New Orleans Seminary trustees will weigh sole membership alternatives_72604

Posted: 7/23/04

New Orleans Seminary trustees will
weigh sole membership alternatives

NEW ORLEANS (BP)–New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary trustees apparently will weigh alternatives to sole membership during their October meeting, according to comments by the trustee chairman reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.

Messengers to the SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis voted this summer to ask seminary trustees to adopt sole membership. Sole membership seeks to clarify–in legal language–that the convention owns all of its entities.

The other five seminaries previously have adopted sole membership, as have the North American Mission Board, International Mission Board, LifeWay Christian Resources, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and Annuity Board.

But New Orleans Seminary representatives have held out, saying they support the convention but that sole membership violates Baptist polity and also is incompatible with Louisiana law.

In a Times-Picayune article, trustee Chairman Tommy French, pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, was quoted as describing the messengers' vote at the SBC annual meeting as a “request.”

“They didn't say we had to do it. … They requested; they didn't demand,” French said. “We'll come back and say we heard the request, and this is what we recommend.”

He set two options alongside sole membership:

The seminary could reincorporate in Georgia, where it has an Atlanta-area extension center, in order to give the SBC sole membership under Georgia law rather than Louisiana law, which seminary leaders have described as uniquely unfavorable toward sole membership in the state.

Both the SBC and the seminary could revise their charters in a way that would bind the two together without using sole membership language.

“We're not a bunch of renegade trustees,” French told the newspaper. “We're trying to protect both the (seminary) and the convention.”

In February 2004, seminary President Chuck Kelley said that if convention messengers asked for the adoption of sole membership, “the discussion's over.”

However, in response to the messengers' vote, Kelley said: “The messengers did not vote on sole membership. They voted on a request for our trustees to consider sole membership, and our trustees will consider it very carefully.

“However, next year will be the actual vote on a charter change. The messengers heard this before they voted. The result of that vote will be implemented immediately as I promised.”

Responding to Kelley, Gary Smith, pastor of Fielder Road Baptist Church in Arlington and outgoing chairman of the Executive Committee, disagreed.

“There is no ambiguity,” he said. “The messengers asked NOBTS trustees to name the convention as sole member in the seminary charter, and Dr. Kelley has repeatedly given assurances that if the convention made that request he would respond accordingly.”