A year after personnel issues at the executive level of the South Carolina Baptist Convention were aired in an open forum during the Executive Board’s 2010 spring meeting, the first step has been taken to write a policy to resolve issues at that level in the Baptist building.
The Executive Board, which met in executive session April 11 at White Oak Conference Center for this year’s spring meeting, approved the immediate creation of an interim executive personnel committee to formulate the SCBC’s first guidelines for dealing with personnel matters at the top level of the convention structure.
The assignment for the interim committee – which consists of the state convention president, the chairman of the Executive Board and chairman and vice chairman of the board’s administrative committee – includes oversight of the performance of SCBC executive director-treasurer Jim Austin until a policy recommendation is brought to the Executive Board.
“The process of looking into the issues at the executive level this past year represented new territory at every step,” said Executive Board chairman Keith Davis in a statement to The Baptist Courier. The pastor of Zion Hill Church in Spartanburg added, “The truth is, there are no written procedures in place to examine personnel issues at that level. Recognizing this need, we will develop procedures that will assist the Executive Board in the future.”
At last year’s April meeting, the agenda of the Executive Board included a rare open question-and-answer session to bring to the surface what was described then as an “undercurrent” of concern on the part of former Baptist building employees related to grievances linked to the executive director-treasurer.
At that time, the Executive Board approved measures to clarify and communicate the process available to Baptist building employees to file grievances, and called for Executive Board members to conduct listening sessions with employees to “hear both affirmations about the way the convention is going and concerns people have,” according to Ed Carney, pastor of Riverland Hills Church in Irmo and then chairman of the Executive Board.
In September 2010, the Executive Board, in a called executive session at Riverland Hills Church, heard a report on the listening sessions and assigned the board’s administrative committee the task of “developing a plan of action and reporting back” to the Executive Board.”
Carney described the convention as “divided” at that time, referring to South Carolina Baptists who are “struggling with our current leadership” and “those who aren’t.”
At the October meeting of the Executive Board, the administrative committee cited “issues which demand our attention” and referred the matter to a subcommittee for further study and to “monitor our executive director’s progress,” and to report back to the full board.
In a statement to the Courier after the executive session on April 11, Davis said the report brought to the Executive Board by the subcommittee, based on its research, “revealed affirmation of Dr. Austin’s Christian character and integrity from both supporters and detractors.”
The subcommittee’s report indicated that Austin had been given “several specifics” to be addressed – including strengthening communication with the convention staff, institution heads and Southern Baptists across the state – and that his progress in these areas had been “monitored since January,” and that “Dr. Austin has been very agreeable and willing to do whatever we recommended.”
“The Executive Board desires to see God at work through his people across our state,” Davis said in a statement. “There are many good things happening through the work of the state convention, and we want to affirm those things. We applaud every effort by our convention and its leadership to see God’s kingdom work advanced.”