JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — In a move unprecedented in Southern Baptist circles, a state convention president will attempt to bar a Baptist publication in Missouri from attending or reporting on state Baptist meetings.
David Tolliver, recently elected president of the Missouri Baptist Convention, informed the editor of the Word & Way that the staff of the 107-year-old newsjournal will no longer be allowed to attend convention meetings, including executive board sessions and committee meetings. Tolliver also will attempt to bar Word & Way from the convention’s 2004 annual meeting, which is usually attended by secular media.
In a Nov. 19 letter to editor Bill Webb, Tolliver explained that his “directive” is a result of the action the Word & Way and four other convention agencies took to establish self-perpetuating trustee boards.
Word & Way, Missouri Baptist University, Windermere Baptist Conference Center and the Missouri Baptist Foundation changed their charters in 2001 to allow each entity to elect its own trustees rather than allow the convention to elect them. The Baptist Home trustees took the same action a year earlier.
The Missouri Baptist Convention filed suit in August 2002 to force the boards of the five entities to rescind their charter changes.
Tolliver, pastor of Pisgah Baptist Church in Excelsior Springs, is a member of the convention’s legal task force charged with overseeing the legal effort to recover the five breakaway agencies.
In a telephone interview Nov. 24, Tolliver emphasized the lawsuit as his primary reason for expelling Word & Way from board proceedings. “This was not done in animosity but in prudence,” he said.
Tolliver said the directive would not apply to other news organizations because they are not involved in legal action with the Missouri convention. “If ABP [Associated Baptist Press] calls and asks if they can attend, I will let them. We are not in a lawsuit with them,” he said.
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