[BP], [ABP]. Sounds like my advice was a little late; as commenters at SBCOutpost note, there are hints the story was written last week. [Later: Someone reliably informed me that the date snafu was a BP technical glitch, and that the story wasn't post-dated.]

ABP blames a “scathing” report. Reccord cites a conflict over his ‘entreprenuerial’ vision, friends cite an administrator used to “free reign.” Barry Holcolmb, the chairman of NAMB’s board, says “Dr. Reccord has aptly noted that in [Southern Baptist] Convention life, entrepreneurial leadership and denominational requirements may be at odds with one another. “

“Entrepreneurial” and “denominational requirements” aren’t really at odds, and Holcomb should be concerned if he really believes they are. But “entrepreneurial” isn’t synonymous with “free reign,” at least not when you’re in charge of spending other people’s money.

The Committee’s report was hardly “scathing,” and I’m disappointed that Reccord didn’t stick it out. Denominational leadership is not a ticket into the world of landed gentry — it’s a trusteeship. Good leaders can be ‘entrepreneurial,’ and they should be compensated well for reaching goals. But ‘entrepreneurship’ is not a license to forget the line between “me” and “the mission.”  The Board’s actions seemed to be aimed at keeping the lines straight, and not killing Reccord’s ‘entrepreneurial’ vision.

ABP has published a story on Bob Reccord; some Trustees say Reccord hasn’t gotten the ‘message’ that he’s supposed to resign.

I can’t say I like this kind of message any more than I like Eugene Peterson’s.

Publicly, the Trustee have released the findings of an Investigative Committee. It’s full of reasonable, constructive criticisim. Reccord had gotten into the habit of confusing his mission with NAMB’s mission — and when subjected to review, those differences seem pretty obvious. Was NAMB helped by Reccord’s presence at the Lion the Witch and the Wardobe premier in London? Probably not. Was it helped by two PR agencies tasked with increasing Reccord’s public persona? Probably not. Was the cause of missions furthered by Reccord’s speeches at Promise Keepers? Tangentially, at best.

But it’s also true that all Reccord’s ‘offenses’ were the kind of thing that crop up when anyone starts to feel unaccountable. It is as if there is a hardwired tendency for people to prefer themselves, no matter how logically committed to other propositions. We’ve long called it “sin,” as I remember. It is foolish to think that there’s another executive out there who doesn’t have this tendency. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need boards.
Which is why my initial optimism is shifting to concern; the players are reverting to patterns that are deeply ingrained, and extraordinarily damaging, despite our collective knowledge that they don’t work.

People don’t like to be accountable, but they’re not very good when they stop answering to anyone. To generalize, leaders don’t like explaining themselves to Boards. And to generalize, Board members like to think they’ve made a good hiring decision — yet “God’s man” regualrly gets fired every two or three years in Baptist life.

And so it goes: the Board hires a leader it hopes it won’t have to supervise; the leader, unsupervised, slips toward selfishness; the Board, shocked by people acting like people, imposes restraints; leader, embarrassed by an unusual (but healthy) request for accountability, can take three roads:

• (1) Accept the criticism, and agree to rebuild trust through accountability.
• (2) Rebel against the criticism, and (a) gets fired (if the Board is strong) or (b) destroys the Board, by packing it with cronies or abolishing it.
• (3) Flee the cricisim for a more pleasant place.

The last one is the “Jonah” option, and invariably results in three or four days in the belly of a large fish. Option 2 results in hurt feelings and weakend organizations. Only the first option results in a both leader and organization growing stronger without damaging relationships. For a number of reasons, I think that approach #1 is the option that best lives out the gospel.
Baptists shouldn’t have a problem with this — but we do. Even ‘God’s man’ needs an occasional ‘check,’ to remind him that selfishness can get in the way of the institution. The problem is that Option 1 takes two. If either board or leaders stops participating, someone loses. That’s why we usually end up with one side or the other trying to win, rather than risking humiliation if the other side doesn’t reciprocate.
So, with respect to Bob Reccord, we have a chance to set a better precedent — for the SBC and for local churches. I’d like to see Reccord acknowledge that he’s taken steps that benefit him more than they benefit NAMB. And, unless there are problems we don’t know about, or serious differences in strategy, I’d like to see the Board commit to working with Reccord as God’s man who needs to be treated like a man — instead of searching for a “super-man” replacement that need to be supervised less. We can’t harbor incompetence, but I don’t sense anyone saying that Reccord’s vision isn’t the right vision.
Good governance of a good leader is a recipe for trust by Southern Baptists — anything less could damage NAMB (and the Cooperative Program) immesurably.

HT: Steve McCoy.

A group of members from Germantown Baptist Church, near Memphis, Tennessee, has started a website, www.savegbc.com, to organize opposition to a new bylaw plan.  It looks like a primary change would be investing an elder board with much of the authority formerly held by the congregation.

It looks like the primary complaint, however, is that leaders haven’t followed the procedure laid out in the current bylaws for changing the constitution — instead, they’ve submitted a substantially rewritten constitution.   I can’t comment on the merits of the proprosed changes, but it is worth pointing out that this disagreement might have been avoided through a more deliberate, careful process.   It’s unlikely that GBC’s strategy required elders at this point, so the structural change could have been debated, and the congregational policies followed.  It’s a discussion worth having in polite tones, which this group seems to be doing.

To read the news accounts, a “competing” Gospel has been uncovered, the Gospel of Judas.  It glorifies Judas as the enabler of Christ’s betrayal and resurrection; rather than being the rejected apostle, he becomes the greatest.  The ‘gospel’ was condemned
by early church fathers, but this is the first copy discovered in 1,700 years.
Reading it, I think it provides a much clearer example of why the canon is the canon, and confirms that the right decisions were made; in content and in tone, Judas is out of synce with the rest of the Bible, including the gospels.  But to hear about it on the news, you’d think it was giving Matthew, Mark, Luke and John a run for their money…

Tim Challies takes on critics of Charles Colson in his latest post; Colson claimed that much modern Christian music is written to be entertaining, and names names: “Draw Me Close to You.”  I agree with Colson and Challies that lots of ‘worship’ songs are little more than fluff.However, with little more evidence than my own eyes and ears, I’m hopeful that we’ve hit a low-point in terms of lyrics.  The trend among worship writers seems to be to describe the attributes of God, rather than the feelings God stirs up in men and women.   A lot of this seems to stem from the musicians associated with the Passion conferences — or maybe that’s just what churches around here are playing.  In any event, the change strikes me as for the better –  the attributes seem a little more objective, at least compared to the feelings we often misinterpret…