By Will Hall, Message Executive Editor
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (LBM)—The Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention formed a task force, Feb. 18, and charged it to investigate “past and present activities” of the Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission relating to “whether the actions of the Commission and its leadership are affecting Cooperative Program giving or the further advancement of the Cooperative Program.”
It is the second time the ERLC, under the leadership of its president, Russ Moore, has come under fire in the last four years.
In February 2017, the Executive Committee set up two investigative panels to study the ERLC after dozens of congregations either withheld funds to the SBC or left the SBC altogether after Moore made harsh comments about President Trump and his supporters. Among the prominent congregations that escrowed money was the historic Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, which withheld about $1 million in cooperative ministry funds. Meanwhile, only months earlier, during its 2016 annual meeting, the Louisiana Baptist Convention voted to set up study of its own regarding the ERLC “with regard to issues of concern to Louisiana Baptists.”
Moore apologized in March 2017; Prestonwood released its funds shortly thereafter; the Louisiana Baptist Convention issued a letter of firm counsel to the ERLC with a pledge “to pray”; and the SBC ad hoc panel closed out its investigation in September without recommending any corrective measures.
Mike Stone, pastor of Emmanual Baptist Church in Blackshear, Georgia, and chair of the SBC Executive Committee, did not indicate what had transpired since 2017 — when 75 congregations withheld financial gifts and another 49 churches dropped out of the SBC — to cause the SBC EC to take on another investigation.
Stone simply said the 2020 task force will be “looking for the facts” and that six other EC members would join him to complete the membership of that investigative panel.
