North American Missions Board—are today the major focus of our attention and receive the lion’s share of our resources. But the truth is more complicated. Although the SBC began as a collection of small churches with a world-wide vision, it’s grown to be a sprawling religious empire with people and offices scattered literally around the world. Along the way (the Convention began in 1845), we’ve become not only become the nation’s largest Protestant denomination but also it’s most highly organized with a multitude of institutions, departments and agencies all intended to help fulfill the original vision.

It’s a mistake to say that the modern SBC is bound together by our passion for missions. While the statement may be true in a philosophical sense, it’s most definitely not the case when it comes to functionality. In the way our denomination operates—and in almost every way that matters to the crises we’re facing today—the SBC today is defined by its institutions. Indeed, the SBC doesn’t even make sense apart from its institutions. Our two missions boards, the IMB and NAMB, are our two most prominent institutions but there are many more. Six seminaries are scattered from coast to coast across the country. Guidestone provides for our ministers’ and other workers’ retirement and insurance needs. Lifeway publishes much of our teaching material. The Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission lobbies congress on behalf of our doctrinal convictions. Then there’s the Executive Committee, the institution that coordinates the work of all the other institutions.

The SBC as a denomination has reached the point where our vision, organization, resources, staffing and direction are driven by a complex institutional structure. To make matters even more complicated, the same structure is duplicated on a smaller scale within each state convention. In describing the modern Southern Baptist Convention, then, the notion that we’re a collection of small churches cooperating together for the sake of the gospel is more a romanticized memory of our distant beginnings than a reflection of our modern reality. The truth is that we’re a collection of institutions staffed with a massive bureaucracy often competing with one another for the same resources.

But there’s more. Each and every one of these institutions on the state as well as the national levels is governed—in theory at least—by a board of trustees. And that’s a problem because our trustee system doesn’t work well. In fact, you could say it’s broken. For example, Southwestern Seminary, one of our six seminaries, and at one time the largest seminary in the world of any kind, reported last summer a stunning series of setbacks:

A new report from trustees at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, details two decades of fiscal mismanagement, including a $140 million operating deficit. According to an overview of the seminary’s finances released Wednesday, Southwestern ran an average deficit of $6.67 million per year from 2002 to 2022. During that time, the number of full-time Southern Baptist students at the school dropped by two-thirds (67%) while expenses went up by a third (35%).

Granted, the controversial Paige Patterson was President of Southwestern Seminary during much of the period of decline and his successor Adam Greenway made a bad situation worse, but there was still a Board of Trustees that in theory was providing oversight. What they were really doing was ignoring two rogue presidents as they ran the very institution the trustees were elected to protect into the ground.

A similar situation apparently occured in 2017 with Lifeway, the SBC’s publishing arm. When its president Thom Rainer announced his retirement after eight consecutive years of multi-million dollar losses, a decline that culminated with the closing of all its brick and mortar stores, the chairman of Lifeway’s Board of Trustees awarded Rainer a one million dollar bonus without authorization from the full board.

The Executive Committe—the institution that guides the work of all the other institutions—isn’t exempt from problems. As the SBC was engulfed with sex abuse allegations in 2021, the Trustee Board governing the Executive Committee refused to abide by the directions of the convention to waive attorney-client privelege so that the investigation of sex abuse cases could proceed. The stand-off resulted in the resignation of Ronnie Floyd, President and CEO of the Executive Committee.

These are just a few of more public examples of the problem our trustee boards present to the health of the SBC, but the picture they present is visible in many different ways throughout the convention. Our trustee system is broken and until it gets fixed I don’t see how the denomination moves forward.

That’s why what happened with the North Carolina Baptist Children’s Homes is so important. In our Southern Baptist system where trustees are often ignored, forgotten or complicit in questionable actions by their institutions, this board did its job. It investigated, told the truth and fixed the problem. If only the larger SBC were to follow suit, we might have the structural strength to address the other crises that bedevil us.