ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP) – Robert E. (Bob) Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, will work under several sets of “Executive Level controls” signaled by NAMB’s trustees during a special meeting March 23.
By Art Toalston
Baptist Press Editor
ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP) – Robert E. (Bob) Reccord,
president of the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, will
work under several sets of “Executive Level controls” signaled by
NAMB’s trustees during a special meeting March 23.
The trustees based their deliberations on a 19-page
report by a nine-member trustee task force created in response to an
article in the Georgia Baptist Convention’s newsjournal, The Christian
Index, which set forth a range of allegations about NAMB’s evangelism
and church planting strategies; the size and makeup of its missionary
force; and management issues related to Reccord.
“We want the Southern Baptist Convention to know
we’ve responded to the issues [through the task force report] and
because of that response we believe that you can trust what we’re doing
here at NAMB,” trustee chairman Barry Holcomb said in a news conference
after the meeting.
“We want Southern Baptists to know you can trust the
North American Mission Board to take your Cooperative Program dollars
that you generously give through the state conventions,” Holcomb said,
“and you can trust us with your Annie Armstrong Easter Offering to be
on mission and to do the work of God’s Kingdom.”
The task force report was posted on www.namb.net March 24.
The 58-member trustee board unanimously approved a six-part plan to
establish the Executive Level controls for Reccord during a meeting
stretching seven and a half hours at NAMB’s Atlanta-area headquarters
in Alpharetta, Ga. The meeting was held in executive session because
SBC trustees typically meet in private when dealing with personnel
issues.
NAMB’s chief operating officer, Chuck Allen, submitted his resignation on March 22.
Allen “resigned for reasons that did not involve our
discussions today in the board meeting,” Holcomb said. “Chuck Allen has
been a friend of the trustees. … We stand ready to assist Chuck Allen
in whatever future ministry opportunities God has for him.” Holcomb,
otherwise, declined further comment about Allen’s departure.
Reccord has been NAMB’s president since its founding
in 1997 as part of the Southern Baptist Convention’s restructuring,
called “Covenant for a New Century.” NAMB primarily was formed in a
merger of the SBC’s former Home Mission Board, Radio and Television
Commission and Brotherhood Commission. At the time
Reccord was pastor of First Baptist Church in Norfolk, Va.
Under the accountability plan for Reccord, a trustee
subcommittee will be appointed by Holcomb “to develop a set of
Executive Level controls to be used as a guide” related to various
issues raised in the Feb. 16 Christian Index article.
The subcommittee, which Holcomb said he hopes to name during the coming month, will propose controls for:
1) “directing the travel, speaking, and on-campus office time required for the President….”
2) “the use of RFP’s” (Request For Proposals), akin to bidding to compete for work being outsourced by NAMB.
3) “when the President … wants to develop new
initiatives, including the appropriate oversight and approval by the
Board.”
4) “clarifying what constitutes poor management by an executive officer and how it should be handled.”
5) providing Reccord and NAMB “with greater levels
of accountability to the Board and the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Under the sixth part of the plan, the board assigned
“its duly elected officers, in perpetuity, with the role of monitoring
these controls, utilizing them as part of the President’s annual
review, and reporting the status of these controls annually at an
assigned full Board meeting.”
Holcomb, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in
Andalusia, Ala., noted that SBC President Bobby Welch attended the
meeting.
“I phoned him about a week ago and I said, ‘Bobby,
we’d like to invite you to be there for our meeting. I would like for
you to be able to say to Southern Baptists that the board of trustees
of the North American Mission Board handled the business at hand. And
he sat through almost our entire meeting. He was very pleased with how
things went and he said, ‘Barry, the board has done an excellent job.
They’ve addressed the facts. And Southern Baptists don’t have anything
to be ashamed of.’”
Reccord said in a statement: “I am thankful that the
trustee process worked. That’s why we have such a process. While we
jointly found opportunities and areas on which to strengthen and
improve, I celebrate the fact that the deep and thorough financial and
practices audit gave us a clean bill of health, including the status
and history of our reserves.”
Holcomb said Reccord told the trustees “that he
understands that, as president of this agency, he is under our
directorship. … He said, ‘I am willing to work with the trustees in
whatever parameters we need to,’ in order to address the concerns that
Southern Baptists may have about the North American Mission Board. …
“I don’t want to speak for him, but I think it would
be alright to say he recognizes, just like all of us, that he’s not
perfect and we’re not perfect, and there are certain areas that we need
to improve,” Holcomb said. “I think the recommendations that the board
adopted today will help him. I think in that sense he is very happy to
follow this process.”
“[Reccord’s] job is not in jeopardy,” Holcomb said,
noting that no disciplinary measures were taken by the board; “we found
nothing to sustain any kind of thought of wrongdoing, anything
unethical, anything immoral … .
“Dr. Reccord is a very visionary leader, and I think
with any visionary he’s going to do things and lead in such a way that
it puts us on the cutting edge of what we’re trying to do in missions
and evangelism,” Holcomb said. “And we’re at a point now of looking
back at some of those things and some of those decisions and saying,
‘Here’s some things that worked and here’s some things that really
didn’t work and we wouldn’t do that again.’ …
“But I think the trustees overwhelmingly today said,
‘Dr. Reccord, you are the visionary leader that God has given us.’”
William J. (Bill) Curtis, the trustees’ first vice chairman, said that
the trustees are “prepared to acknowledge that it is a shared
responsibility for where we are at this point.”
“Rather than just place all the responsibility for
some of the concerns that have been raised on the shoulders of the ELT
[NAMB’s Executive Leadership Team], as trustees we also acknowledge
that this is a process that together we need to take ownership of and
work through for the improvement of the agency and the good of the
SBC,” said Curtis, one of the task force’s members.
Another task force member, Tim Patterson, said, “We
did not give Dr. Reccord a pass on anything …. We asked very tough,
very pointed, very particular questions, because we want Southern
Baptists to know that we want everything dealt with that is an issue.”
Said Holcomb: “We do not want to give the impression
to anyone that we do not welcome criticism. As we worked we realized,
‘Hey, this is going to make us better, this is going to make us
stronger.’”
Asked by a reporter about a fear among NAMB
employees of being terminated if they raise concerns about the
organization’s direction and operation, Holcomb and Curtis acknowledged
that some staffers have voiced such fears.
Curtis said the task force report will reflect a concern “to see what we can do to remedy that.”
Patterson said the trustee task force appreciated the openness its members received.
“Everyone within this building and outside that we
asked information of was very forthcoming, very helpful. No one was
reticent or holding anything back. They [would say,] ‘What do you need?
Anything else you need?’ And when we asked for personal opinion, they
gave us personal opinion. No one that we asked held back anything.”
Reccord said he hopes NAMB now can refocus on its ministry.
“This has been a time of great distraction for all
of our staff from the task of North American missions,” he said in his
statement. “And while, like Nehemiah, we were committed ‘Not to come
down from the wall,’ the forces of distraction were strong. Now it is
time to get back to the work. Where mistakes have been made, I have
made a pledge to use this process to correct those errors and work with
our trustees to make NAMB a stronger agency.”