Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Philip Roberts resigned amid controversy Feb. 10. The Kansas City, Mo.-based seminary trustees accepted his resignation effective Feb. 29 during a called meeting and named Robin Hadaway, associate professor of missions at the seminary, as acting president.
Roberts, an 11-year president, was facing questions about misuse of seminary resources and verbal abuse of seminary staff. Other trustee meetings in years past had revolved around those same questions. At the previous board meeting in October, James Freeman, an attorney and trustee from Kansas City, resigned.
“I’m glad that the trustee system finally worked,” Freeman said.
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. Trustees then “suspended” the special meeting.
Roberts apparently was not in the room for the trustee meeting but was in contact with them. Afterward he could not be reached for comment. Prior to the meeting, he declined to discuss reasons why it was being held.
There was no mention of a severance package in the release.
Also taking place during the meeting, was a transfer of the chairmanship from Wayne Lee of Southlake, Texas, to Kevin Shrum of Madison, Tenn., who emerged as the sole trustee spokesman for the day’s events and the interim board chair until April.
Shrum said Hadaway will serve as acting president through the April board meeting when the board’s executive committee will be recommending the process that the seminary will use to move forward in a search for a new president. Hadaway, who is an associate professor of missions, has been with Midwestern for eight and a half years.
Roberts came to Kansas City in 2001 after serving seven years with the North American Mission Board and it’s predecessor the Home Mission Board.
Roberts taught missions and evangelism at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He was acting dean of at the Emmanuel Baptist Seminary and University in Oradea, Romania, 1992–1994, and a pastor in England, Germany and Belgium
Roberts is a graduate of Georgetown College in Kentucky and Southern Seminary. He earned his doctorate from the Free University of Amsterdam. His father, Ray Roberts, was a church planter and the first executive director of the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio
Roberts is the author of books including Mormonism Unmasked and The Counterfeit Gospel of Mormonism. (Greg Warner contributed)
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