Matt Bush, FISM News
In an unprecedented outcome, the Executive Committee (EC) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted against appointing the search committee’s top candidate for president and CEO, Texas pastor Jared Wellman.
The members of the committee voted 50-31 against Wellman’s appointment after a 14-month recruitment effort. The committee’s decision means that the entire process must now start over.
In an unprecedented move, the SBC Executive Committee (EC) did not affirm the candidate nominated by the group’s Presidential Search Committee. Jared Wellman, the EC’s former chairman, did not receive the votes needed to become its next president and CEO.https://t.co/whgqtQjJ0D
— Baptist Press (@BaptistPress) May 1, 2023
The vote took place during a special- called meeting in an executive session in Dallas with 81 of 86 members present.
Since the vote was held in private, it was not immediately clear why Wellman received less than 40% of the vote, but speculation has run rampant.
Wellman’s candidacy seems to have been hung up due to three major issues, none of which seem to have anything to do with Wellman.
“Most of the concerns that we heard from the EC trustees today were not about Jared personally, were not about his qualifications, were not about his leadership,” said David Sons, current chairman of the Executive Committee. “It was more so about the process of how it came to be.”
The three major issues, according to MSN, were Wellman’s previous position as chairman of the EC, his positions on issues such as a sexual abuse reform in the SBC, and, perhaps most notably, the lack of consideration given to interim president Willie McLaurin, who was interviewed twice but been passed over for the role.
The Baptist Standard reported that Wellman quietly resigned from the EC on April 17 and recused himself from the search committee for the president on Jan. 26. However, prior to those dates, Wellman was the acting chair and a member of the search committee that “found” him as a candidate.
This perceived conflict of interest, though not one legally, and lack of transparency gave many EC members pause when it came to Wellman’s candidacy.
The former EC president, Ronnie Floyd, had ties to the Conservative Baptist Network (CBN) and was against the idea of bringing in a third-party firm to handle the huge SBC sexual abuse scandal reported by FISM in 2021. While members of the CBN wanted to handle and control the investigation, SBC leaders like Wellman believed it needed to be handled by an outside firm.
The most controversial of the three major issues involves acting president McLaurin, who is a black pastor and, according to The Christian Post, was the first African Americans to lead an SBC entity, if only on an interim basis.
The Baptist Standard reported that A.B. Vines, pastor of New Seasons Church in San Diego, Calif., recently wrote an open letter sharing the concerns he raised with the Executive Committee. In the letter, he questioned the process of nominating Wellman, but added the additional element of race as a reason for McLaurin’s failure to become president.
“We are facing a decision that could forever change our convention as we know it,” he wrote. “How come Southern Baptists always seem to have issues with hiring a person of color for a senior leadership position? When God calls us to fulfill our assignment, we must be willing to do what he asks and go where he sends us, even if it means we must work under challenging situations where it is spiritually complex.”
Vines ended by describing the difficulties of being a “person of color in this convention” and asking the EC to reject Wellman’s nomination.
In the end, Wellman thanked the EC for allowing him to serve as their chairman. The search process will start over with McLaurin continuing to lead in the interim.