I agree with your call for more openness. I don’t know if this should extend to public release of all information regarding a person’s termination or not.

In any case, I think NAMB is making progress:

(a)The church planting portion of NAMB remains on solid footing.

(b) The evangelism portion of NAMB seems to be ramping back up as is evidenced by the “demonstration” GPS [God's plan for sharing] projects which happened in the Altanta Georgia area and in the Inland Empire area of California. [The Inland Empire is San Bernardino and Riverside counties].

You always make such great, wise comments. I enjoy dialoguing with you.

The only meeting that I was referring to was the meeting to terminate Dr. Hammond. I would think that all other meetings of the NAMB would be public.

That meeting was closed. The special parliamentary procedures that I wrote about were employed. Many people are concerned that Dr. Hammond was not fairly treated in that meeting. The same thing is true with respect to Mr. Logan.

I agree with you in the main – that the SBC agencies are more open than the meetings of other church and non-profit world.

But since the post was a call to take a deep breath about NAMB (which, I am sure you noted – I agree with) one of the things that I suggested was to provide more disclosure about Dr. Hammond’s termination (a/k/a resignation). And the same thing applies to Mr. Logan’s departure.

Even if that doesn’t happen, as I said, I am going to support NAMB and the EC. It’s just that disclosure is a good way to build trust, especially as it relates to recent events that have caused concern.

Hope I get to meet you someday.

Louis

I was concerned about the situation with the IMB BoT. There was quite a bit of noise one or two years ago regarding the real or perceived infighting on the IMB BoT.

I decided to investigate this myself. I “got permission” to attend a sesson of the IMB BoT myself. In addition to the plenary meeting I was able to attend a number of other business meetings. I was assisted by several current and former senior people at the IMB who facilitated my attendance at these meetings.

I paid my travel & hotel bill when I attended the Jacksonville BoT meeting.

My point is this: If you want to penetrate what is going on at the NAMB BoT then show up at the trustee meeting yourself. If the IMB is any indication as to what you might expect at the NAMB, then I think you will be able to find out quite a bit about what is going on. If you ask committee chairs ahead of time, it is quite likely that they will give you permission to attend their working meetings if you agree to a few ground rules such as — no laptops taking notes, etc.

At the IMB I had pretty wide access to quite a few meetings. I didn’t even ask to attend the “forum” and several other meetings but I did attend quite a few meetings besides the plenary session. My attendance was conditional on me following a few groundrules which I observed.

I wrote a report about my experiences and put it on my personal website. I offered on-my-own to run my report by Dr. Mike Hand at the IMB before putting it up on my website. Dr. Hand did not censure it in any way.

As far as the big picture is concerned, we all want NAMB and its mission to prosper, even if that means we later decide to fold NAMB into the IMB.

So all expressions of public opinion should be balanced and based on knowledge from full disclosure. And it’s important that comments have some balance.

One of the things that bothers me most about opinionated people (I confess to being one), SBC life, and the SBC blogsophere is the complete lack of balance. People are cast as wearing black hats or white hats. The comments are extreme, over the top, and are often made from the mindset of expecting the worst out of people.

I endorse your suggestion that we be gracious. Even if we disagree on what has been done at NAMB or what will be done with NAMB, it seems that a sense of proportion is in order, especially in view of the importance of NAMB’s mission.

Let me add, however, that disclosure is an important component of this picture.

Trust and confidence are based on honesty and disclosure. A lack of disclosure breeds suspicion and mistrust.

Given the unfortunate history of NAMB in its leadership and trustee governance prior to Dr. Hammond, Southern Baptists are not without reason to be concerned.

Also, the imbroglio involving Dr. Hammond is a concern for many. I am not going to list all of the particular concerns. We have all heard them. They relate to dismissing someone who had not yet even had a good opportunity to move NAMB forward, trustee division, an extremely divisive trustee meeting where a special parliamentarian was flown in to interpret Robert’s Rules of Order. The minority trustee’s motions, questions, and attempts to hear from other staff who supported Dr. Hammond etc. were ruled out of order. I hear all the time from people who ask questions about all of this.

Some of these same concerns are/were being vocalized regarding Clark Logan’s forced resignation at the Executive Committee. There, the issue was the executive leadership, and whether leadership was being exercised properly and fairly, and not simply by fiat.

All of the SBC agencies should be open and transparent. When the trustees or executives need to make a change, it is appropriate to give the benefit of the doubt.

But the other side, those trustees and executives who are leading the SBC agencies need to be transparent and open about decisions. And the decisions should be handled reasonably, as good business people who do, even it some of us might have made a different decision.

I am hoping and trusting that things go really well of NAMB and the new leadership.

But I am also hoping that the SBC and her agencies can move toward a culture of openness that brings trust, and not toward a culture of personal fiefdoms and leaders (trustees or executives) using their positions for personal privilege.

A climate of complete disclosure will help us to continue to move in the right direction.

Louis

It is not to make converts. It is not to by any means elicit ‘professions of faith’ only to never see the person darken the door of that assembly again. It is not to rack up baptisms. It is not to gather crowds, ever larger, ever more impressive.

Why do I put such focus on these issues? Because they are the very metric by which ministry is evaluated; effective or deficient. More is always good. Bigger is always better.

I have corresponded with many SBC leaders on this issue (Rainer, Stetzer, Austin, Aiken). I produced very substantive, civil, kind, passionate and exegetically precise correspondence seeking to focus on this issue of PURPOSE – “Making Disciples’.

I received cordial but hollow responses. When the very crucial question is posed as to what is a Disciple and how do we measure Transformation (Metrics), the communication ceases. In one case I was told simply – - “The churches will not complete the ACP now. If we add this additional requirement no one will fill out the form”. Any freshman in college can see through this logic. It is apparently more important to ‘fill out forms’ than it is to make disciples and to measure our effectiveness in that glorious task with precision and exegetical accuracy. Apparently we fear seeing the light of reality shined on our labors. God help us!

The time for corporate comprehensive repentance has come. Stop protecting territories. Stop measuring ministry by activity (ad nauseum) and begin to measure ministry by the genuine God enabled Transformation of His people with humility and precision.

I will say without hesitation or apology, when we do that, all this barking and sniping will be gone and God, the Sovereign of the Ages, will cause His Truth to sweep across America and the Globe. We will find harmony and co-operation in abundance. He will use us, imperfect, flawed sinners redeemed by Grace to accomplish his PURPOSE.

The most crucial question we face is – “What is our PURPOSE?”