IMB backs away from trustee removal

Posted: 2/17/06

IMB backs away from trustee removal

By Robert Marus

Associated Baptist Press

RICHMOND, Va. (ABP)—Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board will ask the agency’s trustees to rescind an action that asked for the removal of a trustee.

But the trustee in question, Wade Burleson of Oklahoma, said the controversy that has erupted over the board’s action isn’t over.

IMB Chairman Tom Hatley confirmed the board’s executive committee will recommend the reversal at a March 20-21 meeting in Florida. Hatley is pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Rogers, Ark.

In January, the board voted to recommend removal of Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla.

In a press release following the action, IMB officials charged Burleson with “broken trust and resistance to accountability” because of an Internet weblog, or blog, he has maintained.

On his blog, Burleson has criticized previous board actions placing theological restrictions on missionary appointees that he—and other Southern Baptists—have said far eclipse SBC doctrinal consensus.

The board’s press release said trustees did not take the action because of Burleson’s opposition to the new policies, but because of the way he conducted his dissent. Because trustees of Southern Baptist agencies are elected by SBC messengers, they can only be removed by action of the full convention. It meets in June in Greensboro, N.C.

In a statement following the January meeting, Hatley said: “This difficult measure was not taken without due deliberation and exploration of other ways to handle an impasse. … The trustees consider this a rare and grievous action but one that was absolutely necessary for the board to move forward in its duties as prescribed by the SBC.”

Asked to explain IMB leaders’ change of heart, Hatley said, “It’s mainly (that) we discovered more options for handling trustee relationships than we thought we had.”

A Feb. 14 story released through Baptist Press, the SBC’s official public relations agency, reported the IMB executive committee’s decision to reverse was made Feb. 10.

In his Feb. 16 blog, Burleson said that while he felt IMB trustees overreacted, he had been prepared to take his case to messengers to the SBC annual meeting.

“I, and others on the board, did not want this issue to go before the convention in the first place,” he wrote. “We felt the motion to remove was unsubstantiated, without precedent, and occurred without any attempts at mediation. The first time I ever heard of the motion was the day it was presented. Nobody had come to me privately to tell me what they were going to do.

“However, once the recommendation for my removal for ‘gossip and slander’ had been read into the public record, I was fully prepared to provide my defense. … Since the board chose to make this issue public, if there is to be ‘discipline’ it would need to be of a public nature.”

Now, even though IMB leaders have backtracked, the issue may not die down quietly.

The trustees’ original attempt to oust Burleson has set off controversy among Southern Baptist bloggers and chatrooms. Some have cast the conflict in generational terms, with the old guard of conservatives who led the SBC’s rightward shift during the 1980s butting heads with a cadre of younger leaders who, while also conservative, want more power.

Bloggers also have speculated the conflict involved disagreements among powerful SBC officials over the leadership of IMB President Jerry Rankin.