October 27, 1999
Midwestern appoints search committee
___KANSAS CITY, Mo.--Trustees of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary last week appointed a presidential search committee, approved a $40,000 severance package for the president they fired last month and heard an message from the interim president that the seminary's present difficulties are "miniscule" in comparison to life's greater challenges of life and death.
___Trustees also debated, disagreed over and ultimately did not act on a proposed plan to regulate communication between trustees and faculty as well as trustees and the news media.
___ The presidential search committee was appointed in a different manner than the trustee executive committee proposed. The committee's original proposal was for the seven-member committee to be chair by the current board chairman and include at least two other members of the executive committee.
___ Trustee Ken Barnett of Colorado instead proposed that the search committee be drawn from the full board. His motion approved. In the end, however, four of the seven search committee members elected proved to be executive committee members.
___ Some tension has existed between the full board and the executive committee since the executive committee attempted to handle charges of "misappropriation of anger" by President Mark Coppenger. After some trustees were displeased with the way the executive committee handled the situation, a full board meeting was called at which Coppenger was terminated.
___ Members of the search committee are Carl Weiser, chairman, a pastor from Lynchburg, Va.; Reagan Bradford, a physician from Edmond, Okla.; Loretta Bringer, a finance company manager from Maywood, Mo.; Conrad "Buster" Brown, a pastor from Mount Pleasant, S.C.; William Hatfield, a pastor from Dierks, Ark.; John E. Marshall, a pastor from Springfield, Mo.; and Dennis Wood, a pastor from Tempe, Ariz.
___ Gwen Newman, a homemaker and minister's wife from Winder, Ga., will serve as alternate.
___ Recommendations to the search committee may be directed to Weiser at Rt. 4 Box 25, 314 Crestview, Rustburg, Va. 24588.
___ The proposed policy on trustee communications was offered by Weiser. After more than an hour of debate, Weiser offered to restudy the issue with further trustee input.
___ Weiser had proposed channeling requests for information by trustees through the board chairman who then would contact the president as well as making the chairman the only board member authorized to speak with news media. Violations of these directives could result in removal from the board, according to his proposal.
___ Barnett, the Colorado trustee, was one of several to speak against the proposal. "I don't like gags and muzzles," he said. "I haven't lost my freedom of speech to come over here."
___ In other business, trustees approved a severance package for Coppenger which includes payments totaling $40,000. That total includes payments through Jan. 15 and moving expenses. Coppenger also was given a laptop computer and health and dental insurance through March.
___ Trustees also learned from Interim President Michael Whitehead that on-campus enrollment is down, although a specific figure for on-campus enrollment was not cited in a seminary news release. Although the seminary's overall student head count is up 11 percent this fall, the measure of full-time equivalents is down, Whitehead said.
___ FTEs are the primary figure used as a common measure between seminaries and are calcuated by dividing the total number of class hours students are taking by the number of hours constituting a full-time class load.
___ FTEs at Midwestern are down about 10 percent, Whitehead said.
___ In addition to reporting on this year's enrollment, Whitehead said the FTE report for the previous year had been corrected due to "computer errors and human errors." The earlier report of 380 FTEs has been corrected to be 326 for the previous year.
___ In an address to trustees, Whitehead said recent events at the seminary have been painful but "we have nothing to cry about."
___ "Every department and every division now has a stalwart inerrantist teaching that every word of God's Scripture is true and infallible," he said. The school has "never been stronger, more poised for power in preaching the truth of God's inerrant word."
___ The pain of the seminary's difficult days pales in comparison to the trauma experienced by individual trustees who recently have lost loved ones, he added. "God puts some things back in perspective for us in those events."
___ Based on Baptist Press reports
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