Thursday, February 16, 2006

SBC: Proposal planned today from IMB Executive Committee

... to trustees to handle Wade Burleson case internally.
Trustees of the nine-member International Mission Board executive committee will recommend at the March 20-21 meeting in Tampa that trustees reverse a Jan. 11 motion asking the Southern Baptist Convention to remove Wade Burleson of Enid, Okla., as a trustee.

IMB trustee chairman Thomas Hatley of Rogers, Ark., told the Southern Baptist TEXAN the committee determined that the matter of disciplining a trustee can be handled internally. Meeting Feb. 10 in Atlanta, the committee reviewed the Burleson matter and acted unilaterally to offer the new plan.
I was taught to always assume people have the absolute best intentions in what they do ... I will hold to that teaching here until more is learned.

However, this has gone beyond simply "disciplining a trustee ... internally"; questions have been publicly raised about the actions of other trustees, about secret caucuses, and about about doctrinal positions of the board. And right or wrong, the blogosphere has ridden a high wave in the history the SBC.

Many lay people in the convention have expressed concern over this matter; the IMB threw down the gauntlet when it decided to take the Burleson affair to the floor in June ... for the sake of Southern Baptists everywhere, there should be no turning back now. Lingering questions about a board of such great importance would do nothing to bring us closer together in our mission to the world.

One paragraph in the Baptist Press report troubled me ...
In several weeks, Hatley said he will release a comprehensive explanation of the board's earlier decision to assess missionary candidates regarding private prayer language and baptism, giving the historical and theological framework. Misinformation disseminated through informal weblogs caused confusion in the minds of some Southern Baptists, he said. He hopes a more detailed accounting of the timeline and rationale for those standards will help separate those issues from the matter of Burleson's personal conduct as a trustee and answer questions that have arisen.

I'm not sure why this bothers me but it does. I'm not the only one. We'll just have to wait and see.

SBC Outpost is all over this and brings some pertinent insights! Not everyone is happy about what appears to be a political CYA move. But there I go, being suspicious of someone's intentions ... hhmm, wonder why I'd do that.

Bowden McElroy at Counseling Notes has a post worth checking out as well.


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