$60,000 a Month to Hire a Receptionist? SBC Pastor Requests Transparency Over Guidepost Hotline Cost + Updated FAQ

In the wake of The Southern Baptist Convention’s decision to drop millions of dollars to tackle sexual abuse claims within the denomination, some pastors and laypeople are seeking fiscal accountability and transparency over the costs associated with some of the programs, in particular the hotline that was created for victims to call in and report abuse.

In response to the question, SBC president Bart Barber released a video explaining that he doesn’t know how much it costs, other than that it’s “expensive” and that no one will know until it’s revealed at the annual convention this summer.

He explains:

The last two years that we’ve met the Southern Baptists, the messengers like you and me have overwhelmingly lifted our ballots in support of reforms regarding sexual abuse…Messengers have known when we’ve done that, that there would be costs associated with our response to sexual abuse. And there have been people who’ve been asking questions…about one aspect of those costs and, you know, the transparency and the answering the questions and all that sort of thing that happens in the Southern Baptist Convention happens in (the convention center). That’s the way our system is designed, that you can come to the convention and ask questions and receive answers.
The question has been raised is about the cost of the hotline that Southern Baptist has for people who have experienced sexual abuse to make a report about abuse. And folks have been asking, “what is the monthly charge for that?”

It doesn’t actually work that way. There’s not a flat monthly charge for the hotline. Instead, a month where one person calls in is less expensive than a month where ten people call in. And of course, the first few months of the hotline came when we’ve never had anything like that before. And because we’ve never had anything like that before, there’s a backlog of people waiting to call in.

So I can’t give an answer that says every month it costs ‘this amount’. But I will tell you this: it’s expensive. Responding to sexual abuse is expensive, and Southern Baptist deserve to know that. But what we’ve got to do, whenever we examine the cost of doing something about sexual abuse, we’ve also got to try to assess the cost of doing nothing. It does not cost nothing to do nothing about sexual abuse… The only way to make the expense go away is to make the abuse go away.

Barber’s suggestion that “a month where one person calls in is less expensive than a month where ten people call in” is puzzling, given what the hotline does and doesn’t do.

While on the one hand, it’s clear the Guidepost Solution report is not worth the paper it’s printed on, on the other, it makes one question what the Guidepost operators are doing all day. According to the Guidepost Solutions website, updated with a FAQ just days ago after questions emerged regarding their practices, the hotline operators take in reports, ask a few questions, and then pass on the information without investigating, functioning as glorified answering machines or receptionists. It’s to be assumed that those taking the calls would have some training in trauma response and how to speak to victims, but why would it cost more to take in one report verses ten?

What is the purpose of the SBC Hotline?

The goal of the SBC Hotline is to gather reports of current or former allegations of sexual abuse in a trauma-informed, safe atmosphere for survivors so as to inform the SBC about any past or current issues and allegations which demand action. While Guidepost conducts interviews of reporters of abuse who contact the hotline, we are not currently engaged by the SBC to undertake investigations of any allegation.

Who does a reporter speak to when they call or email the SBC Hotline?

A small number of trauma-informed Guidepost team members receive hotline emails/calls and engage with reporters. Once Guidepost receives a report through the hotline, one of our trauma-informed team members contacts and speaks to the reporter to gather additional information relative to the allegation. All calls/emails are handled exclusively by Guidepost team members.

Once the report is made, the traumascribe would create two reports. First, they send summaries of the allegations gathered in the course of the interviews to the SBC Credentials Committee, giving them the who, what, when, where, and why of each case. This bi-weekly report (the “CC Report”) includes “the names of alleged abusers, the names and locations of the respective churches, the names of leaders potentially involved, and other details of the allegations.” This could be as little as a single page of information.

They also send a monthly report to the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) and SBC EC executive leadership, summarizing the various statistics of calls and emails that go through the hotline.
This means that the executive leadership knows how many (or how few) calls are being fielded each month and could quickly release this information if they chose. But they don’t and are content to wait a year before sharing.

Given how the hotline works, it’s difficult to see how manning it could cost more than three or four thousand bucks a month, given what a competent receptionist with a little extra something-something working a 40-hour workweek could accomplish. We can only hope that Barber is wrong and they’re not paid per phone call answered, but let’s not pretend that, as he claims, “transparency happens in this room” and “that’s how the system works.”

The reason SBC and EC leadership don’t want to give the cold hard numbers on Twitter is because they know it will be shocking. They want to have everyone gathered in the room in New Orleans so they can control the environment, tell sob stories about the cost of doing nothing, give their James Merritt shaming speeches to make people feel guilty for having any questions, and finally take a mob vote that follows the platform.