The SBC Needs A DOGE—Now

Rhett Burns

Financial Transparency and Accountability in the SBC is Long Overdue. DOGE Proves It Can Be Done; It’s Just a Matter of Leadership.

At the request of President Trump and his 77 million voters, Elon Musk is waging war against our bloated and corrupt federal bureaucracy. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already canceled 36 consulting contacts, totaling $165 million, over the last few days. Prior to that, it canceled 104 DEI-related contracts, saving American citizens over $1 billion. The temporary department is also trimming the federal workforce through a deferred resignation program.

At every turn, the Musk-led effort is bringing transparency, accountability, and efficiency to the federal government. Many doubted this was even possible. Turns out all it took was some courage and the will to get it done. Or, in one word, all it took was leadership.

If transparency and accountability are possible at the highest levels of national government, then it should also be possible among God’s people in the Southern Baptist Convention.

Trust among Southern Baptists is at an all-time low. Cooperative Program giving has been declining for a decade and a half. We’ve pulled our most experienced missionaries off the field and sent them home because we were running out of money. And, due to failed leadership, we’re entangled in lawsuits that threaten to bankrupt the convention. We are even in the process of selling the SBC’s headquarters in Nashville—all because an overzealous cadre of politically-minded and power-hungry liberals in the SBC have led us into ruin.

We desperately need a DOGE for the SBC. And we need it now.

Baptists are very good at acronyms, so we should be able to come up with something. I’ve seen DODE and DOBE floating around X, standing for the Department of Denominational Efficiency and Department of Baptist Efficiency, respectively. DUDE would be a fun one (Department Unveiling Denominational Efficiency?). But seeing as we’re Baptist, it really should be a “committee” rather than a department. I propose the Committee on Convention Accountability (COCA). 

Whatever we call it, the future of the Cooperative Program, the very heart of the SBC, depends on it. If our leaders refuse to open the books, churches will stop giving. It’s that simple.

Imagine it with me for just a moment. SBC President Clint Pressley appoints our very own Baptist PayPal alum, Rod Martin, to lead the SBC DOGE. Martin then taps a few detail-obsessed Zoomers to comb through all the files. What would they find? How many missions dollars could they save? 

We would finally learn how much the Sexual Abuse Hotline costs and maybe how many mission dollars we have spent on LGBTQ-friendly lawyers to advise us about issues related to sexual morality. Perhaps we could also learn what the Sexual Abuse Task Force did with the $250,000 the ERLC gave it after it had completed its work and had no way forward to do anything else. 

Hopefully, SBC DOGE could tell Southern Baptists straight just how much money Johnny Hunt made as a NAMB vice president. Hunt claims the Guidepost report cost him $610,000 in lost salary per year from the North American Mission Board, while NAMB disputes the amount. Cleverly, on their website, they only mention the “salary amount” but not the total compensation. 

Speaking of salary information, SBC DOGE could publish the salaries of the top executives of our SBC entities. Of course, Article 14 of the current Business and Financial Plan already requires entities to provide such information to members of cooperating churches. However, not all entities comply.

For example, officials from NAMB and IMB stonewall such requests by wrongly reinterpreting Article 14 to mean that they only need to explain how salaries are “set.” So, when you ask for the salary structures, they only tell you that the trustees set the salaries. Other entities comply, but the information is so vague as to be useless. What they provide is a wide salary range but not total compensation, and one entity even admitted that the scales provided do not match what they actually pay. 

SBC DOGE could also look into the Convention employees at the Executive Committee who colluded with David Platt to hoodwink McClean Bible Church into giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the SBC, even though their church constitution forbids joining a denomination. The group could trace the church planting money trail from McClean to NAMB and back to McClean’s own church planting network. Why would Platt jump through all these hoops and lie to his church the way he did unless there are some rewards to leading one of the top-giving SBC churches? What are those rewards?

One of the more significant things DOGE did last week was shut down USAID. This was a shock-and-awe move that aimed to cut the heart out of the deep state. While USAID no doubt funded some good initiatives that provided real help to needy people, as a whole, USAID provided the funding mechanism for some of the Deep State’s darkest deeds. It funded regime changes around the globe, the spread of LGBTQ+ ideology in remote villages, and media influence in favor of CIA interests. It was ripe for corruption and double-dealing. For example, why was a Senator Lindsay Graham-directed institute receiving $130 million dollars from the American taxpayer?

If there is a Southern Baptist version of USAID, it’s NAMB and the Send Network (although a close second in terms of the damage it does is the ERLC). But NAMB and Send have the money. They have piles of cash (a half billion dollars in assets). And they use it.

NAMB and Send peddle their influence through a vast network of paid contractors, influencers, and “church growth consultants” and by paying the salary or housing of some state convention executives, thus controlling those state conventions. NAMB was affiliated at some level in the church coup at McClean and the attempted one at FBC Naples.

Just as USAID pushed gender ideology around the globe, so too NAMB is pushing egalitarianism and DEI throughout our convention. Prominent NAMB Employee Trevin Wax was an outspoken opponent of the Law Amendment, for example. SBC DOGE could make NAMB and Send Network show the churches of the SBC what they are really doing with your tithe dollars and let us decide if it’s worth it.

Some may argue that our polity doesn’t allow for the creation of a committee with such authority. Maybe, maybe not. However, the above thought exercise paints the picture of why we need transparency and accountability in our convention. I’ve attempted to help move us in that direction by making motions for the last two annual meetings that would require entities to publish 990-level financial information. But both of those motions were referred to the Executive Committee to be ground into dust by the denominational machine. 

The EC’s finance committee, chaired by Mississippi pastor Adam Wyatt, is the committee responsible for stopping my transparency motion from even getting a hearing before messengers. Wyatt and his committee killed it—not once, but twice.

If Southern Baptists want to know why they do not have access to nonprofit industry-standard financial disclosure, it is because Wyatt’s committee does not deem your church worthy enough to be privy to such information. And if you want to ask Wyatt himself why this is the case, you can find him on X.

Instead of embracing my widely-supported effort to secure 990-level financial transparency, that committee has promised to provide its own “financial transparency recommendations” to messengers in Dallas this summer. Given the misinformation that was used against my 990-level motion and the rumors that most entity heads opposed it (though they didn’t have the courage to say so forthrightly), I’m not particularly optimistic about what the finance committee is going to propose.

If their recommendation does not meet a minimum threshold of transparency, messengers should be prepared to exercise their will to amend the recommendation to include the publishing of 990-level financial information.

Or, we could just vote to create SBC DOGE and let Rod Martin and his Zoomers give it a go. Or whoever the messengers want to appoint for this task.

Because if we’ve learned anything from the first two weeks of the Trump Administration, it’s that the meme is true: “You can just do things.”

  • Rhett Burns

    Rhett Burns is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Travelers Rest. A lifelong Southern Baptist, he previously served with the IMB in Central Asia. He resides in Travelers Rest, SC with his wife and four children.