SBC’s Sex Abuse Task Force Pivots Away From Guidepost Amid Pushback
A month after the SBC’s Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force (ARITF) announced that Guidepost Solutions was chosen to develop a “Ministry Check” website to “establish and maintain a public database of “pastors, denominational workers, ministry employees, and volunteers who have at any time been credibly accused of sexual abuse and who have been or are associated with a cooperating Southern Baptist church or entity,” the task force announced that they’d no longer recommend Guidepost Solutions as the one for the job.
Previously, SBC president Bart Barber released an extended video detailing why Guidepost was the only entity capable of creating the database, but weeks later, that’s no longer the case.
Amid fierce pushback from SBC laypeople and some leaders against using Guidepost, especially after they tweeted out pro-LGBTQ content to celebrate Pride month, ARTIF now says they will “consider alternative pathways (dividing the work among smaller firms which share our values) to establish and maintain the Ministry Check website. The ARITF is presently sourcing and evaluating additional firms to assist with the Ministry Check process who meet our qualifications for the highest professional standards.”
This is good news. We explained in our Guidepost Sex Abuse List how sloppy, deceptive, poorly researched, and almost entirely without merit Guidepost’s efforts have been so far. In particular, we noted that despite the report containing more than 700 entries, over 300 of the entries are against individuals who are either not part of the SBC or whose denomination is unknown.
How ARTIF needs to completely repudiate their notions of what it means to be “credibly accused” and they might have some worth after all.
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Nobody who’s worth a hoot would accept such a project. You don’t need a big, sophisticated, expensive system to maintain and publish a list of a few hundred names, representing half a century, that will change a few times a year, at most. It is tantamount to theft of the Lord’s money.
When I was a software and systems engineer, which was back when it was still legal to turn away work for moral reasons, I would not have accepted the project. I would’ve responded with a flat-out NO, and told them exactly why – I am not about to take that 30 pieces of silver.
Publish a PDF with checksum. That’s all you need. It doesn’t get any more secure than that, and it will cost next to nothing for a few hours work per year.
Some might say, the Lord has blessed me greatly, so I’ll do the work pro bono. Well, that’s great, but nothing is ever free. Such a sophisticated system will commit the customer to software and hardware costs in perpetuity. And if you get hit by a bus, then how much will they have to pay someone to take your place.
It’s nonsense. Facilitating tens of millions of queries/transactions against a database that will only change a few times a year. You’ve got to have the hardware to handle that load. You’ve got more sophisticated software, requiring more skill to maintain. And it will have to be maintained if for no other reason than to be kept up to date with ever-changing security requirements, browser and platform compatibility, accessibility requirements, standards compliance, and so on.
Even if someone were to do it for nothing, the total cost of ownership for the lifespan of the system would still be fairly high.
It is a total waste. It is not needed. It makes no sense whatsoever. Just publish a darned PDF or something along those lines.
Sloth is sin.
Laziness is a sin.
It’s not your money. It’s not your time. It belongs to the Lord. Exercise good stewardship. Do not waste it on something that is not needed. And that is especially true if your main motivation is to appease and please the godless world. Let them wail and moan and gnash their teeth, and bellyache from now to the end of days. So what. They’re going to do that no matter what you do. Ignore them.