SBC Elites Refusal to Open the Books and Reject Wokeness Will Kill the Cooperative Program. It’s Just a Matter of Time.
Everyone agrees the SBC is ailing. But the doctors offer conflicting cures.
Almost everyone outside of the SBC institutions agrees there should be more “transparency.” However, inside SBC board rooms, there is a palpable fear that opening the books will lead to more fighting and a further loss of credibility, not a stronger SBC.
So, what will lead to a stronger SBC? Transparency or tranquility?
The tranquility theory argues that the SBC’s strength lies in cultivating a reputation for benevolence. This has become the slogan of the Executive Committee: “The SBC is a force for good.”
But what does this actually mean in practice?
Increasingly, the answer seems to be that the SBC’s “good works” must align with the values of America’s educated liberals. This SBC would be a display of diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice. This SBC would be known for appealing to the marginalized, for solving gender and race issues, and for its “limitless” funding for victims of abuse. Indeed, this SBC would display government partnership, encourage universal “democratic values,” and promote the universal brotherhood of mankind. This is a peak “neutral world” strategy, a vision calling the SBC to demonstrate DEI. Or perhaps we should refer to it by the alternate acronym: A call for the SBC to DIE.
In this plan, the ideal churches are those that do not dispute the Convention’s PR plans or ask troublesome questions like “How are our tithe dollars being spent?”
Last June, former SBC President and Baptist cattleman Bart Barber expressed frustration with the restless SBC “herds” at a “9 Marks at 9” SBC gathering. 9 Marks at 9, of course, is a fellowship of Reformed (or Reformed-ish) Baptists after the daily business of the SBC’s annual meeting. The topic of the meeting was not transparency, but Barber flagged his comment as something he felt compelled to say to the 2,000 people in the room:
“There are also motions related to Form 990 transparency and similar issues … But it’s also clear to me that there’s a shadow issue behind that concern, and I want to address it. Our entity employees, including our entity heads, are not overpaid. They are not overpaid.
I could justify that based on my feelings for them, but rather than that, I’ll say this: positions that are overpaid don’t take two years to fill. Look at what’s happening in our entities—it is taking longer and longer to hire people for those positions…If you want mediocre leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention, pay mediocre salaries. But I believe in what we’re doing, and I stand by this: they are not overpaid.”
Barber’s comment reveals an underlying assumption within SBC leadership: Transparency is not just an administrative issue—it is a threat to leadership stability.
If salaries are disclosed, it might disrupt the system, not because the numbers are unjustifiable but because the scrutiny itself is seen as disruptive.
This logic prioritizes institutional tranquility over accountability.
Note Barber’s premise: SBC leadership positions need to be desirable. The calls for transparency arising from the pews might keep leaders underpaid. By implication, the Convention should oppose 990 motions to make life easier for the bulls in the pasture and avoid spoiling the contentment of the other milch cows.
But Barber’s comments reveal an even deeper (and more problematic) institutional assumption:
Transparency threatens leadership stability, and leadership stability is more valuable than accountability.
As a supporter of transparency, I was dumbfounded. The goal of the 990 motion is not to make entity heads more uncomfortable about their pay. The motions are intended to ensure that trustees can’t avoid responsibility for their most important budget decision: compensating the CEO based on performance.
What is the difference? CEO morale is entirely beside the point. The 990 motion does not limit CEO pay in the SBC. In a world where new lawyers can be paid $215,000 a year, I imagine the case can be made some of our CEOs are underpaid.
But how could we, as the givers who make the entire Cooperative Program system work with our church’s financial support, even know that? We can’t. Because the entities won’t open the books.
Rather, the 990 salary disclosure (and salaries are only part of the transparency package) concerns the trustees’ overall failures to manage in a way that builds trust.
In rooms driven by the desire to appear good, trustees avoid any decision that asks, “Are we actually doing what we promised?” It has become common practice at our entities for the CEO’s salary to be unknown even to the Boards. Sometimes, the salary is only known to each Board’s small executive committee. I understand that at some entities, even the executive committee does not know the number; the committee just votes on a percentage raise without knowing the percentage. After a few years of rotation, nobody knows the CEO’s full compensation.
And no one wants to know because to ask the question is to risk having to make a difficult decision if the pay does not align with performance.
This is not a hypothetical problem in the SBC; this is an acknowledged, recurring problem among trustee boards floundering to understand their purpose. These incentives led even “Conservative Resurgence” conservatives to sit by calmly while Southwestern Seminary ran a deficit for 20 years, shrinking from America’s largest seminary to one of the SBC’s weakest. Even though their theology was pure, they failed to match performance and spending. Year after year, it became easier to put up a show of hope about turning things around in the near future—a future that never came without a cataclysm.
There will always be disagreements about “too much.” As a trustee at the ERLC, I have voted for CEO salaries that I think are reasonable, understanding that many would say it’s too much and some may say it’s too little. But I am willing to stand behind the number as reasonable.
The push for transparency is about more than just paychecks—it’s about ensuring that all major decisions align with the mission of the SBC. And the most important, basic decision of the boards will be open to the churches to judge.
Yet again, secrecy isn’t limited to salaries. A similar problem emerges in how SBC entities interact with the government.
A recent report from CBL revealed that SEND Relief, “Southern Baptists’ global compassion ministry,” took a $70,000 subcontract from the State Department to provide resettlement services for refugees in Boston.
Baptists have long demanded a version of “separation” between churches and government that doesn’t fuzz Divine authority and State authority. It pursues benevolence and mercy powered by the gospel, free of government direction. Send Relief’s contract means the Cooperative Program is no longer a pure demonstration of cooperating churches or an undiluted outflow of the voluntary gospel. It’s an example of “Southern Baptists” getting credit for spending tax money in an emotionally satisfying way like other charities. The desire for the SBC to be seen as “good people” like the Red Cross or Catholic Charities abandons the old goal of the SBC as a display of cooperating New Testament churches.
Individual Baptists, of course, should be in the public square. They can contract with the government according to their consciences. They can credit their charitable work to their faith. But they can’t baptize government contracts as cooperative efforts of churches. Churches don’t serve as subcontractors to the State; the embassy of Christ’s kingdom should not be confused with emissaries of the American State Department.
The SBC of DEI (or DIE) is, above all, pursuing an emotional location in the mind of the American Left. “Baptists are good people, fighting for social justice.” “The Baptists have ethnic fellowships for the marginalized.” “Baptists can partner with the Biden Administration.” “Baptists sign letters supporting the stranger.” In this vision, the SBC won’t ever risk being seen as too far to the Right—because it will exist by taking the measure of our distance from the Left.
But this is a vision that does not ask whether the Left is “right.” It just asks if the Left thinks the SBC is a force for “good.”
And this is not a vision that needs SBC churches. The churches are “good” insofar as they support the good people running the SBC and do not foul up the brand’s reputation. Their money isn’t necessary so long as it can be replaced with government funds. One does not need to join an SBC church (or even to believe the gospel) to fight for social justice or to support the stranger. Rather, the idea is that you could want liberal goods and think the SBC is good, too.
However, there is another vision for the SBC—one that does not depend on the Left’s approval. The contrasting vision comes from SBC “outsiders” (that is, those not in power at our entities) who argue that the Convention has become opaque and unaccountable to the people in Baptist churches.
The churches in the pews want an SBC that defends the BF&M forthrightly, including the topics that put us at odds with God-optional liberalism. One that leads the fight for biblical anthropology, one that fearlessly declares both man and woman were made intentionally. One that says Biblical anthropology conflicts with liberal sociology, and that’s a good thing. One that says the state is a limited tool for the good of the nation, not a safety net for the world.
These Baptists recognize that churches must measure the Convention against Scripture, not reputation. Whether the SBC is a partner in the Evangelical Immigration Table is less important than the SBC’s reputation among gospel churches. Whether employees of the Rockefeller Foundation might consider taking a position at Send Relief is less important than Send Relief’s integrity as a unique display of church cooperation.
In this vision of the SBC, there will necessarily be judgment by the churches. It will be part of our business. And the people drawn to it will welcome the judgment of the churches because they share the same vision. They aren’t looking for comfortable jobs away from scrutiny—they are anxious to show the churches what’s being spent, even on themselves. Of course, there will be disagreement, but mostly, there will be the kind of trust that comes from showing how the promises made are being delivered.
Lasting institutions can only be built on trust, and trust is earned by measurable honesty.
One cannot help but feel excitement about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) initiative. The team consists primarily of young software engineers eager to make the American government more trustworthy. After a decade of COVID obfuscation, media malpractice hiding President Biden’s decline, and, yes, tyrannical DEI/DIE, young men are exhilarated to “open the books” to make the government more efficient and accountable for the benefit of Americans.
It would be a blessing to have the same exuberance about a reinvigorated, renewed SBC that can address the demands of the internet age. Pastor Rhett Burns recently wrote about what a “DOGE” might look like in the SBC.
Would it have been nice to convince the old guard to have done it themselves? Sure. Do young SBC outsiders have foibles? Sure. Will there be false starts and concerns about moving too fast? Sure. But when organizations become sclerotic, there’s no other way.
Revival unsettles old patterns. It always has.
I was struck this week by Trace Woodgrain’s essay about a hiring scandal in the Federal Aviation Administration. FAA leaders, beholden to a DEI vision, engaged in outright race discrimination for years to fill Air Traffic Control positions—leaving the nation dangerously understaffed because racial quotas took precedence over qualifications.
Woodgrain is a liberal, a Democrat, and a former Mormon. He tried to drag the scandal into daylight for a decade. “But,” he writes:
“Democrats did not handle it. The scandal occurred under the Obama administration. The FAA minimized it, obscured it, fought FOIA requests through multiple lawsuits, and stonewalled the public for years as the class action lawsuit rolled forward…I badly wanted the Biden admin to rise to the occasion, speak plainly and frankly in response to the scandal, and defuse this time bomb. I wanted other, more mainstream outlets to cover the story, but none did so…
Trump isn’t handling the scandal how I would, but when is that not true? I expect collateral damage, I expect intense partisanship and noise, I expect chaos. But at the core, fundamentally, I can’t be unhappy that after a decade, a President finally brought attention to the scandal.”
Here, we see that Woodgrain was willing to take transparency over tranquility. Yes, dealing with the scandal felt like “chaos.” But it was worth it.
The SBC stands at a similar crossroads. The FFA’s leaders lost their way; once the FAA fell for a moral theory that was more important than making air travel safe, it proved impossible to self-correct. Many SBC leaders—even some that might be labeled “conservative”—have fallen for a moral and organizational theory that prioritizes peace and goodwill among both American political parties over “acceptance of His teachings in all the affairs of … nations.” (BF&M Art. XVI). Prioritizing political quotas on our committees cannot come at the expense of the Baptist mission, but that is the tacit agreement. An SBC revival will need leaders to lift up those outside the current structure who are committed to a Convention as an outgrowth of churches.
Small changes won’t be enough. Pastor Barber recently claimed that “the [SBC’s] entities are EXACTLY as transparent as the messengers have required them to be.” But Pastor Burns quickly corrected Barber’s mistake, explaining how SBC leaders stack the deck against transparency, requiring awkward procedural votes without debate: “It is not that messengers were given the choice and voted against it; rather, they were denied an opportunity to even hear the arguments.”
Why was Pastor Burns’ motion to secure transparency denied a fair hearing? Because SBC entities have let tranquility become their purpose, not a byproduct of faithful service.
There is no easy way back to accountability, but the gospel is worth the effort. The gospel is worth the uncomfortable revelations and conversations required to get back on track. The gospel is worth giving our churches the honest and transparent truth about how and where their tithe dollars are being spent.
As such, the SBC stands at a crossroads: DOGE or DIE.
I choose DOGE. What about you?
