‘Save Our Convention’ seeks change
ST. CHARLES— A new political organization called “Save Our Convention” was unveiled by 11 Missouri Baptist pastors at a meeting at First Baptist Church, Harvester, in St. Charles on May 15, opposing “the continued power control of certain Project 1000 leaders” and promising to “halt the spread of a legalistic spirit” by the election of different leaders in the future.
The “Save Our Convention” (SOC) meeting attracted 169 people. Organizers said they will propose a new slate of officers at the annual meeting in October and may offer substitute nominations for trustees on committees and boards, consisting of persons who are “conservative but not legalistic,” coming from churches strongly supporting the Cooperative Program (CP), and who are not controlled by “political power brokers.”
Project 1000 was the name given to a strategy developed by layman Roger Moran in the late 1990s to enlist 1000 messengers to attend the annual meetings and to vote for conservative candidates for Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) leadership. Moran announced in 2003 that Project 1000 had been discontinued.
SOC leaders outlined their political strategy to enlist 1100 messengers to attend the annual meeting at Tan-Tar-A, Osage Beach, Oct. 29-31, and to vote for SOC-endorsed nominees. The plan initially involved the 11 founders each enlisting 10 persons to come to the Harvester meeting. That produced more than 110 potential messengers. If each of those 110 persons would enlist 10 more, there would be 1100 messengers to vote for SOC nominees, according to the announced plan.
SOC leaders did not announce who their candidates would be for president or other MBC officers. Some observers at the meeting speculated that the presidential candidate might be John Marshall, pastor of Second Baptist Church, Springfield, or David Sheppard, pastor of First Baptist Church, St. Charles. Marshall did not speak at the Harvester meeting but had hosted an earlier meeting on April 25 at his church, attended by the 10 other SOC organizers. Sheppard played a prominent role at the meeting on May 15, speaking three times.
The announced strategy would involve working closely with the Missouri DOM Fellowship, comprised of directors of missions from associations around the state. Pastors who agreed to recruit for SOC would be urged to enlist the maximum number of messengers allowed for each church, based on the membership size. A handout given to attendees listed the numerical goals to come from churches of varying sizes: “20 churches x 15 messengers = 300; 20 churches x 10 messengers = 200; 20 churches x 5 messengers = 100; 150 churches x 2 messengers = 300; 200 churches x 1 = 200. Total messengers: 1100.”
Organizers of the new group were listed as: John Marshall, pastor, Second Baptist Church, Springfield; Mitch Jackson, pastor, Miner Baptist Church, Sikeston; Jim Breeden, director of missions, St. Louis Metro Baptist Association; Dwight Blankenship, pastor, Parkway Baptist Church, St. Louis; Kenny Qualls, pastor, First Baptist Church, Arnold; Wes Hammond, pastor, First Baptist Church, Paris; Tom Willoughby, pastor, First Baptist Church, Eldorado Springs; David McAlpin, pastor, First Baptist Church, Harvester; David Sheppard, pastor, First Baptist Church, St. Charles; Wayne Isgriggs, pastor, First Baptist Church, Lincoln; and Lee Sanders, minister of education, First Baptist Church, O’Fallon.
Jackson was the only one of the 11 who did not attend the meeting, due to his son’s baseball playoff game.
Some organizers’ churches are among the largest in membership size and in CP giving in the state, including Arnold, O’Fallon and Second Springfield. Jackson and Qualls are both former presidents of the MBC. First Arnold was formerly pastored by Gerald Davidson, and O’Fallon was formerly pastored by Gary Taylor, both past presidents. Taylor was hired by former MBC Executive Director David Clippard to join the Executive Board staff on April 1 as state evangelism director. Hammond, Willoughby and Isgriggs are current members of the Executive Board.
Current MBC President Mike Green attended the meeting, as did David Tolliver, interim executive director of the MBC. Neither was recognized to speak to the group.
A total of seven SOC leaders spoke. Of those the primary speaker was Sheppard. He spoke about how the group of 11 initially “gathered together as friends” April 25 in impromptu fashion to discuss their concerns. Some had thought about pulling their churches out of the MBC, he said, but had decided to “stick it out” through Tan-Tar-A. Regarding the political enlistment strategy, Sheppard explained the simple math to achieve the goal. “That’s 1,100 people to go to the State Convention and to turn our Convention back around and move it back from the legalism to the center where it needs to be,” he said.
Qualls spoke about how the SOC group feels the “spirit of legalism” among the current leadership of the MBC may “lead to the destruction of the Missouri Baptist Convention and more specifically Southwest Baptist University and Hannibal-LaGrange College.”
Blankenship said the purpose of SOC is to break the power-hold that Moran and his associates have on the Convention.
Sheppard elaborated. He said Moran has too much power and control in the Convention through positions held by himself, and by a cousin, a brother-in-law and an employee. He also identified current MBC Executive Board Member Kerry Messer and former MBC Executive Board Member Cindy Province as being so close to Moran that they are almost like kin. Sheppard used the phrase “All in the Family” to describe the influence of the research group founded by Moran and Messer in the early 1990s, called “Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association.”
McAlpin rose to speak after Sheppard. He said that SOC leaders believe that the tenets of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000 should be the parameters for Baptists to come together in cooperation. He related his experience as a member of an ad hoc MBC theological study committee, made difficult because his spirit is not in step with the spirit of the other four committee members. He said the majority practices “sloppy, sloppy study” and holds “an alarming degree of insistence that we narrow and narrow and narrow our theological stream … of what is acceptable.”
Hammond gave his testimony about his experiences on the MBC Executive Board, and Willoughby did the same concerning his service on the MBC Nominating Committee.
The only person invited to speak who was not among the 11 organizers was Bruce McCoy, pastor of Canaan Baptist Church, St. Louis, and first vice president of the Convention. McCoy is also current chairman of the MBC Nominating Committee. McCoy was chairman of the Ad Hoc Investigating Committee which gave its report at the April 10 Executive Board meeting, at which Clippard was terminated by a vote of 44-7, with one abstention.
McCoy was listed on the SOC program as a testimony speaker regarding the investigating committee. McCoy told the group that he would not do that, choosing instead to speak about the Nominating Committee that he now chairs. He spoke briefly about the need for the people present to send to his committee names of good candidates for board trustees and committee members.
Breeden then delivered four summary statements about his concerns: about pastors who are tired of divisive politics; about “narrowing”; about withdrawing their CP money from the MBC; and about The Pathway.
Breeden said some church leaders and directors of missions are talking about bypassing the MBC, giving instead to associations and to the Southern Baptist Convention. “This is not only a possible new mode of giving but would greatly impact the MBC institutions in our state,” he said.
Concerning The Pathway, Breeden said the official newsjournal of the MBC has been no friend of inclusiveness and tolerance.
“There is a loss of trust in The Pathway newspaper,” he said. “A large number of Missouri Baptists believe The Pathway has fueled the current conflict by focusing on controversy, reporting events in a very biased manner and writing with inflammatory tone. The vast majority across the state believe The Pathway should work with, and not against, MBC staff. It is a sad day when Missouri Baptists trust secular papers and the Word & Way more than the official state paper.” Reporters for both The Pathway and Word & Way covered the meeting.
Sheppard was the closing speaker. He talked about how the Nominating Committee process under McCoy was the key to change. Persons who were willing to be nominated or to nominate others were urged to fill out official “Save Our Convention” response cards that were circulated in the First Harvester sanctuary.
Sheppard said the group feared an “exclusive” Nominating Committee report to the Convention produced by “that narrow group of folks that we’ve seen for the last couple of years.” If the report comes back more inclusive and positive, the SOC group will support it, Sheppard said. If not, the SOC messengers will be urged to reject it.
Some in SOC leadership hope that McCoy will at some point support a substitute report or minority report to be presented on the Convention floor.
In a handout, SOC leaders stated that SOC was not “about Calvinism, alcohol, or the Emerging Church. It is not even about the recent firing of Dr. Clippard, though we each have our own opinions of those events. However, that is over and done. It is the past. We are concerned about the future.”
“1. The continued power control of certain Project 1000 leaders and the Missouri Baptist Laymen’s Association that has led to micro-management of the Missouri Baptist Convention staff and the exclusion of many fine Missouri Baptists.
2. We are concerned about the spirit of legalism that refuses to cooperate with those who are not in total agreement and sets parameters that exceed the Baptist Faith and Message.
(In summation) we are concerned that these two forces—a political power broker machine and a spirit of legalism—will lead to the destruction of the Missouri Baptist Convention and more specifically Southwest Baptist University and Hannibal-LaGrange College.”
1. To break the power-hold that a small group has on the Missouri Baptist Convention;
2. To halt the spread of a legalistic spirit and allow for diversity of opinion on non-essentials;
3. To include all those who want to work together with the Baptist Faith and Message as our guide.
Green, the MBC president, left the meeting a little past the halfway mark when he was denied the opportunity to speak. Group leaders said they were not allowing anyone to speak, but said that Green and anyone else were welcome to come up to them after the meeting and talk individually.
Afterwards Green expressed disappointment that he was not permitted to speak and told Pathway that he would like for SOC leaders to help him understand what their definition of “positive” and “inclusive” would be regarding his nominations. Green will nominate eight people to serve on the Nominating Committee for the next three years.
Green said he welcomes input from all Missouri Baptists regarding his nominations, but he will not be controlled by any person or group. “No matter who seeks to influence my selection or my recommendation of individuals for the Nominating Committee, it simply won’t happen, because I serve all Missouri Baptists,” Green said.
All 11 leaders of “Save Our Convention” stated in the printed materials that were circulated at Harvester that they are biblical conservatives who endorsed the initial objective of Project 1000. Qualls had been a regional coordinator for Project 1000 and chaired the search committee which called Clippard as executive director. Qualls was elected MBC president with the endorsement of Project 1000 in 2002 but resigned when he was hired by Clippard to serve on the Executive Board staff, where he served until he was called as senior pastor at Arnold.
Contacted by Pathway after the meeting, Moran offered his reaction: “I have supported the political goals of all these men over the years, except for Mr. Breeden, whom I have not met. Mitch Jackson nominated me to chair the Nominating Committee when he was president in 2005, but in 2006 he tried to remove me. His wife served well on the Executive Board, and no one complained, but when two of my relatives are elected by the Convention, I am called a ‘political power broker.’ I was involved in asking David McAlpin to serve on the SBU Board of Trustees, which he now claims is in jeopardy for having legalistic trustees. What has happened in the last 12-18 months to cause these men to change to this new political strategy?
“Missouri Baptists will decide if this group is raising legitimate concerns and if our Convention needs this political group to save it.”