Phil Roberts, the embattled president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo., resigned Feb. 10. No reason was stated and trustees gave no details about their called five-and-a-half hour meeting at a Kansas City hotel that prompted the 61-year-old to step down.
Trustees met behind closed doors in a meeting called specifically to consider Roberts’ job performance, trustees said in a statement released afterward. The start of that meeting was delayed when trustees supportive of Roberts tried to save his job by voting out the trustee officers and committee chairs instead.
That vote failed, the trustees’ three-sentence statement said. Roberts then submitted his resignation, effective Feb. 29.
The board’s executive committee — the officers and committee chairs — reportedly had called the meeting, in part, to present a summary of a recent forensic audit that several trustees said uncovered serious financial irregularities.
His predecessor, Mark Coppenger, was fired in 1999 for reasons including low employee morale. Sources said the Feb. 10 meeting was the third attempt to terminate Roberts during his 11-year tenure. The most recent, in 2007, was led by the chairman of the trustees at the time.
James Freeman, a trustee who resigned in October 2011, said, “I’m glad that the trustee system finally worked.”
Trustees named Robin Hadaway, associate professor of missions at Midwestern, acting president.
Despite failure of the attempt to remove the officers, board chairman Wayne Lee, of Southlake, Texas, resigned at some point in the meeting. At Lee’s suggestion, trustees elected Kevin Shrum, pastor of Inglewood Baptist Church, Nashville, as trustee chair until the board’s next meeting.
Although some of the criticism of Roberts is similar to that from 2007, the forensic audit added a level of seriousness not seen in previous confrontations. A forensic audit is a detailed inspection of financial records by an outside consultant conducted to the standards of a court of law. Because it must meet judicial-level standards, it raised the possibility of legal ramifications for the administration and/or trustees, who both have fiduciary responsibility for the school under the law.
Before the Feb. 10 meeting, several trustees told Associated Baptist Press that Roberts misled trustees and auditors about the improper use of designated accounts, government grants and other funds at the seminary, which has struggled financially for years.
Trustee leaders said Roberts shuffled money between seminary accounts and misused designated funds in order to mislead trustees, auditors and Southern Baptist Convention officials about the school’s true financial status.
Not all the problems with Roberts’ leadership are financial, trustees said. The former president was described as a “micromanager” who intimidated or fired employees who disagreed with him. The seminary has had 11 chief financial officers during Roberts’ 11 years as president — three in the last 12 months.
Roberts was elected in 2001 as the fourth president of the seminary founded in 1957. He came to Midwestern after seven years at the North American Mission Board and its forerunner, the Home Mission Board, first as director of the interfaith evangelism department and later as vice president.
(ABP, Allen Palmeri contributed)
Share with others: