Wellman nominee for SBC Executive Committee president

UPDATE: The nomination of Jared Wellman as the next president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee failed on a 50-31 vote. The Executive Committee is naming a new search committee. A new story will be posted when additional information becomes available.

ARLINGTON—Texas pastor Jared Wellman, who recently stepped down as chair of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee board of trustees, has been selected as the nominee for the next Executive Committee president and CEO.

Wellman, 39, serves as pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, which is uniquely aligned with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

At the end of the April 30 morning worship service, Wellman announced a “brief family church meeting” would be held following the service and asked the church family not to record the meeting. Live stream cameras turned off before the meeting began.

Selection process critiqued

While the full Executive Committee trustee board will review the nomination during a special called meeting May 1 in Dallas to vote, a growing number of voices across the convention are speaking out against the process that led to Wellman’s selection.

A.B. Vines, pastor of New Seasons Church in San Diego, Calif., recently wrote an open letter sharing the concerns he raised with the Executive Committee through an email he reports he sent to members March 10.

Vines, a former SBC first vice president and former president of the California Southern Baptist State Convention, also previously served as president of the National African American Fellowship of the SBC.

“We are facing a decision that could forever change our convention as we know it,” he wrote in the recent open letter to Executive Committee members.

Raising concerns about the search process leading to Wellman’s nomination for Executive Committee president, Vines asks Executive Committee members to question how a closed application portal was reopened privately but not publicly and how an ex-officio member of the committee gets an interview in the process he helped develop.

Other questions Vines noted revolve around whether staff members were involved in discussing the hiring of a new leader. “Who was feeding all these (alleged) staff issues to the committee? What was that person’s agenda in the first place when giving information to the committee?

“Why was the current interim expected to cast vision for the staff while serving in a temporary assignment?”

“These are just a few questions you should ask yourself while discussing this critical decision,” he stated. “How come Southern Baptists always seem to have issues with hiring a person of color for a senior leadership position?

“When God calls us to fulfill our assignment, we must be willing to do what he asks and go where he sends us, even if it means we must work under challenging situations where it is spiritually complex.

“Yes, we may encounter challenging situations that make it difficult to do our calling. But regardless, we must decide that, with God’s help, we will push through each distraction or problematic situation and refuse to be affected by what we see, hear or feel.

“Being a person of color in this convention has its highs and lows, but we keep pressing forward because of the assignment Christ has given us,” Vines continued. “Therefore, I’m calling on you to reject this nominee, develop a transparent process and call for a new search committee. If it is God’s will, then He will allow the newly appointed search committee to see the same person this committee has chosen, if the current nominee is God’s choice.”

Affirming Wellman but questioning process

Dwight McKissic, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington has been an outspoken voice related to race issues in the SBC. He affirmed Wellman in an April 29 message via Twitter: “Jared Wellman is a friend of all those who are friends of God, through his Son, Jesus. No one in the SBC has a more stellar record of fighting for racial equality/representation, abuse victims and justice for them, and lovingly listening to opposing viewpoints, as does [Wellman].”

He also spoke highly of Wellman while affirming Vines’ letter April 27

“Jared Wellman’s church, Tate Springs Baptist Church, sponsored Cornerstone in our inception,” McKissic wrote on Twitter. “We are fellow pastors in Arlington. I’ve had nothing but positive interaction with Wellman. However, I affirm every single word in the attached probative letter from Rev. A.B. Vines.”

Others across the denomination have raised similar questions and many are calling it an integrity issue.

Voices speaking in favor of Wellman as the candidate began surfacing after the nomination became official, and even many of those opposing the move are concerned about the process, not specifically about Wellman.

Wellman declined to comment for TAB Media Group, which publishes The Baptist Paper and The Alabama Baptist, ahead of the public announcement but agreed to discuss the nomination at a later date. Neither Executive Committee Chair David Sons nor search committee Chair Adron Robinson returned email requests for comments prior to press time.

Robinson told Baptist Press, “[Wellman’s] humility, administrative skill and pastoral sensibilities made him a strong candidate for the search team.”

Wellman called for waiving privilege

Wellman became well-known among Southern Baptists during the September and October 2021 Executive Committee meetings for his motion to waive attorney-client privilege in the independent investigation of the Executive Committee’s handling of sexual abuse allegations within the denomination.

He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in biblical studies and a Master of Arts in philosophy from Criswell College in Dallas, as well as a Ph.D. in theology from South African Theological Seminary. He is currently working on a Ph.D. in apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also serves as an adjunct professor of apologetics.

Wellman and his wife, Amanda, have four children.

As far as his role as a trustee of the Executive Committee, Wellman is in his second and final term, having served since 2015, and in his first year as chair. His time as a trustee would have expired at the upcoming June SBC annual meeting, but he reportedly gave up his Executive Commitee seat about two weeks ago, Baptist Press reported.

If he is voted in as the new staff hire for president and CEO, he would have had to step down from the trustee role prior to officially taking the staff position. His trustee seat will remain vacant until new trustees are elected at the annual meeting in June.

The Baptist Paper confirmed vice chair Sons of South Carolina had stepped into the role of chair several days prior to the search team’s announcement.

The seven-member presidential search committee, which included Wellman as an ex-officio voting member because of his role as Executive Committee chair, announced a nominee had been selected in an April 3 news release from Executive Committee media relations director Jon Wilke.

Robinson of Illinois shared a few days prior to the regularly scheduled February Executive Committee meeting in Nashville and again during the meeting that the committee had hoped to present a candidate but was not ready.

“We had a desire to arrive at this place with a candidate, but that was not able to happen. We are meeting again (the afternoon of Feb. 21, after the Executive Committee meeting adjourns),” he reported during the Feb. 20 opening session. “Continue to pray for us so we can bring you a candidate as soon as possible.”

The search committee was named in February 2022 to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Ronnie Floyd in October 2021.

Serving on the search committee with Robinson and Wellman are Sons, Mollie Duddleston of Arkansas, Jeremy Morton of Georgia, Philip Robertson of Louisiana and Mike Keahbone of Oklahoma.

In previous updates, the search committee reported 11 initial applicants who were narrowed down to seven and then eventually trimmed down again to those who were interviewed. The search committee did not share how many were in the last set being considered, but Robinson confirmed Willie McLaurin remained as one of the final candidates as of Feb. 21.

It was not clear if Wellman was among the initial applicants or if he became an option after the search team was unable to bring a candidate to the February meeting.

Sons told Baptist Press that Wellman recused himself from the search committee Jan. 26 and stepped down from his position on the Executive Committee confidentially April 17. The full board was apprised of the move April 19 but a public announcement was not made until Wellman could share the news with his congregation prior to the May 1 vote, according to the Baptist Press article.

McLaurin, who came to the Executive Committee from the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board in 2020, has been serving as interim president and CEO since February 2022. He previously served as TBMB special assistant to the executive director since 2005.

Following the February Executive Committee meeting in Nashville, speculation ramped up related to McLaurin not being the nominee since an announcement was not made at the meeting. A late-night Twitter post by McLaurin on Feb. 22 stated, “Thankful that Ash Wednesday reminds me that my hope is in Jesus and not in a job. Embracing this season of reflection, repentance and renewal.”

McLaurin reportedly has continued to lead and represent the Executive Committee with the same energy and commitment these past two months as he has all along. He recently told The Baptist Paper about his plan to ensure a smooth transition between his interim role and the newly elected president.

“I’m prioritizing the Great Commission and the Great Commandment and working to foster cooperation and collaboration,” he said. “While living life at the intersection of expectation and disappointment … I plan to continue to serve our convention and continue to advance the mission of the gospel.

“It’s not about the individual. … Our job is to be prayerful and faithful,” McLaurin added, noting Southern Baptists can pray for him to “keep being who God has called me to be and not allow this set of circumstances to define who I am and who I’m not.”