SBCOutpost

For earlier parts, click the following links:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Question Number 10: Has your entity authorized a forensic audit of the institutions finances within the last five (5) fiscal years? An audit of any kind? If so, are you willing to provide a copy of the audit to interested persons? How would I go about obtaining such an audit, if one exists?

Jeff Iorg — “A copy of our audit is published annually in the SBC Book of Reports, but I have included a copy for your convenience.”

Richard Land — “The ERLC has a complete, independent, external audit every year. The audit firm is evaluated annually and a Request for Proposal is completed every three years. The audit is reviewed by our Executive Committee members who also serve as our audit committee. They have the opportunity to speak privately with the auditors. The audit is also provided to all ERLC trustees and the SBC Executive Committee.”

Morris Chapman — “With an organization of only 36 employees, including maintenance and cleaning crew, a forensic audit has been deemed unnecessary in light of audits, performance reviews, and accountability measures built into the business system of the Executive Committee.”

Jerry Rankin — “The IMB has an audit each year, currently conducted by KPMG and readily makes a copy available to anyone requesting one. KPMG meets privately with our trustee finance committee, serving as the audit committee, to report findings. A copy of the 2006 audit will be presented to the board in its May meeting and may be requested after that from David Steverson, vice president and CFO. *2005 Audit Report Enclosed.”

Danny Akin — “Our institution has an annual audit completed by an independent external audit firm. This audit in its entirety along with our institution’s operating budget and reserves can be found in the SBC Annual and Book of Reports. In my three years as president we have implemented virtually every suggestion made to us by our auditors to improve how we conduct business at Southeastern.”

Al Mohler — “A corporate financial audit is conducted each year by an independent accounting firm, which reports directly to the Board of Trustees. In addition, a financial report of the most recently completed year is published in the Book of Reports of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.”

Phil Roberts — No information provided in letter dated August 3, 2007.

Geoff Hammond — “The North American Mission Board is governed by a board of trustees that approves and monitors all of the business and financial policies of the mission agency. We adhere to General Accepted Accounting Principles, in fact, our outside auditors have given us clean unqualified opinions the last 20+ years. In addition, we are in compliance with the SBC Business & Financial Plan. The board also has an Audit Committee that works with our outside auditors and our internal auditor. This internal auditor was instituted within the last two years to further enhance our already clean practices. The financial policies have just recently been revised and approved by our board of trustees.”

Chuck Kelley — refused any response.

Paige Patterson — refused any response.

Question Number 11: What were the reportable reserve account totals for the previous five (5) years? Would you provide a copy of your standard report form that you submit to the executive committee detailing the amounts of on-hand cash and reserve accounts for these same years?

Jeff Iorg — “The semiary reserve consists of only those funds that the Board of Trustees has designated to be endowments ($4,400,000). There are no operating, captial, or contingent reserves.”

Richard Land — “The ERLC Reserve accounts were reported in the audit already received. The total reserves at the end of FY 2005/2006 were $263,497.97 or approximately 1-month of our budget. Our goal would be to increase this amount over time to between 2 and 3 months of budget in reserves.”

Morris Chapman — “The reserves are reported in the SBC Annual.”

Jerry Rankin — “Reports to the Executive Committee are kept for only three years since these are not an official part of our audit or accounting system. The reserve account totals at the end of hte year as reported to the Executive Committee are as follows:

2004 $296,000,000
2005 $309,000,000
2006 $307,000,000

It should be noted that this is a total of funds invested and does not represent funds available for undesignated use.  A recent report outlines the nature of these funds as either designated or restricted.  *Last three annual reports on reserves as submitted to Executive Committee enclosed.  *Designation of reserve funds enclosed.”

Danny Akin — “I have said on many occasions that Southeastern’s finances are open to all Southern Baptists.  If someone wants more detail than what is published in the SBC reports, they are welcome to come to Wake Forest to sit down with our Senior Vice President for Business Administration to make any inquiries they wish.  However, I know that there will always be those who believe that unless one spends dull not shiny pennies it is a sign of inexcusable extravagance.”

Al Mohler — No detailed information provided in letter dated May 22, 2007.

Phil Roberts — No information provided in letter dated August 3, 2007.

Geoff Hammond — According to the SBC Business and Financial Plan, the financial statements of the North American Mission Board are published yearly in the SBC Annual Report.  The financial reserves, liabilities, and total net assets are included in this audited financial statement.”

Chuck Kelley — refused any response.

Paige Patterson — refused any response, though documents obtained earlier this year from Patterson’s administration at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary reveal a depletion of all operating accounts and in-house indebtedness to restricted and endowment funds to be on the rise.  Click here to review the internal memorandum.

To be continued…

This post is the ninth in a series that has appeared at my personal blog and is a follow-up to last Thursday’s post which also appeared here at SBC Outpost. As with that post, if you would like to leave a comment, please do so at my personal blog here. Before you do, please read this.

*******

Last Wednesday, I made my case for the often subconscious, but no less tragic, double standard that grips the Southern Baptist Convention in regard to some of its entity heads. It seems that, whatever they say or do–no matter how far out of biblical character for the way Christians in leadership roles should conduct themselves–they get a “pass” in most quarters.

It’s like deja vu to the Republican Party of the Reagan Era. What was referred to as the “Eleventh Commandment” of the Party went: “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican (even if it’s true).” Have things in the SBC really gotten to the point of: ”Thou shalt not admit the wrongs, excesses and sins of some Conservative Resurgence leaders (especially if it’s true”)? Is the “blood covenant” of the Conservative Resurgence really so tight that no one is allowed to acknowledge the truth about some leaders, even when it is right in front of your face (e.g., Paige Patterson not allowing the details of either the declining enrollment figures at Southwestern [hovering at perhaps 3,000, while he speaks of 6,000 students], or his own excessively generous personal financial package)? Read the rest of this entry »

One of the reasons I maintain my involvement in this blog is a conviction that no one is beyond critique. I became distressed when I watched the video from the Joshua Convergence and heard Anthony George tell attendees that the leaders of the past are due our unquestioned honor and respect. Hogwash. The Scriptures themselves critique Abraham, Moses, David and just about everyone else except for the Perfect One. If Nathan could tell the most powerful man in his world “Thou art the man,” then the kings of the SBC are not past hearing a prophetic word themselves from time-to-time. I suspect that until the kings reply “I have sinned against the Lord” it may well be that a Nathan needs to keep pointing out all of the innocent Hittite bodies lying around.

Obviously we are not beyond critique ourselves. Not only do we hear it regularly in the comment section, we’ve also heard it recently from a number of our SBC luminaries.

So, while we’re calling spades, spades let me also explain why more than one contributor to SBC Outpost is no longer contributing. Read the rest of this entry »

(In 1985 our family moved to Dallas to attend Seminary. We visited a number of churches. A good friend suggested I visit a church in far southwest Dallas. Not a year later, I was asked to serve on staff of this church and would do so for three years while finishing the M.Div. at SWBTS. Dr. Rick Davis served the church as pastor. He would become my mentor. Now more than 20 years we continue to mentor one another. Rick served in evangelism as the Evangelism Director for the BGCT before moving to FBC, Brownwood, TX. I have asked him to write from time to time as an “Interested Outsider.” Rick writes at Aintsobad.)

The most evangelistic thing we may ever do as Church is worship. If we can do it more or less together, it is no more evangelistic but is possibly more effective evangelism.

At FBC, Midlothian, TX a few years ago, I knew a small Pentecostal church near us was in a building program. They were excited (Pentecostals are always excited, even when they are sad) about moving into their new place. At the last minute, a city inspector decided they would need just a little more cement in the parking lot before they could occupy. This scrape and fill congregation was about as close to raising the additional $9,000 as I am to buying Trump Tower.

They were excited. And devastated.

I went to my (pick one) leaders, deacons, elders at First Baptist and asked them for $3, 000 for this Pentecostal group. They refused to give what I asked. Instead, they doubled the amount to $6,000 and a few private donations later, we were excited to get the whole amount.

Never let the left hand know the activity of the right, surely, but you cannot keep this kind of story quiet. Soon, everyone in town knew.

Amazingly, people began to stop us on the street to talk about one church supporting another in what the local public seemed to understand as an endless competition of “My Steeple is Taller Than Yours.”

Please understand, at the Pentecostal church, they think we are a tad, well, baptist. I do not think they mean this as a compliment. They get excited, beat drums and engage in general euphoria, inciting interpretation of tongues, encouraging women to speak (aloud, presumably) in church. They are fired up, wired up and ready to ride before we pass out all our worship folders.

How is it we can participate in evangelistic worship across the denominational divide? If Christian unity is evangelism in the active tense, how can we manage to cooperate with persons of variant polity and practice without the alteration of the system generally brought on by active observation?

I suppose we should first ask if this kind of evangelism is interesting to us. For me, the answer is in the positive.

If there is a next step to practice unified Christian worship as evangelism, I suppose a definition is needed. I do not have one, however, and you will have to settle for my groping toward it.

By unified Christian worship, I do not mean the All Faith Worship Service we have at Thanksgiving. I do not mean the monthly ministerial lunch in the basement of the local Presbyterian Church. I do not mean we all join the Roman Universal Church, itself an oxymoronic term, imperium notwithstanding.

In short, I am not talking about the ultimate blended worship service, designed like a body shop, “Beat to fit, paint to match and certain to offend all.”

I do mean, by unified Christian worship as evangelism, the unique individual experience of reconciliation. We do not need four denominations gathering in one place, trying to decide if Amen is pronounced A-Men or Ah-Men in the closing prayer.

In fact, it would be a worshipful occurrence worthy of note if one baptist Christian church (anyone, anywhere, any time) could meet in a spirit of soul salvation generated by the source of light in God the Father, refracted through the prism of God the Holy Spirit and so warming/illuminating worshippers in the embodiment of God the Son. Christ draws nigh to us in order to draw us nigh to the Father. We snuggle up to Him as though He is our sister who keeps us safe, our mistress who excites us, our wife to satisfy and correct us.

I use baptist as an adjective rather than as a noun. Spell check tells me this is incorrect, because I do not use the capital letter. Spell check must be run from Louisville or Fort Worth.

Baptist Christians just barely need God in our churches. We have our doctrine, our Bible, our organizations. Baptist Christians might seek the unique individual experience of reconciliation to make us comprehensible to the portion of the world not yet drawn close to God. Just look one pew over or barely outside the door.

I posit reconciliation as the balancing of accounts, like when your bank statement shows you have as much in your account as the bank thinks. Then, you are reconciled.

This is a unique individual experience each time. We may be reconciled in a mass meeting, a prayer meeting, a meeting by the road. Whether we come as one of thousands or one of ones, we still experience reconciliation as a unique, individual experience. Salvation, like a hug, comes breast to breast, or it is cursory.

If unified worship is better evangelism, as it declares and manifests the faith simultaneously, the barrier to reaching people outside the covenant community may simply be we do not have anything of durative quality to show them. To be sought by a love-crazed God willing to literally die to meet us is the beginning statement of reconciliatory living.

Today, SBCOutpost was asked by a reporter to respond to Frank Page’s retraction of the earlier endorsement of this site, and I was asked to write the response in behalf of the blog editors. It is unlikely that the response will be printed in full, so we are posting it here for our readers.

“I regret that Frank Page’s ability to lead all Southern Baptists has been compromised in any way by the thoughts and tone of his most consistent and vocal supporters. I also regret that blogging — which reflects rather than directs the tone and temper of conversation in the SBC — has become a favored scapegoat for other convention leaders who have opposed Frank Page’s presidency from the beginning.

I agree with Frank Page that character attacks should not be welcome in Southern Baptist life. Unsubstantiated allegations serve only to weaken Christian community and witness. I only wish that respected leaders like Page would unite their voices and influence to address the shameful actions of some who lead the convention from the highest levels of institutional office. Blogging has merely shouted from the housetops what has often been whispered in secret. To publicly rebuke bloggers for having addressed directly and passionately the questionable actions of some convention leaders, and to refuse to rebuke those same leaders whose actions have precipitated the blogging dissent is unbalanced.

I must share Frank Page’s desire for the convention to be refocused on united fronts of missions and evangelism. I do not think, however, that this focus will be regained so long as the issues raised by bloggers are dismissed because of the tone occasionally adopted by them. Frank Page is an honorable man presented with a remarkable opportunity. He can use his presidency to address the real problems in the SBC that have caused our Great Commission efforts to suffer. I pray to that end, and continually pray for Frank Page to have wisdom, discretion, and patience.

The Bible makes it clear that “no man can tame the tongue.” Certainly, all bloggers are guilty of unchaste speech. Frank Page is guilty as well. I suppose that is why we all need God’s redeeming and forgiving grace in this hour of division and crisis.”

During the past month, endorsements have become a topic of heated and frequent discussion. SBC leaders have retracted endorsements from this site. Other SBC leaders have been busy making endorsements. Wiley Drake has drawn fire for endorsing Mike Huckabee. I have stated my intention to vote for Rudy Giuliani. Today, I watched the endorsement made by Alabama pastor John Killian for his presidential candidate of choice, Congressman Ron Paul.

SBCOutpost readers may remember Pastor Killian for his commendable leadership as Bobby Welch’s appointment to chair the 2006 SBC Committee on Committees. Others may know him as the leader of the now disbanded Alabama Conservatives network. You can view Killian’s report — and Outpost Daddy Marty Duren’s response from the convention floor — in the 2006 SBC Video Archives from the Wednesday morning session of the Greensboro Convention.

I encourage you to check out John Killian’s blog, and to watch the two-part video of his August 18, 2007 appearance during last week’s Alabama Straw Poll. Killian’s speech is an excellent case study for questions about Church-State separation, religion in politics, and Evangelical patriotism.

Some brilliant mind at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School has been blogging “The Secret Diary of D.A. Carson.” For the Southwesterners among our readers, he’s a professor of New Testament at the Deerfield, IL, seminary. He’s written a bazillion books, and we at SBCOutpost are quite fond of him.

Outpost readers who are able to smile should check out the satirical site.

I found this post particularly side-splitting.  And this one.

…Charles Spurgeon?

That great Baptist Charles Spurgeon was quite the man and quite the preacher. He is often lauded as one of the greatest Baptist preachers and is known for his evangelical Calvinism along with his firm convictions during the “down-grade.” He lived during some contentious times for English Baptists. The whole down-grade controversy and Spurgeon’s role in it is an interesting study in religious conflict. Spurgeon was concerned with the loss of the old Puritan faith, but at the same time shared fellowship with Anglicans and Presbyterians. He even argued for open communion. Yet he hated the liberalism of the day where so many were falling into historical errors. He seems to have had little patience for some of these folks. Note this from John Ploughman’s Talks:

When a man has a particularly empty head he generally sets up for a great judge, especially in religion. None so wise as the man who knows nothing. His ignorance is the mother of his impudence, and the nurse of his obstinacy; and though he does not know B from a bull’s foot, he settles matters as if all wisdom were at his fingers’ ends - the Pope himself is not more infallible. Hear him talk after he has been at a meeting and heard a sermon, and you will know how to pull a good man to pieces if you never knew it before. He sees faults where there are none, and if there be a few things amiss, he makes every mouse into an elephant. Although you might put all his wit into an egg-shell, he weighs the sermon in the balances of his conceit with all the airs of a bred-and-born Solomon, and if it be up to his standard, he lays on his praise with a trowel; but if it be not to his taste, he growls and barks and snaps at it like a dog at a hedgehog. Wise men in this world are like trees in a hedge, there is only one here and there one; and when these rare men talk together upon a discourse, it is good for the ears to hear them; but the bragging wise-acres I am speaking of are vainly puffed up by their fleshly minds, and their quibbling is as senseless as the cackle of geese on a common. Nothing comes out of a sack but what was in it, and as their bag is empty they shake nothing but wind out of it. It is very likely that neither ministers nor their sermons are perfect - the best garden may have a few weeds in it, the cleanest corn may have some chaff - but cavillers cavil at anything or nothing, and find fault for the sake of showing off their deep knowledge; sooner than let their tongues have a holiday, they would complain that the grass is not a nice shade of blue, and say that the sky would have looked neater if it had been whitewashed.

Ol’ Chuck. I bet he took some heat for talking like that.

The following links will direct SBCOutpost readers to some of the internet chatter about Southwestern’s homemaking curriculum:

TODAY SHOW Video: Homemaking a major at one college

Jane Smith, MRS: You mean I Can Finally Earn My Degree in Homemaking?

Sewing, cooking, and other Southwestern Seminary courses.

A BA in lady-like submission!

I am telling you, the SBC is trying my patience this week.

Drs. Patterson defend homemaking degree

Daughters of virtue

Southwestern Seminary becomes homemaking school

Controversy continues over homemaking degree

Southern Baptists encourage basic skills — for women only.

A homemaker’s education — The MSNBC Blog

This post is the eighth in a series that has appeared here.  In order to keep comment hijackers at bay comments will not be allowed on this post here at SBC Outpost.  If you would like to leave a comment, please do so at my personal blog here.  Before you do, please read this.

*******

There is a distressing double standard at work in the Southern Baptist Convention today and it manifests itself in various ways.  Recently, there has been a fair amount of debate regarding the obviously opulent–it’s no longer whether, just how outrageous–lifestyle of at least one Conservative Resurgence leader.  As bad as it is that some take advantage of their positions to live like SBC royalty, I don’t think that sort of thing, though highly embarrassing (at least it should be to the trustees who “rubber stamped” their benefits packages), is the worst part of the double standard.

What is?  The spiritual double standard.  Let me lay it out for you. Read the rest of this entry »