UPDATE: In 50-31 vote, SBC Executive Committee rejects Wellman’s nomination. Read more here.
Wellman to be nominated as SBC Executive Committee president
NASHVILLE – Jared Wellman will be nominated to serve as EC president/CEO in a special called meeting in Dallas on today (May 1) at noon, Baptist Press (BP) reported, April 30.
“Wellman, 39, is the pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas,” the BP report says. “He served as a member of the EC from 2015-2023, serving as chairman from June 2022. He stepped down from the EC in a confidential letter to EC officers on April 17, according to newly named chairman David Sons. The full body was made aware in a confidential communication on April 19, Sons told Baptist Press.
Jared Wellman
“It was also in that email that the full body was made aware of Wellman’s selection as the presidential candidate. Sons said it was kept confidential among EC trustees “to give Jared the opportunity to inform his church of his candidacy when he could do so in person.”
“Wellman informed the church of his candidacy today (Apr. 30), according to Sons.
“Wellman also served on the presidential search team as an ex-officio member until he recused himself on Jan. 26, Sons said.”
According to BP, Wellman was the first EC member to make a motion in 2021 for the EC to waive attorney-client privilege. His motion was defeated but members voted to waive privilege weeks later.
Read the complete Baptist Press article here.
Wellman’s nomination questioned
Chris Turner and Lonnie Wilkey, news staff with the Tennessee Baptist and Reflector, questioned Wellman’s nomination in an April 29th article.
“Wellman will be put forward as the EC’s sole candidate,” they wrote. “The announcement of a candidate finally comes after more than a year-long process conducted by the EC’s appointed presidential search committee, a committee on which Wellman served as an ex officio member since being named EC board chair last June.
“However, Wellman is not the issue here. He seems like a likeable enough person. It’s the EC’s process over the past three months leading up to Wellman’s selection that comes with a large helping of speculation about the integrity of the search process, his candidacy and the possibility of his being named the EC’s new leader.
“Questions linger, such as:
“Why was interim president Willie McLaurin disqualified when as recently as February’s EC board meeting, Adron Robinson, chair of the EC search committee, told The Baptist Paper, that McLaurin remains “a viable candidate” for the position?
“And why shortly after Robinson’s statement did Wellman recuse himself from serving any longer as a voting ex officio member of the search committee to become a candidate (after participating in the interviews of other candidates for at least eight months)?
“And why did the EC’s full board not know of Wellman’s recusal until weeks after it happened?
“And why did Wellman resign as EC board chair approximately two weeks prior to Monday’s vote that potentially affirms him as EC president?
“And why didn’t Baptist Press report his resignation when it happened? Surely the resignation of the EC’s chair would be big news across the denomination since the EC has been at the epicenter of SBC news for at least the past three years.
“And why haven’t Southern Baptists been informed about any of these developments as they occurred by the denomination’s news agency?
“And then there are questions about McLaurin. Why does a man with vast leadership experience and an exemplary record as an Army intelligence officer, a pastor, a state convention ministry specialist, a special assistant to Tennessee’s state mission board executive director, a vice president of the EC, and an interim EC president get passed over?
“And how is Wellman – or any other candidate, past or present – any more professionally or spiritually qualified than McLaurin to hold the position?
“And what expectation has McLaurin failed to reach while serving as interim EC president for more than a year? Before his tenure as interim president began, the EC was a public relations nightmare. During his tenure, McLaurin has been well-received in a diversity of churches across the Southern Baptist Convention preaching a message of unity through the gospel and a call for a cooperative effort for the sake of advancing the Great Commission.”
Turner and Wilkey added, “The process by the EC presidential search committee leaves the impression that a fix was in, a deal was brokered, and Wellman slid into the catbird seat before, during or shortly after the EC’s February 2023 board meeting. That’s the perception, and unfortunately Southern Baptists have no real information about the process to inform them otherwise.”
Read Turner and Wilkey’s full article here.
A.B. Vines raises concerns in open letter
Wilkey and Turner haven’t been alone in raising questions about the process followed by the EC presidential search committee, according to an April 30th report from The Baptist Paper.
The Baptist Paper reports:
A.B. Vines Sr., pastor of New Seasons Church in San Diego, California, recently shared through an open letter the concerns he raised with the EC through an email he reports he sent to members March 10.
Vines, a former SBC first vice president and former president of the California Southern Baptist State Convention, also previously served as president of the National African American Fellowship of the SBC.
“We are facing a decision that could forever change our convention as we know it,” he wrote in the recent open letter to EC members.
Raising concerns about the search process leading to Wellman’s nomination for EC president, Vines asks EC members to question how a closed application portal was reopened privately but not publicly and how an ex-officio member of the committee gets an interview in the process he helped develop.
Other questions Vines noted revolve around whether EC staff members were involved in discussing the hiring of a new leader. “Who was feeding all these (alleged) staff issues to the committee? What was that person’s agenda in the first place when giving information to the committee?
“Why was the current interim expected to cast vision for the staff while serving in a temporary assignment?”
To read the full report from The Baptist Paper, click here.