Investigation committee to report April 10
Executive Board agenda adjusted
to accommodate committee findings
JEFFERSON CITY – Executive Board Chairman and Missouri Baptist Convention President Mike Green said March 23 that the agenda for the MBC Executive Board’s April 10 meeting will be modified from its normal schedule so that the ad hoc Investigative Committee can give its report before any other business is addressed.
The board will convene at 8:30 a.m. (30 minutes earlier than usual) and the committee will bring its report from its three-month probe immediately following the roll call, approval of the Dec. 12 meeting’s minutes and prayer. Normally the executive director’s report would come next.
“Because of the significance of the committee’s work, I want to make sure there is plenty of time to adequately cover the entire report the committee has prepared,” Green said.
Tentative plans call for Committee Chairman Bruce McCoy, MBC first vice president and pastor, Canaan Baptist Church, St. Louis, to provide copies of the report to all board members to read as the committee makes its presentation. It was not known at press time whether the committee’s report will be held in executive session, which is not open to the public. However, if held in executive session, some details of the confidential report and any board action associated with the report will be made public afterwards. As always, the rest of the board meeting, along with its committee meetings – scheduled for their normal starting times of 9 a.m., April 9 – are open to Missouri Southern Baptists.
According to the modified agenda released by Green, the agenda will resume its normal schedule after the investigating committee’s report, starting with the executive director’s report, the controller’s financial report, a presentation by the Legal Task Force and reports from the board’s six standing committees.
The investigative committee is the product of an Executive Board-approved motion introduced by Board Member Wesley Hammond, pastor, First Baptist Church, Paris, at the board’s Dec. 12 meeting. The motion, as passed on a 29-19 roll call vote, calls for a five-member committee “to investigate rumors affecting the character of our executive director, our Executive Board staff, our Executive Board members and the members of our convention committees, which, if true, could render some of our leaders unworthy of service; and that the committee be instructed to follow the biblical principles of discipline and reconciliation and bring back a report to the full board at our April 10 meeting.”
The committee has examined a voluminous number of documents and interviewed a plethora of people, including nearly the entire Baptist Building staff. Interviews have also been conducted throughout the state and much of the report was written by the committee over a recent four-day span.
In addition to McCoy, other board members include MBC Second Vice President Jim Cogdill, director of missions, Cape Girardeau Baptist Association; MBC Recording Secretary Lisa Albert of Hallsville Baptist Church; and two former MBC presidents, Bob Curtis, pastor, Ballwin Baptist Church, Ballwin, and Monte Shinkle, pastor, Concord Baptist Church, Jefferson City.