Op-Ed: In Blisteringly Stupid Move, SBC Messengers Vote AGAINST More Financial Transparency

In an act of self-immolation and self-hatred, messengers gathered at the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting voted against resolutions that would have insisted on more financial transparency from Southern Baptist entities, ensuring more dark winters of hidden budgets and unaccounted spending from a leadership class hellbent on keeping their financial practices concealed and unexamined. 

Yesterday morning, Pastor Rhett Burns made a motion pushing for financial transparency. In a thread on Twitter, he explained his motivation.

“I made a motion requesting the SBC business and financial plan be amended to require 990-level financial disclosure from our entities. Here is why: I pastor a small SBC church that just celebrated our 110th anniversary. Our church, including many current members, have faithfully given to the CP for many decades.   I believe they deserve the confidence and courtesy of financial accountability and transparency.

Recent revelations of financial negligence by SWBTS add to the lack of transparency and allegations of financial impropriety at the NAMB. Southern Baptists deserve to know our missions dollars are well-spent.

…Further, as a pastor, I’m noticing a stark increase in conversations with prospective members who do not want their tithe dollars going to the SBC due to a lack of trust and transparency. In other words, the perceived financial mismanagement is hurting us on the ground at the local church level.   For these reasons, I hope messengers to #SBC23 will pass the motion for financial accountability.

This is perfectly reasonable and should have been done decades ago. In the last few weeks, we learned that Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, funded by sacrificial Southern Baptist giving, ran up $140 million in deficient spending in the last two decades. We also discovered that disgraced former SWBTS President Adam Greenway was spending money like a drunken pirate, with the taskforce reporting “1.5 million was spent on renovations, furnishings, and related expenses to the President’s home, including $59,865.79 for Christmas decorations, $4,850.51 for the framing of personal diplomas, more than $25,000 for artwork, and $11,123.49 for an espresso machine.”

Couple this with the fact that budgets and spending for the IMB, ERLC, and NAMB are eternally concealed from the messengers, a black vortex where fiscal accountabilities die and waste and excess thrive, every voting member should have been voting for more transparency and insisting “we want to know how our money is spent!”

Yet, in a move that is bewildering as it is disappointing, Southern Baptist messengers REJECTED the request for financial transparency by Rhett Burns and co-belligerent Pastor David Norman, who requested that the SBC institute the same best practices and minimum reporting standards that non-profits must adhere to. They needed 2/3 of the vote to begin to shine a light on the severe fiscal impropriety at the heart of many SBC entities, but they did not receive it, Instead, the messengers opted to see their hard-earned dollars being squirreled away and spent by despots and degenerates. As a result, being referred away, the Executive Committee will instead take a year, (or two, or three, or four) to study the issue, ensuring more inaction and financial abuse in the meantime.

Before the vote, Executive Director-Treasurer of Northwest Baptist Convention Randy Adams gave a brief example of how the corrupt and secretive NAMB (which should be audited) is doing its part to ensure they continue to operate with impunity behind closed doors.

What a bitter, bitter pill to swallow.

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