Former SBC President Tries to Argue The SBC Is Sufficiently Transparent, Gets Quickly Checked
Former SBC president Bart Barber riled up the rank and file after making a series of posts on X arguing that the Southern Baptist Convention and their entities are very transparent and that, more importantly, they are as transparent as the messengers would like them to be.
These remarks come on the heels of a growing number of SBC pastors refusing to give to the denomination’s cooperative program because of the historical and almost comical lack of financial transparency on how funds are spent and allocated, along with responding to former NAMB VP Johnny Hunt’s claims that his yearly compensation was $610,000, as he continues his $100M lawsuit against the SBC.
Last week, I posted a series of videos celebrating the Cooperative Program. I plan to continue to do so a lot this year. I would encourage you to join me in doing so. There is much to celebrate. Very many of you celebrated the CP with me in comments, messages, and likes.
A few people replied saying that they could not support the Cooperative Program because of their disagreements with CP-funded entities. Most of these objections to cooperation fell loosely into three buckets:
1. Complaints from anonymous burner accounts, and I do not treat these seriously, ever.
2. Complaints about an allegedly high compensation package of a former NAMB VP.
3. Complaints about the alleged lack of financial transparency by CP recipients.
I will reply to the last 2.
I cannot make any comment about the specific circumstances that lie at the root of objection #2, both because litigation is still pending regarding that item and because I know nothing about NAMB compensation packages. I have never worked at NAMB.
I do recall, however, a past lawsuit that estimated the amount of money that a person would receive from being SBC President. I have served in that role. If that alleged number was accurate, then I wish someone had shown me the ropes for how to earn that as SBC President. Serving as SBC President cost both my personal finances and my church a significant amount of money. Five figures. Each.
I suspect that the number in the SBC President lawsuit had no basis in reality.
So, without any specific knowledge or any comment at all to make about the scenario that gives rise to this complaint, I will say in general that I have learned not to take numbers given in lawsuits as trustworthy indicators of reality, especially before a verdict.
He continues:
As for the transparency complaints. I would simply note two things: First, you can find the SBC Annuals here
These include the results of annual audits of all of the entities that receive CP. The messengers who attend our meetings have demanded this level of transparency, and the entities comply every year.
The level of transparency for which people have clamored in reply to my CP videos is an additional level of transparency that the messengers have not requested.
Indeed, in the Tuesday afternoon session of the 2024 Annual Meeting, messenger Rhett Burns did exactly what a messenger should do if he feels that his motion is important and he wishes to advance it:
He moved that his motion requiring Form 990 transparency be scheduled for discussion and a vote rather than referred to the SBC Executive Committee. He needed only a simply majority of the voting messengers to accomplish what he was proposing.
He lost the vote.
And so, at least in 2024, the messenger body did not agree with Rhett Burns about how to handle financial transparency for CP-funded entities. This is not a disagreement with “elites”; it’s a disagreement with the messengers, at least so far.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that they opposed his motion, but at the very least it means that they did not feel the urgency to vote on his motion and implement his plan that Mr. Burns himself felt. I’ve lost more votes at the SBC Annual Meeting than I know how to count. That is never fun. I am sympathetic. There are a LOT of things I wanted us to accomplish during my presidency that we haven’t (yet) achieved.
But I don’t take my ball and go home just because I’m missing free throws. This is a key part of the “cooperation” in the Cooperative Program. The messengers vote on exactly HOW transparent the entities should be. Sometimes I am in the minority. I cooperate anyway.
I think there’s room for us to be more transparent in reporting our finances. I think the more transparent we can be, the more confidence it builds in things like CP. But make no mistake, the entities are EXACTLY as transparent as the messengers have required them to be.
And we can at least say this about the financial transparency of the SBC. The SBC entities are, every one of them, legitimate, independent 501(c)(3) charitable organizations legally incorporated and registered in the USA and independent of any other organization. Give the SBC entities some credit: they all have been clear, honest, and transparent about that.
Are there votes I could lose that would cause me to stop supporting the Cooperative Program? Yes. 100%. But the harm done by the votes I lost would have to be greater than the good that is accomplished through these CP-funded entities. In my estimation, that’s not even close.
FBC Farmersville gives through the Cooperative Program because we have seen firsthand the good things accomplished through this giving plan. More videos are coming about that.
The comment about not requesting levels of transparency struck a chord with many, who pointed out that the standard shouldn’t be how little they should show, but rather how maximally transparent they should want to be.
And because he was mentioned by Barber, (who we should note, never used his influence as President to push for and advocate for greater levels of financial transparency,) Pastor Rhett Burns chimed in with what Bart didn’t say:
What @bartbarber says here is true, but it only tells part of the story. Yes, I lost the vote to overrule the decision of the chair. That’s what you’ll find in the minutes. But the realpolitik of the situation fills out the story.
Rarely does the messenger body overrule the chair. That means, a motion can get referred to the EC & never see the light of day.
The reason I offered the ’24 motion was because a similar motion I made in 2023 was referred to the EC, where it was killed in the finance committee.
Messengers were explicitly denied an opportunity to vote on 990-level financial transparency. It is not that messengers were given the choice and voted against it; rather, they were denied an opportunity to even hear the arguments.
So, I was given a vote on overruling the chair, but I was not allowed to speak as to why I was asking for that.
That’s not the whole story either. The finance committee was originally scheduled to take up my motion at the September 2023 EC meeting. I was invited to speak, but that invitation was rescinded. I was told the committee had postponed discussion of my motion until February.
However, during the September meeting, the committee invited the entity heads to discuss the 990 motion. They were given the opportunity to speak first about the motion and to “cross-examine” it before I was ever given the opportunity to speak to it.
Later, Paul Chitwood, addressed IMB trustees on the matter and his remarks were reported in Baptist Press. Those remarks were filled with misrepresentations and falsehoods about what the motion required.
So, it’s not quite as simple a situation as Bart would have you believe. There are many factors at play. The odds are against a messenger’s efforts to bring reform. I don’t mean that as an excuse or an accusation, but as a realistic assessment of how things really work.
Bart further says that entities “are EXACTLY as transparent as the messengers have required them to be.” That is just not true. For example, both @NAMB and @IMB_SBC have refused to comply with Article 14 of the Business and Financial Plan.
Messengers have required them to disclose their salary structures, but they will not do it.
What should messengers who care about transparency do? Show up in Dallas and vote for it. That will likely mean voting through some red tape to even have a chance at voting on transparency, and so comes prepared to vote that way, too.
The appetite for financial transparency isn’t going away. It’s only getting stronger. We will get it, sooner or later. And the SBC will be much healthier for it. As trust is restored in the SBC, our Great Commission partnership will be strengthened.
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Wonder what they are hiding…..
Rhett Burns is right. The Messengers need to support this 990 level disclosure. Our churches are paying into a system and that makes us the “shareholders” if you will. Not just the Trustees. Every Southern Baptist should know the salaries of all our entity leaders.