NEW ORLEANS (RNS) - Trustees of New Orleans Seminary agreed Oct. 13 to amend the terms of the Southern Baptist Convention's ownership of the school, but not without misgivings they want to share with other Baptists before the whole convention makes a final decision at its annual meeting next summer.

Trustees agreed to charter changes that would give the convention "sole membership," in the language of corporate law, in its ownership of the 3,700-student seminary.

The seminary will file the changes with Louisiana authorities if they are approved by messengers from the nation's largest Protestant denomination when they meet in Nashville, Tenn., next summer.

Meanwhile, the seminary's leadership will mount a public campaign against the change in Baptist newspapers throughout the country, president Chuck Kelley said.

"Before the typical messenger gets to the convention, they will have seen both sides," he said.

The trustees' decision came after more than a year of increasingly strained discussions between the seminary and the convention's powerful executive committee, which has pushed for the change.

The executive committee believes "sole membership" best insulates the whole convention from lawsuits against the school, while also tying it securely to the convention so its trustees cannot liberalize it against the convention's wishes.

The convention has asked, and secured, similar changes from all its agencies and other seminaries, leaving the New Orleans seminary the only holdout.

But the seminary maintains that peculiarities in Louisiana law do not provide the wished-for financial insulation, Kelley said. Perhaps more important, the trustees say that granting the convention sole membership would give the executive committee a measure of influence over the seminary that violates the way that famously democratic Southern Baptists like to distribute power, Kelley said.