Baptist Press and SBC clergy child sex abuse

Baptist Press, our Executive Committee's press arm, is not known for a lot of news reporting these days. I daresay that Southern Baptists get most of their religious news, indeed most of the news that includes our entities, state conventions, and other things of interest, from other sources. I suppose This merely reflects changes in the distribution of information in our society rather than demonstrates anything unique to Southern Baptists.

But one area where BP is lax has been in regard to the scandal of clergy sex abuse in our churches. With almost 50,000 individual churches and dozens of entities and organizations it is not uncommon for SBC clergy, staff, or church volunteers to be accused of the abuse of children. One reads of these incidents regularly if not frequently in Associated Baptist Press and secular outlets but very rarely in any BP stories.

These cases are ugly, a stain on all Southern Baptists, and most of all a great tragedy for those victimized. while I understand the motivation to let the secular press handle the reporting of such sordid things, I would say that in this area Baptist Press does a disservice to Southern Baptists by mostly ignoring them.

So, I was pleased to see that BP got around to doing a story on the most recent clergy sex abuse incident in an SBC church. Their story yesterday, Children's pastor charged with sex abuse, was a summary of  information "compiled by the Alabama Baptist staff" of the case of a children's minister in a Muscle Shoals, AL church arrested for child abuse. The Alabama Baptist is the state paper for the Alabama Baptist Convention. If that paper had an article on the matter, I couldn't find it.

When our Baptist news outlets ignore these highly visible and publicized cases, they convey to the public that we would rather not talk about such things. This exacerbates the impression that the SBC is less concerned about child safety in affiliated, autonomous churches than they should be. Such in an unfair impression but an understandable one.

One might ask what possible good could come from BP or state papers carrying such stories?

I believe that the reporting of such news conveys concern, provides an opportunity for education of other congregations in child protection, and gives denominational people who are knowledgeable about child protection policies and measures an inroad into our autonomous churches. I would speculate that there are many Alabama SBC churches that see some of the same things made public in this one case of clergy sex abuse. Perhaps some of these will ask for assistance in strengthening their child protection procedures and policies. Most SBC churches are small and I'd guess that most pastors are less well informed that they should be in what should be done to ensure the safety of children. State conventions surely have knowledgeable people in this area who are willing to help.

I commend Baptist Press for carrying this uncomfortable story.

Depressed pastor? Entirely predictable.

Easter is over. The big crowd is gone. The pastor has another 51 or so Sundays before he gets to the next highest, holiest Sunday. In that time it will be back to the old grind of probably a couple of sermons and at least one teaching occasion, every week...after week...after week, hospital visits, the dreaded church administration ("Pastor, what are we going to do about VBS this year? It's only three months away and I can't find any workers..."), working with perhaps recalcitrant deacons, surly staff, and the occasional (or frequent) complaint from the congregational hoi polloi.

It shouldn't be but sometimes it is rather depressing.

Take a look at a story of a few weeks ago in Associated Baptist Press f  by Jeff Brumley on clergy depression. Clergy depression is a regular subject for reporting, and certainly ought to be.

Rising stress boosts clergy depression

A few quotes:

There is a cultural expectation that our pastors have it all together and that they are the last people who are going to be depressed...

 In seeking help for severe depression, [prominent moderate Baptist pastor Stephen] Shoemaker, 64, is an example of a trend that's seeing more ministers confronting mental illness and letting their congregations know about it.

Clergy financial and sexual abuse scandals have publicly tarnished ministers, while declines in membership have added financial stresses that turn pastors into nearly full-time capital campaign managers, [Methodist minister and counselor Christopher] Carlton said.

OK, all of you who think about church revenues at least some each week (day?) raise your hand.

I thought so.

You know that when your congregation does this you call it "worry" and preach about how believers ought not to worry.

Yeah, I thought that might depress you. It's called at worst 'hypocrisy' and at best, 'willful ignorance.'

What makes this more worrisome (uh, sorry) is that credible bloggers and admired leaders either purposefully or inadvertently make it worse by maintaining the 'bullet-proof' pastoral posture (can't happen to us) or by foolishly ignoring that depression is a serious medical issue that should be treated by a physician and medication at times.

You are not bullet proof, I don't care how long you read your Bible and pray each day.

I have never experienced severe depression but I have seen plenty enough of it to have a layman's understand that it should be taken seriously.

But you go ahead and pray your way out of it or move to another church or engage in reckless behavior to compensate for it.

Oh, did I mention that every community I have ever lived and pastored in has at least one and sometimes more than one pastor suicide story. Ask, they will tell you (Oh yeah, preacher Morose shot hisself over at Hardtimes Baptist Church, and in the pastorium too).

Megachurch pastors get sabbaticals, perhaps every August off, and get sent on cruises. That might help.

You and I might try something more realistic, like going to the doctor.

God bless you. You are in my prayers.

 

Cringing at church on Mother's Day

This Sunday will be the first Mother's Day in thirty years where I have not presided over a worship service.

I'm looking forward to it.

Mother's Day at church can be a bit of a minefield. Although I read that it is one of the top attendance days of the year, there are hazards.

I don't know how widespread is the old tradition of recognizing various mothers in the service - the oldest, youngest, and one with the most kids or most kids present...stuff like that. I do know that it made for a much more relaxed Mother's Day worship service when I dropped that deal like a bad habit (come to think of it, it was a bad habit) years ago. Most of us have our anecdotes, mostly embarrassing about those recognitions.

One expects religious news outlets to offer some pre-Mother's Day stories but it was quite a surprised to read these two on the same day this week:

Remember infertility on Mother's Day

Mother's Day & the infertile

The surprise was that the first is an Associated Baptist Press story by a female associate minister in a Baptist church near me while the second is a piece by Russ Moore in Baptist Press.

The articles are almost interchangeable. Quotes from both:

What if, at the end of a service, the pastor called any person or couple who wanted prayer for children to come forward and then asked others in the congregation to gather around them and pray?

What if the church had a service to surround childless couples in blessing and prayer?

What if pastors and church leaders were to set aside a day for prayer for the infertile?

What if the church made more of an effort to integrate infertile couples into its current family ministry model?

What if the churches simply said the word “infertility” a thousand times over so it is no longer taboo?

Sometimes there is no difference between Baptist conservatives and moderates.


...and I sometimes wonder if we would all be better off to drop Mother's Day from the church calendar.

What it takes to get Baptist Press off the sidelines

Apparently, it takes a prominent state newspaper editor writing an opinion piece about calvinism (the link is to Peter Lumpkins' blog where he puts Harris' entire article, with permission).

Just a single day is all it took for Baptist Press to chase down every SBCer that Harris' mentioned in connection with his article, "The Calvinists are Here" which BP's Erin Roach wrote up in Encroachment of Calvinism' concerns editor.

I admit to being a Baptist Press watcher and reader and they seldom touch anything that is unpleasant, critical of the SBC, or uncomfortable. Don't look for much from BP on Phil Roberts' resignation as Midwestern Seminary head, for example.

But they nearly melted their rusty journalistic gears getting in action after Harris wrote this article.

I've said for years that if you want a good coverage of Baptist news, it is necessary to read Associated Baptist Press in addition to Baptist Press. You would be an ignorant SBCer if you stuck with BP only.

Gerald Harris, by the way, is editor of the Georgia state paper, The Christian Index. The Index alone has provided much of the coverage of the North American Mission Board and all of its debacles and disasters of the past decade or so.

Gerald Harris might not be a journalist, his background is as a successful pastor, and he might not be the most elegant writer, but he has seen to it that The Index does some authentic news coverage, something rare at BP.

...but it's good to see our in-house news/pr outfit with some rumblings of real journalism and reporting again.

What major SBC meeting was held in Nashville this week?

Er, ah...LifeWay had a Christmas sale? Frank Page played Santa Claus for the Executive Committee's office party?

Nope.

What happened was that several upper echelon SBC leaders met with several Baptist World Alliance reps.

You'll find this news, not at Baptist Press, but at Associated Baptist Press:
BWA, SBC leaders meet for first time since 2004.

From ABP:

Initiated by BWA General Secretary Neville Callam, the joint meeting was part of a commitment made in 2004 for continued dialogue between the two groups.

Joining Callam in the BWA delegation were John Upton, current BWA president and executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia; George Bullard, general secretary of the North American Baptist Fellowship; and Sam Chaise, general secretary of Canadian Baptist Ministries.

Representing Southern Baptists were SBC President Bryant Wright; Frank Page, president of the SBC Executive Committee; Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Page, Patterson, Wright & Mohler in the same room with BWA president et al? Sounds like a newsworthy item to me.

One might have figured that the SBC, after spending several hundred thousand on Bobby Welch's Global Ambassador position for a few years, might reassess how we relate to the world's major Baptist body. I've been one who thinks that the SBC ought to have some relationship with them. This Global Ambassador stuff through the peripatetic Welch wasn't much of a substitute, though no fault of Welch's.

They met. They had a conversation. Good.

Maybe BP will stir themselves up enough to do a piece on it...tomorrow...maybe this week...maybe this year...maybe next year?

Another strange silence from Baptist Press

Updated 11/3/11: LifeWay has added a Q & A page on Sammy Nuckolls. The page answers questions about LifeWay's relationship with Nuckolls, their policy concerning speakers, and directs any Fuge attendees who think they might have been victimized to call the police who are investigating. Nothing yet from Baptist Press.
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I don't expect Baptist Press to jump on every bit of salacious information that bubbles up around the Southern Baptist Convention but their credibility is eroded when they pass on stories that are pertinent to SBCers, to the SBC's entities, and to SBC churches.

Take for example the story of the arrest in Blytheville, Arkansas last week of evangelist Sammy Nuckolls for video voyeurism.

The local Arkansas paper reported the story last Thursday: Mississippi man accused of video voyeurism.

A prominent Baptist blogger, FBCJax Watchdog, reported the story this past Saturday: SBC Lifeway's 2011 Youth Camp Pastor Sammy Nuckolls Arrested for Filming Woman Showering in Her Own Home

Associated Baptist Press reported the story yesterday: Evangelist charged with video voyeurism .

There is a virtual flood of stories (many linked here ) from news outlets and bloggers yesterday with more to come today and this week.

Baptist Press reported...well...nothing so far.

Before one accuses ABP or the Baptist blogger of gratuitous journalistic voyeurism for delving into this, consider that the evangelist was one of LifeWay's FUGE, a big youth camp, pastors and had been involved in the camps for years. He was also popular with youth events and in churches. This makes it news of interest to SBC pastors, youth ministers, and anyone concerned about the SBC's handling of sexual offenses.

LifeWay was concerned enough to immediately scrub their online sites of the evangelist's presence.

Is not this something that Baptist Press needs to report? Other news outlets are reporting that more victims are coming forward.

I like Baptist Press. I read Baptist Press. But I don't trust Baptist Press to report all matters that are newsworthy.

In this case, I look for BP to eventually get around to reporting on this, dragged kicking and screaming to do what they should have done already.

Come on, BP, you can do better than this. We can handle bad news and may even learn from it.

Kick the Calvinist church out?

Alternate title: Associations Gone Wild!

More accurately, 'Should this Calvinist church be denied membership in the local association?'

Tom Ascol called attention to the recent case of a Calvinist church in Kentucky being denied membership in the local Baptist association for being too Calvinistic.

The Kentucky paper, Western Recorder, reports the story (though you have to get to p. 3 to read it).

Associated Baptist Press does as well.

I don't see anything from Baptist Press but maybe they will get around to considering this to be news one of these days, especially since the BP boss man, Frank Page, has listed the theological divide of Calvinism and non-Calvinism as the number one challenge confronting the SBC today.

ABP has this quote from the association:

“Our concern in the initial stages of our investigation revolved around the fact that Pleasant Valley Community Church’s confessional statement is one that (is) Calvinistic in nature,” the newspaper quoted from a recommendation by the association’s credentials committee. “It affirms the doctrine of election and grace.”

“While we know the doctrine is not heresy, we do recognize that it is vastly different than the majority of churches within the DMBA,” the statement noted.

An associational pastor who supported the church's application for membership was quoted in the Western Recorder:

“In my dealings with the pastors from this church, I experienced good fellowship (and) good cooperation. These men love the word, they preach the gospel; … they are taking the gospel
around the world,” Rager told the Western Recorder. “I didn’t see any reason they shouldn’t be in the local association— whether their theology is reformed or not. I thought they would be of great benefi t to us.”

Apparently, the brethren and sistren of the association were persuaded far more by the former than the latter. The vote against acceptance was 104-9.

The church's confession of faith is a sprawling document, more a confession plus someone's musings, that makes mention of not only the historic expressions of Calvinistic doctrine but also Mark Dever, John Piper, and Santa Claus. Perhaps the church could rename the document an annotated confession of faith with bonus commentary about this that and the other.

Baptist associations are sometimes odd things. A few bombastic pastors can wield a lot of influence and perhaps there is more to this than is reported; however, I don't see a lot of profit in keeping this church out of a local association. The church remains a member of the SBC and the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

My answer to the question posed in this blog title is, "No."

Baptist Press unleashed...or shorter leash?

Baptist Press, that venerable news outfit that we've been used to for all these decades is yet again shuffled around in the grand scheme of SBC things. You'll have to go to Associated Baptist Press to get a brief summary of the history of changes in where BP fits in the SBC organizational chart, and that's part of the problem, having to go outside of BP to find some news.

Baptist Press will do their work directed by a veteran news guy, Art Toalston, who works under two non-news guys, Roger "Sing" Oldham, Vice President for Convention Communications and ultimately Frank Page, CEO of our Executive Committee.

The change cuts some high dollar positions out of the Executive Committee staff (although two notable high dollar positions, that of Ken Hemphill and Bobby Welch, should receive scrutiny, particularly the former, if we're serious about saving a few hundred thousand here and there), which I like. But will BP thrive, improve, stay the same, or decline in this new slot?

Guess we will have to wait and see.

BP's ultimate leader, Frank Page makes it clear that there will be no micromanaging of Baptist Press, so reports Baptist Press, BP won't be micromanaged, Page says. We can be forgiven if we wait and see if he means what he says.

Baptist Press is, well, I'm not sure what. It should be the SBC’s news source but for some time it has fallen short of that. Perhaps we could call Baptist Press the SBC’s limited journalistic effort at reporting to Southern Baptists and others some news of note.

Seems to me, and I’ve read BP for decades and have gotten every news feed BP emails out for years, that you can expect BP not to cover some news that is noteworthy to the religious press because it is negative to Southern Baptists. Perhaps that is unfair. It is my subjective opinion. Recently, some people complained about BP being unfair and unbalanced in the reporting about the Great Commission Task Force the past couple of years. Perhaps.

Isn't it ironic that BP is criticized today for story selection, what to write about and what to ignore, just like it was 20 years ago when its leaders were fired because the powers that be didn't like their story selection?


Neither Page nor Oldham have journalistic experience. Both are good men. Perhaps they will do the right thing and give BP enough independence to be something other than an SBC puff publication. We've got SBC Life for that.

It remains to be seen if BP will thrive or be stifiled in this arrangement. One has to admit that while the organization chart has been changed, there isn’t much difference between Morris Chapman having BP under his authority and Frank Page.

Frank, Sing…let the guys go with the news wherever it comes from and wherever it takes us.

Frankly, I’m tired of having to read Associated Baptist Press to get stuff BP didn’t cover but should have.

Fastest route for SBC clergy to go to jail...

...might be the route taken by Tim Dillmuth, 34, a pastor at Valley Christian Church in Conway, N.H.

According to this Associated Baptist Press story, Dillmuth's crime was failing to report suspected child abuse. In New Hampshire ministers are required to report such things and Dillmuth, along with two of the church's elders, were found guilty, a misdemeanor. Sentencing is later. Jail may not be the sentence.

The pastor received the report of abuse from the victim's parents, confirmed it by speaking with the child, urged the parents to report the crime, yet did not do so himself and even told others in the church to "keep your mouth shut" about it. The pastor, several elders, and eventually others in the church knew about the abuse but police did not until a church member, with agreement by the pastor, reported it months later.

The defense presented at trial, and rejected, was that the pastor and elders acted in good faith in urging the parents to report the crime.

One wonders why any clergy, especially in New England where news about the Catholic child abuse scandals is so widespread, would not understand that child abuse in the church must be reported and cannot be handled 'in house'. It is sad that the young minister had to learn this the hard way. Reports listed the minister as an associate or youth pastor. Where was the pastor? Perhaps they didn't have one at the time.

I understand the difficulty involved when parents come to you as a minister to report suspected abuse of their child but who want to avoid the embarrassment; hence, the request to keep it quiet. Sample child protection policies for churches are virtually ubiquitous in SBC life. They all include reporting to authorities accusations of abuse.

ABP has a long history of articles on abuse and most involve SBC churches. Obviously, they think the issue is important in churches and among their readers. Baptist Press, however, is unlikely to report this or other cases like it. While I understand that our denominational news service likes good news and generally eschews stuff like this, it is likely that such news would be profitable in protecting children and educating ministers and others in SBC churches.

Predictably, the first I read of this was at Stop Baptist Predators:
Pastor told member to "keep his mouth shut". Member didn't keep his mouth shut. Pastor may go to jail.