June 29, 2005
By Gary D. Myers
NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Chuck Kelley and NOBTS trustee secretary Phil Hanberry signed the school’s new charter June 27. The new charter, approved by messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting, names the convention as sole member of the seminary corporation.
Don Richard, legal counsel for the seminary, filed the new charter with the Louisiana secretary of state’s office June 28. He said the papers would be processed immediately and by the end of the week the charter change should be complete.
At the 2004 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting, messengers approved a motion from the SBC Executive Committee requesting that the seminary make the convention sole member of the NOBTS corporation. NOBTS trustees complied with the request by approving a charter amendment. However, the trustees attached their reservations to the document.
While the trustee board wanted to strengthen and clarify the SBC’s ownership of NOBTS, they stated that sole membership was the wrong approach in Louisiana. Their reservations centered around the uniqueness of Louisiana law and Baptist polity concerns.
The trustees believed that the Cooperative Program could be opened to liability if the seminary named the SBC as sole member. The board also saw the move as a step away from traditional Baptist polity toward a more centralized structure.
“I believe the day will come when the SBC will regret its approval of the sole member strategy, but the messengers have spoken and we have done what was requested,” Kelley said. “The Baptist way is to speak your convictions clearly and plainly, then let the messengers vote and move on. That’s what we are going to do.”
Kelley said he was grateful that he was allowed to express the seminary’s position during the convention.
“This was possible, I am told, because Dr. Chapman gave up his annual report to the SBC,” Kelley said. “I do not recall any other meeting of the SBC in which the President of the Executive Committee did not give a report. This was a sacrifice on his part, and I am grateful to him for it.”
Kelley did express a few regrets about how the sole membership issue was handled – especially in the press.
“I regret that Baptist Press failed the test on handling a major difference of opinion between its boss, the Executive Committee, and another entity,” Kelley said.
Kelley was also disappointed that messengers were not given the opportunity to hear from the two lawyers who joined Kelley at the convention when he presented the school’s reservations to sole membership. Richard and David Bains, a seminary trustee and assistant attorney general for the state of Louisiana, have spent their careers practicing law in Louisiana. Kelley believes these men could have explained some of the state’s legal nuances concerning sole membership.
As for how the matter was handled, Kelley said he believes that the process by which SBC entities bring their proposals before the convention is “broken” and in need of repair.
“The Executive Committee was not intended to be a wall separating the messengers and Southern Baptists from the entities, but rather to be a facilitator, enhancing the interaction between the entities and the people and messengers of the SBC,” he said.
For Kelley, signing of the charter marked the end to the sole membership controversy. He said he is not discouraged by the outcome because of what is happening on the NOBTS campus.
“This issue is history now, however, and we are moving on to other things,” Kelley said. “I am extremely excited about what lies ahead for New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.”
“We have an amazing faculty that is just beginning to hit its stride and a generation of students more passionate than any I have seen in my three decades on this campus,” Kelley said. “God has already done so many miracles in this place, and I can hardly wait to see what is next.”
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