Serious Thinking toward an SBC Reform Agenda (IX): “The SBC Business and Financial Plan”

When I left off for my two-week Christmas-New Year’s “sabbatical,” I had not yet heard back from Matt McGee (whom I will introduce shortly), who had, in a comment, volunteered to do an assessment of the need for reform in the SBC Business and Financial Plan.  So, I had planned to start back in 2008 with a “one-timer” today on “The Cracks in the Foundation of the Dominance” (i.e., of the Conservative Resurgence, in its current “beyond the bounds of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000″ manifestation).  I will now post that piece on Wednesday.

As background for writing the following piece, Matt McGee is a graduate of Auburn University in accounting and finance.  He also holds the MDiv from Southeastern Seminary and an STM in theology from Dallas Seminary.  Currently, Matt is pursuing a joint degree program (JD and LLM) at Duke Law School after serving on the home office staff of a non-denominational missions agency.  The McGees are members of Summit Church, Durham, NC.

Many thanks to Matt McGee for a marvelous contribution to this ongoing process of assessing what areas of the SBC are in need of reform and how such reform should be approached!

In this post my intent is to follow Boyd’s lead in his helpful assessments of the SBC Constitution and Bylaws by offering my own critique of the SBC Business and Financial Plan.  I will propose some simple changes to the plan that I believe would greatly improve the finances and stewardship of our convention.  Doubtless, if I were to write a Business and Financial Plan from scratch it would likely bear little resemblance to the current plan.  However, I believe that proposals outlining changes to the existing plan have a much greater chance of being successfully implemented than if I were to present an entire substitute plan.  My proposals arise out of the same factors that Boyd identified in suggesting changes to the Constitution and Bylaws (see Boyd’s December 19 post for a more detailed explanation):

1.  Those who serve must be spiritually qualified to do so.  In the realm of finances, I would add that those who serve must also have sufficient financial education and/or experience.

2.  There must be realistic means of accountability built into the Business and Financial Plan.  I would go even further by endorsing principles of radical transparency in addition to principles of accountability.  With accountability, we can hold people responsible for their decisions after the fact.  With radical transparency (at all stages of the decision-making process all relevant information is publicly available), the churches can head bad decisions off at the pass before the decisions are made in the first place.

3.  There is no place for nepotism and cronyism, and we must have safeguards against such evils built into our foundational documents.

4.  There is a need for strict term-limits to keep anyone from gaining too much power.  This concern is less applicable to the Business and Financial Plan than it is to the Constitution and Bylaws since financial administrators don’t have the same level of authority as entity heads and board members do.

With these opening comments in mind, I propose the following reforms to the SBC Business and Financial Plan:

VI.  Fund Raising Activities – I would add specific safeguards to require that all approved fundraising be done in an ethical manner.  While the ECFA is far from perfect, its fundraising standards ought to at least be adopted as a bare minimum.  Within evangelical Christianity (including some SBC churches and entities) the M.O. in fundraising is often to share all information that would tend to make a potential donor want to give and fail to disclose all information that might tend to cause a potential donor not to give.  Thus, everything the fundraiser says is technically true, but the overall impression he gives to potential donors is extremely misleading and gives the donors a far too rosy impression of what is really going on.

IX.  Gift Annuity Agreements – Change “encouraged” to “required.”

XIII.A.  Change “each such committee shall include at least one such trustee who is competent by training and experience in fiscal matters” to “a majority of each such committee shall consist of trustees who are competent by training and experience in fiscal matters.”

XIII.B.6.a.  I disagree with a premise underlying this provision of the Business and Financial Plan.  The most natural reading of the provision indicates that as long as an entity president’s expenses and perquisites do not exceed market rates, then such expenses and perquisites are necessarily in keeping with biblical stewardship.  In the United States, the “market” would justify all kinds of extravagant expenses when Christ instead calls us to lives of simple devotion to Him.

XIV.  The statement “Members of cooperating Southern Baptist churches shall have access to information from the records of Southern Baptist Convention entities regarding income, expenditures, debts, reserves, operating balances, and salary structures” needs to be rewritten entirely.  There are three problems:  (1) too little financial information is available (e.g. the salaries of individual entity heads and other administrators are not available), (2) there is no built-in provision for accountability, and (3) the process for accessing the information is not specified.  These flaws resulted in the disastrous responses to Ben Cole’s letter requesting financial information from entities.  Grossly inadequate responses were praised because they seemed good by comparison to the lack of any response whatsoever from SWBTS and NOBTS.  The numerous entities that blatantly did not comply with a clear provision of the Plan have not been held accountable in any way.  To solve these problems I propose changing the text to the following:  “All financial information and records of any kind (with the exception of contribution records of individuals) from Southern Baptist Convention entities shall be public.  All financial records of all entities shall be available on the SBC web site.  No entity may keep any internal financial records of any kind without also making such records available on the SBC web site unless the records concern contributions of individuals or unless the release of such records would violate state or federal law.  At any time if an entity is not in compliance with these requirements, such entity shall immediately be ineligible to receive Cooperative Program funds until the entity is in compliance.”

I also propose adding the following provisions to the Plan:

I would require the highest-ranking financial officer of each entity to have a graduate degree in business from an accredited school.  For some reason, in Christian circles it has become acceptable to hire people to do jobs for which they aren’t qualified.  When I was a student at SEBTS, I noticed that many campus jobs were filled (at ridiculously low wages) by students and spouses who had no relevant education or experience related to the job.  Can you imagine a public university foregoing searching for a qualified person and instead hiring a random student to do a job for which he or she has no qualifications whatsoever?  If your goal is to become an executive at Guidestone, you have a better chance of reaching that goal by attending seminary (3 of 9 current executives) than by earning your MBA (2 of 9 current executives).  The President/CEO of Guidestone has no graduate degrees in business and no professional financial designations (e.g. CPA, CFP, CFA, etc.).

I would require that the highest-ranking financial officer of each entity not be related to the entity president or any board member of the entity.

I would require the board of each entity to directly hire the entity’s highest-ranking financial officer apart from any influence or involvement on the part of the entity head.

I would make sure that financial officers have the freedom (without fearing for their jobs) to share financial concerns directly with the board when they feel the entity head is not responding appropriately to their concerns.  This provision is necessary as a check on the power of arrogant leaders who know nothing about finances yet nevertheless insist on not following the reasoned recommendations of financial experts.

What say the rest of you?

Matt McGee

Coming Wednesday: “Cracks in the Foundation of the Dominance”

Coming Friday: “Fridays are for Newspaper Articles”