NAMB trustees place controls on president for greater accountability

 

ALPHARETTA – North American Mission Board trustees placed executive level controls on the agency’s president on March 23 in a move to restore accountability.

The move comes in the wake of a Feb. 16 article in The Christian Index titled “North America: Hanging in the balance.”

While trustees stated that President Bob Reccord’s job was not in jeopardy, they did initiate a six-point review system that will closely monitor his running of the $124-million agency. The new policy was announced at the end of an eight-hour closed-door meeting at the agency’s national headquarters in suburban Atlanta.

In what board members said was an unrelated development, three NAMB employees – Chief Operating Officer Chuck Allen, and employees Benj Smith and Rick Forbus – resigned.

Smith reported directly to Allen as executive director of strategic planning and Forbus reported to John Yarbrough as director of leadership initiatives. Smith developed the Next Level leadership development program under Allen’s direction several years ago. Forbus’s responsibilities included administration of the program.

Trustees spent the day debating the merits of a 19-page report commissioned by the board to investigate The Index article, which questioned the agency’s effectiveness in key areas of church planting, evangelism, and missionary recruitment and retention.

While the first nine pages of the report addressed the concerns raised by The Index, the bulk of the report focused on concerns about Reccord’s effectiveness. The executive level controls were detailed in six recommendations at the conclusion of the report, which was adopted unanimously by the 58-member board.

Such reports are not commonly shared with the public but trustees released the document with minor omissions in a rare display of openness regarding their findings. The only omissions – about six sentences– dealt with personnel issues and were deemed confidential, according to NAMB spokesman Marty King

While Board Chairman Barry Holcomb of Alabama stressed that the report showed no financial or ethical wrongdoing on the part of Reccord, it did reveal questionable spending habits and cited a lack of openness between the agency head and the trustees.

Among those spending habits:

• $142,000 for repeated use of a private corporate jet through InovaOne;

• a $700,000 loss on Elevate leadership conferences in 2004, followed by a $300,000 loss in 2005 for a total loss of $1 million;

• a $12,000 per month retainer ($75,000 paid to date) for two public relations firms when NAMB already employs two staff who are tasked with that responsibility;

• $1.4 million spent on the creation of 316 Networks by InovaOne, which has generated only $30,000 in income since its launch last fall;

• the expenditure of $1 million on the creation of a high-tech, three-dimensional Vision Center in NAMB’s lobby in 1999, which was closed four years later due to lack of use; and the spending of another $1 million to redesign the space into a high-tech, state-of-the-art conference center;

• $3,771 spent on a four-day trip to England so Reccord and his wife, Cheryl, could attend a premier of The Chronicles of Narnia.

Trustees debated whether to release the document that showed the seriousness of their findings, but Florida trustee Tim Patterson said board members decided it was best to “tell the truth and trust the people.” The best solution, he said, was to put all the facts on the table for Southern Baptists to see for themselves how the agency had been operating.

In the same press conference, Board Chairman Barry Holcomb of Alabama echoed that theme, saying the board wanted to take the high road in accepting its share of the responsibility in a lack of NAMB oversight.

 

Increased credibility

“We want the Southern Baptist Convention to know we’ve responded to the issues (outlined in the report) and because of that response we believe that you can trust what we’re doing here at NAMB,” Holcomb said.

“We want Southern Baptists to know you can trust the North American Mission Board to take your Cooperative Program dollars that you generously give through the state conventions. And you can trust us with your Annie Armstrong Easter Offering to be on mission and to do the work of God’s Kingdom.”

While fearful that the report might damage mission support in the short term, trustees felt they would gain credibility in the long term by sharing the document.

“We do not want to give the impression to anyone that we do not welcome criticism,” Holcomb told the press. “As we worked we realized, ‘Hey, this is going to make us better, this is going to make us stronger.’”

“William J. “Bill” Curtis, the group’s first vice chairman who possibly will succeed Holcomb at the next board meeting on May 2, said the governing body is “prepared to acknowledge that it is a shared responsibility for where we are at this point.

“Rather than just place all the responsibility for some of the concerns that have been raised on the shoulders of the ELT (NAMB’s Executive Leadership Team of top officers), as trustees we also acknowledge that this is a process that together we need to take ownership of and work through for the improvement of the agency and the good of the SBC.”

Curtis, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Florence, S.C., was one of the trustees who served on the eight-member task force – along with Patterson and Holcomb – who prepared the report.

 

Things that worked, things that didn't

Holcomb, pastor of Bethany Baptist Church in Adalusia, Ala., affirmed Reccord’s role as a visionary leader. But he added that the board had spent countless hours “looking at some things that worked and some things that really didn’t work” and agreeing, “we don’t want to do that again.”

The report detailed why it felt it necessary to place Reccord under the “Executive Level controls,” as they are referred to in the document.

Among those concerns are that Reccord:

• “has underdeveloped his relationships with state executives and conventions,” giving the impression of a “top down” leadership style;

• “has chosen at times to emphasize events and venues that are on the periphery of NAMB’s true mission: evangelism and church planting”;

• “has not been providing the kind of consistent oversight that is necessary on a day-to-day basis to properly manage the agency”;

• “has participated in, or presided over, some poor management decisions on a number of levels, including Elevate and InovaOne, which has cost NAMB financially and hindered the confidence that the SBC has in the agency.”

Holcomb said the board would appoint the ad hoc committee within 30 days to work with Reccord in implementing the controls. See sidebar for a complete listing of the restaints.

The Alabama pastor said Reccord told trustees “that he understands that, as president of this agency, he is under our directorship. … He said, ‘I am willing to work with the trustees in whatever parameters we need to,’ in order to address the concerns that Southern Baptists may have about the North American Mission Board.

“I don’t want to speak for him, but I think it would be all right to say he recognizes, just like all of us, that he’s not perfect and we’re not perfect, and there are certain areas that we need to improve. I think the recommendations that the board adopted today will help him. I think in that sense he is very happy to follow this process.”

Patterson said, “We did not give Dr. Reccord a pass on anything … We asked very tough, very pointed, very particular questions, because we want Southern Baptists to know that we want everything dealt with that is an issue.”

In a statement released to the press, Reccord said he was “thankful that the trustee process worked. That’s why we have such a process. While we jointly found opportunities and areas on which to strengthen and improve, I celebrate the fact that the deep and thorough financial and practices audit gave us a clean bill of health, including the status and history of our reserves.

“Where mistakes have been made, I have made a pledge to use this process to correct those errors and work with our trustees to make NAMB a stronger agency.

“Our trustees have spent a multitude of hours and much energy reviewing all the facts and now I trust that Southern Baptists will trust their trustees and these processes and that we will move on together as we focus on reaching North America for Christ,” Reccord said through the prepared text.

 

Sagging employee morale

When asked, the three trustees acknowledged a perceived fear factor among NAMB employees whenever it came to questioning the agency’s direction or operational procedures. Most commonly, workers said they felt they would be terminated if they gave any perception of being less than 100 percent loyal.

The report acknowledged the need for improving employee moral, especially in light of NAMB’s well-established history of reorganizing and terminating of staff. As a result, a protection system for employees who might be perceived by NAMB administration as “whistle blowers” might need to be put in place.

Trustee Bob Rogers, pastor of First Baptist Church of Rincon, said he was concerned about the abuses during Reccord’s nine-year tenure but is optimistic the agency has turned the corner toward being more accountable to Southern Baptists.

“I was prepared to publicly reprimand Dr. Reccord. The conflicts of interests, wasteful expenditures and his failure to ‘mind the store’ were serious mistakes. But he did admit that he had ‘feet of clay’ and he asked our forgiveness. He welcomed our recommendations for change and agreed that we need to renew our focus on missions and evangelism.

“So, I felt we should be willing to forgive. But rest assured, it was a wake-up call to us as trustees to do our job and hold the agency accountable to Southern Baptists.”

The trustees’ nine-member task force, in addition to Holcomb, Curtis and Patterson, included Georgia pastor Timothy (Tim) P. Dowdy, pastor of Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough; Larry Thomas, director of missions for the Red River Baptist Association in Heber Springs, Ark.; Terry Fox, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kan.; David Crump, pastor of Aspen Park Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Okla.; Albert (Al) Y. Kawamoto, a member of Arlington Park Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas; and Ellie Wade Ficken, a member of Vaughn Forest Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.

A copy of the 19-page report, complete with the recommendations for Executive Level controls, can be found on the Index Web site at www.christianindex.org.

 

 

Related articles and information:

NAMB issues response to Index article

NAMB trustee response to the article in The Christian Index (PDF, 19-page report)