Texas pastor Jared Wellman poised to fill top SBC staff role, continuing shift in power
A Texas pastor who has quickly risen in the ranks of the Southern Baptist Convention is poised to take the reins of one of its most influential positions.
Members of the SBC Executive Committee will meet on Monday to vote on appointing Jared Wellman as its next president and CEO.
Executive committee leaders announced the news in a Baptist Press story on Sunday ahead of the committee's special meeting on Monday. Wellman also shared the news with his church, Tate Springs Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, during a Sunday morning service.
If Wellman is appointed to the executive committee’s highest-ranking staff position, it would put to rest an 18-month interregnum period following the last president’s resignation and the appointment of an interim president.
Also, his likely appointment further signifies and cements an ongoing shift of power and influence in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
Other recent SBC news: Upcoming SBC presidential race gets competitive as Stone challenges Barber
Related: Amid sexual abuse reform, how a new guard of Southern Baptist leaders is looking ahead
"I don’t look at the Executive Committee opportunity as a job, but as a calling. I think that’s crucial," Wellman said to Baptist Press in a statement. "I'm willing to follow through with this, regardless of the outcome."
Pending his appointment, Wellman will have to resign from Tate Springs Baptist and he and his family will move to Nashville, where the executive committee is based.
The executive committee manages SBC business outside the two-day SBC annual meeting and is comprised of an 86-member board of elected officials and about 30 staff.
Wellman, who has been an executive committee member since 2015, gained notoriety as an advocate for abuse reform and transparency during a fall 2021 controversy that led the last executive committee president, Ronnie Floyd, to resign.
Last June, executive committee members elected Wellman as their chair and fellow members to other officer positions. Those new officers gained notoriety for similar reasons as Wellman.
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.
"The Executive Committee is not in need of a new vision or fresh direction, but instead a renewed commitment to the responsibilities it has already been given by our Convention of churches," Sons said to Baptist Press.
Turbulence and turnover amid abuse response
Pending his appointment, Wellman will step into a role recently marked by turbulence and turnover that has long faced scrutiny for past presidents’ response to clergy sexual abuse.
Former executive committee president Frank Page, who was in the role from 2010-2018, resigned due to a “morally inappropriate relationship.” Succeeding Page in the interim was D. August “Augie” Boto, a longtime executive committee staffer, of whom revelations have emerged about his repeated failures to address abuse in the SBC and care for survivors.
The executive committee then appointed Floyd its next president in April 2019. Floyd had previously served as SBC president, an elected position responsible for overseeing business at the SBC annual meeting, and had ties to leaders of the Conservative Resurgence, a late 20th-century movement that pulled the convention further to the right.
Floyd’s resignation followed a controversy over a third-party abuse investigation that SBC voting delegates, called messengers, approved at the 2021 SBC annual meeting. Starting in September 2021, executive committee members debated and voted on waiving attorney-client privilege for the investigation, providing investigators greater access to legal memos from the SBC’s attorneys.
Floyd and his deputy, Greg Addison, opposed waiving privilege and advised executive committee members to vote against doing so, even though it defied the will of the messengers.
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.
A series of resignations among opponents followed, including executive committee members, the SBC’s law firm, and Floyd and Addison.
Leading at this moment
After Floyd resigned, the executive committee appointed executive committee vice president Willie McLaurin as 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. There are 12 SBC entities, including seminaries, mission boards, and the Nashville-based Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is the SBC’s public policy arm.
"Over the last 14 months, the search team has diligently prayed, discussed, and worked to identify the person to best lead the SBC Executive Committee through its present challenges and into a brighter future," said Adron Robinson, executive committee member and chair of the committee's presidential search team, to Baptist Press.
"His (Wellman) humility, administrative skill and pastoral sensibilities made him a strong candidate," Robinson added.
Pending Wellman’s appointment, it will be the first time in a while since every entity had a permanent chief executive. Trustees filled similar leadership vacancies at the ERLC and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, in September and April.
Pending his appointment, Wellman will step into his new role at a pivotal moment for the SBC, first and foremost related to abuse response and reform. 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.
An SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force, which the SBC president oversees rather than the executive committee president, is working to implement a series of reforms amid pushback from some Southern Baptists.
Meanwhile, the SBC is divided over cultural issues, such as the role of women in church leadership, and financial stewardship, which are expected to stir debate at the upcoming SBC annual meeting in June in New Orleans.
Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Texas pastor Jared Wellman poised to fill top SBC staff role
