Resolutions Committee revisions to be presented at SBC meeting
by Art Toalston Vol. XV, No. 3, March 2002
New procedures relating to the Resolutions Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention will be recommended during the June 11-12 SBC annual meeting in St. Louis. Among the proposed changes approved during the SBC Executive Committee's Feb. 18-19 sessions in Nashville:
-- The Resolutions Committee will be selected 75 days prior to the SBC annual meeting, instead of the current 45 days.
-- Proposed resolutions may be submitted as early as April 15 but no later than 15 days prior to the SBC annual meeting, giving the Resolutions Committee a two-week period in which to consider submissions. No resolutions could be submitted during the annual meeting.
-- Proposed resolutions must be accompanied by a letter from a church qualified to send a messenger to the SBC annual meeting certifying that the individual submitting the resolution is a member in good standing.
-- Proposed resolutions preferably would be submitted by e-mail or mailed to the Resolutions Committee in care of the SBC Executive Committee. The drafts must be typewritten, titled, dated and include complete contact information for the person and his or her church.
-- No person will be allowed to submit more than three resolutions per year.
-- If a properly submitted resolution is not forwarded by the Resolutions Committee to the SBC annual meeting, the author could seek a two-thirds vote of messengers to bring the proposed resolution to the convention floor.
-- The 10-member Resolutions Committee would include at least two members who were members of the previous year's committee.
Several facets of the proposed changes were noted to Executive Committee members prior to their unanimous voice vote. Jim Butler, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church, Southaven, MS, and a member of the Executive Committee's administrative subcommittee, said the proposed changes will give the Resolutions Committee a longer time frame in which to deal with resolutions. Under the current process, he said, "you only have a few hours and a few days -- it's really a crunch time -- and sometimes you don't have the opportunity to deal with and pray over and think through resolutions as much as you would like."
Additionally, the new process "gives the people who submit resolutions a longer period of time" to draft well-thought-out proposed stances for the SBC, Butler said. And, he noted, "At present, there is no continuity at all" on the Resolutions Committee. "Each year there's a brand new group of 10 people who meet. They have no idea of the mindset or the rationale of the previous committee."
Butler noted there will be no change in the Resolutions Committee's required reporting in the Convention Bulletin on its actions related to all resolutions properly submitted for consideration.
Bill Merrell, the Executive Committee's vice president for convention relations, also reacted positively to the recommended changes. "Having served now for six years as staff liaison to the Resolutions Committee, I can say by experience that a recurrent concern has been the limited time the committee has to deal with resolutions that are submitted from the floor. It had become very nearly a practical impossibility to give due consideration to resolutions that were submitted during the annual meeting, if the committee had had no prior opportunity for research or reflection."
Merrell also noted, "As it stands now, resolutions can only be submitted by messengers in person at the annual meeting, and during a five-hour window. But under the proposal, it would be possible for any Southern Baptist in good standing in his local church to submit resolution proposals over the several months prior to the convention. They will also be able to watch the proceedings over the Internet to see how messengers respond to their suggestions without actually attending."
Merrell also noted that there are other aspects of the changes that shift more power to the people. "Formerly, the established practice of the convention was to grant the Resolutions Committee authority over which resolutions were to be acted on by the messengers," he said. "The suggested amendments modify that authority by specifying that the convention can by a two-thirds vote require the committee to report out a particular resolution. While we believe that such an action would probably be rare, formerly there was no provision for that kind of review. Under the proposal, there would be a specific mechanism should the messengers agree in sufficient numbers that the committee has erred.
"If the changes are adopted, we would naturally expect to discover additional adjustments that would have to be made to address unanticipated problems," Merrell said. "But in assessing those adjustments we would want to stick with the overarching goals of providing more access by our people, more time for the Resolutions Committee to produce and present quality resolutions to the convention, and a greater comprehension by the world at large of who we are, the God we serve, and how wonderful He is."
Among other business during their two-day meeting, Executive Committee members:
-- approved, with no fanfare, the creation of an SBC Funding Study Committee "in light of the financial challenges to the seminaries," stemming in part from more than $4 million in cutbacks enacted last year by the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The committee, whose members were not announced Feb. 19, is to present a report at the Executive Committee's Sept. 16-17 meeting.
-- approved the selection of Nashville, TN, for the 2005 SBC annual meeting on June 21-22 and Greensboro, NC, for the 2006 annual meeting on June 13-14.
-- approved a recommendation to the SBC annual meeting of $176,962,402 as the Southern Baptist Convention Cooperative Program Allocation Budget for the 2002-03 fiscal year. [BP]
[Editorial Comment: The bad news is that messengers will no longer be able to propose resolutions during the convention. The good news is that every Southern Baptist will be able to submit a resolution if he wishes, that the committee will have time to pray and think through its decisions, and that messengers at the convention will be able to override the committee. All in all, these changes will make for a much more orderly, thoughtful, and democratic process. TCP]