Missouri exec questions convention rules

Missouri exec questions convention rules

 

An effort by the Missouri Baptist Convention’s nominating committee to impose new guidelines for selecting trustees of the state convention’s agencies and institutions has been questioned by the convention’s top executive.

The chairman of the nominating committee says his goal is to end the “good-old-boys network” he believes has controlled the convention in the past.

In April, the nominating committee announced adoption of three new guidelines to be used in selecting individuals for service on convention boards and committees.

According to the new rules:

No individual may serve on more than one board or committee at the same time.

No church may have more than two members serving on Missouri Baptist Convention boards or committees at the same time.

All nominees for election or re-election must be fully supportive of the state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention.

The guidelines have never been approved by convention messengers in annual session. And that concerns Jim Hill, executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention. A front-page article in the May 3 Word and Way, journal of Missouri Baptists, quoted Hill as questioning whether the new guidelines are appropriate.

By imposing its own guidelines without convention approval, Hill said the nominating committee had given itself the authority to remove trustees from agency boards who were elected to those posts by the full convention.

May remove trustees

Hill said the committee is preparing to remove duly elected trustees who are eligible to serve second terms according to convention bylaws. “I do not believe it is appropriate for the nominating committee to utilize rules that have not been approved by the convention, and I believe their decision to do so will widen the division in our convention,” Hill said.

“My conviction is that the rules are an effort to accelerate a political process at work within our convention,” he continued. “By their decision not to re-nominate individuals eligible for a second term of service, the nominating committee is able to create additional vacancies for new trustees.”

The nominating committee chairman, however, defended the committee’s work in a separate article in the same issue of Word and Way. He denied the guidelines are politically motivated.

“A lot of folks have been fearful of us being in control of the nominating committee,” Chairman Jeff Purvis said. He said his goal, however, is “to make sure in the future that we will not be accused of being guilty of what has been done in the past 30 years- a ‘good-old-boys network’ that kept rotating the same people” from board to board.

The nominating committee will “flat out ask” nominees for election or re-election if they support “the direction the Missouri Baptist Convention and Southern Baptist Convention are going,” he said.

(ABP)