SBC Executive Committee president vote fails in unexpected outcome, restarting process
Members of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee voted against appointing its top candidate for president and CEO, a dramatic and unexpected outcome in the selection of one of the denomination’s leading positions.
The members voted 31-50 on Monday against Texas pastor Jared Wellman taking up the executive committee’s highest-ranking staff position following a 14-month recruitment effort, automatically requiring the process to restart.
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It means that interim president Willie McLaurin will continue to oversee day-to-day operations for the executive committee in Nashville. The committee is comprised of an elected board of 86 members and about 30 staff and manages denomination business outside the SBC annual meeting in June.
It also foreshadows ongoing debate about which figures in the SBC, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, and their allies will assume the convention’s most influential roles.
“It’s been one of the greatest honors of my life serving Southern Baptist on the EC,” Wellman said on Twitter after the vote. “My prayers are with the EC. I’ll always cherish getting to serve.”
The reason why 50 executive committee members voted against Wellman, who was considered a popular candidate among many committee members, wasn’t immediately clear after the vote. The executive committee members voted on Wellman’s appointment in an executive session during a special meeting on Monday in Dallas.
Wellman, pastor of Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, has been an executive committee member since 2015. In June, his fellow members elected him chairman, which oversees the executive committee’s meetings. The executive committee members meet three times a year.
Two weeks ago, Wellman stepped down from chair of the executive committee in a confidential letter to his fellow officers, according to Baptist Press. The vice chair, South Carolina pastor David Sons, has since assumed the chairmanship.
Sons addressed the public at a news conference early Monday evening and alluded to executive committee members’ division over 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,” Sons said. “It was more so about the process of how it came to be.”
Previous steps and next steps
The process to select a new president and CEO started in the fall 2021 when the last executive committee president, Ronnie Floyd, resigned over a controversy related to an abuse investigation.
After Floyd resigned, the executive committee appointed Willie McLaurin, then an executive committee vice president, interim president while a presidential search team recruited a replacement. McLaurin, a former Tennessee pastor, made history as the first African American to lead an SBC entity, or agencies that oversee various SBC ministries.
While McLaurin served in the interim, executive committee members created a presidential search team in February 2022 to recruit candidates and select a finalist.
Ahead of Monday’s vote, some Southern Baptists expressed concern about Wellman’s nomination related to his position as executive committee chairman. The chairman holds an ex officio seat on the presidential search team.
The Tennessee SBC newspaper published an editorial on Saturday against Wellman’s election, saying the process to nominate him “should have been done much more transparently and publicly.”
Sons said at Monday’s news conference that Wellman became a candidate for the position in January and as a result recused himself from the presidential search team.
“Jared’s participation in the process previously did not create a conflict of interest,” said Sons, noting there has been precedent in the SBC for presidential search teams considering candidates who were previously members of those search teams.
Other criticisms ahead of Monday’s vote were related to Wellman’s previous positions on certain issues, such as abuse reform, and the lack of consideration for McLaurin. The latter was raised by two prominent Black pastors in the SBC, A.B. Vines of California and Dwight McKissic of Texas, who advocated for a permanent appointment of a person of color to head the executive committee.
On whether political divides play a part, Sons said Monday, “It’s hard for me to speculate on what factors may have led to trustees (members) decisions.”
Floyd, the last executive committee president, had ties to leaders of the Conservative Resurgence, a late 20th Century movement that pulled the denomination further to the right. The present-day successors of the Conservative Resurgence, an advocacy group called the Conservative Baptist Network, have criticized Wellman for his stance on abuse reform.
Wellman saw his profile rise during the fall 2021 controversy that led to Floyd’s resignation over waiving attorney-client privilege for a third-party firm as part of an abuse investigation into the SBC, providing investigators greater access to legal memos from the SBC’s attorneys.
Floyd opposed waiving privilege and advised executive committee members to vote against doing so. After three attempts drawn out through a series of special meetings, a majority of executive committee members voted to waive privilege. Wellman in many ways led that charge, introducing the motion to waive privilege in each of those three votes.
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Whether the vote against Wellman’s appointment is a factor, political divisions in the SBC are expected to continue in June at the SBC annual meeting in New Orleans. A leader with the Conservative Baptist Network, Georgia pastor Mike Stone, is challenging SBC President Bart Barber, who is running for reelection. Also, there will be a major debate over women pastors.
Meanwhile, McLaurin will continue to oversee executive committee during a pivotal moment for the organization. The SBC and its SBC Executive Committee are defendants in several high-profile lawsuits, some from abuse survivors and others from people accused of abuse, and the Department of Justice is investigating the convention for abuse.
Sons said at Monday's news conference, "I am personally disappointed in the outcome of today but hopeful."
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: SBC Executive Committee president vote fails in unexpected outcome
