There is an old adage in news coverage that says, “If you have bad news to tell, tell it first and tell it all.” That was the approach taken by the board of trustees of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention after completing a three-week investigation of concerns about NAMB’s operation and performance. The concerns were first made public in an exposé in The Christian Index, the state Baptist newspaper of Georgia.
While not finding any illegal or immoral actions on the part of any employee, including President Bob Reccord, the board did find enough questionable episodes to cause it to create what its report termed “six Executive Level controls.” These are new procedures the trustees will use to monitor and evaluate the activities and performances of Reccord and other top-level NAMB administrators.
The news coming out of the closed-door meeting of the trustees was not horrific (nothing immoral or illegal), but it was still bad news.
The trustees, under the leadership of Alabama Baptist pastor Barry Holcomb of Bethany Baptist Church, Andalusia, had done yeoman’s work by the time the meeting ended. A special task force appointed by Holcomb had spent about 25 hours thoroughly investigating the concerns raised in the press.
The task force had spent nearly eight additional hours walking trustees through every charge and every finding in its 19-page report.
But the best work of the trustees was yet to come. Holcomb and other trustee officers held a news conference about 15 minutes after the board meeting adjourned. The officers reported the actions of the board of trustees — the creation of Executive Level controls.
They reported what they had learned in the investigation. They openly shared the board’s evaluation of actions by Reccord and other NAMB leaders. Sometimes the evaluations supported the employees. Other times, they questioned the decisions made.
At the end of the news conference, Holcomb announced the full report would be made available to the public. It was given to news outlets as well as posted on the NAMB Web site. The complete report was available to anyone interested enough to read it.
The NAMB board of trustees had bad news to tell. They told it first and they told it all. In so doing, Holcomb and the other trustees set a worthy example for others to follow. They told the truth and trusted the people.
From a practical standpoint, the decision to tell the bad news first and to tell it all was the best decision available. In time, accounts of the trustee meeting and trustee actions were bound to leak out.
Some of the reports might have been inaccurate. The board of trustees would have found itself having to respond to every accusation, every rumor, every report. The trustees would have been in a defensive position, having to react to someone else’s actions.
Had the trustees not told their story first and told it all, a question would have hung over all future reports from the board. Anyone can tell good news. The real test of an organization is how it handles bad news. That is when integrity is demonstrated. Does an organization trust its constituents enough to tell them the truth, even when it is bad news?
People become wary of an organization that only shares the good news. Studies show that people feel manipulated or used when they are fed a steady diet of good news. People begin to doubt the stories and question the reports. People are smart enough to know that everything cannot be rosy forever.
An organization that shares the bad news along with the good earns credibility. People know the organization will tell them the truth. Stories and reports from organizations that tell the good and the bad are accepted, and the people making the reports are believed.
Had the trustees not told their story first and told it all, it would have created a breach in the principle of accountability built into the Baptist system of cooperative ministry. Baptist entities are not private companies. They belong to all cooperating Baptists.
It is the money and prayers and people from these churches that fuel the Baptist engine and drive our multiple ministries. In a sense, we are all stockholders in these entities.
Trustees are elected to oversee the entities. These trustees, in turn, are responsible to Baptists for their stewardship of responsibility. When issues arise, trustees owe Baptists an account of their actions. It is not enough to say “trust the trustees” and stonewall calls for information. The trustees must trust the people who entrusted them with leadership by telling the truth — telling it first and telling it all.
It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize a scenario in which a NAMB trustee could have suggested that the trustee officers tell Baptists only that the trustees met, considered the concerns and have taken appropriate actions. That would have been to treat the entity like a private company where no one has a right to know what is going on except the owners.
A scenario in which a trustee suggests sharing only the actions of the board — the Executive Level controls — is also easy to imagine. The board only has to report its official actions, one might argue. The reasons behind the actions are no one’s business. Such a position would be consistent with the downward spiral of trust evidenced in some quarters of Baptist life today.
Thankfully the NAMB trustees never considered such options. Holcomb and the other trustees were committed from the beginning of the meeting to tell their story first and to tell it all.
NAMB is likely to have more bumps in the road before the last page of the current chapter is written. If so, we are confident the trustees will continue to tell their story first and to tell it all. Their commitment and their action are worthy examples for all Baptists to follow.
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