May 21, 2001

Guidelines of Missouri nominating committee questioned
___JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.--An effort by the Missouri Baptist Convention's nominating committee to impose new guidelines on who may serve as trustees of the state convention's agencies and institutions has been questioned by the convention's executive director.
___Meanwhile, the chairman of the nominating committee has explained his goal is to end the "good old boys' network" he believes has controlled the convention in the past.
___In April, the nominating committee announced adoption of three new guidelines to be used in selecting individuals for service on convention boards and committees. According to the new rules:
___ No individual may serve on more than one board or committee at the same time.
___ No church may have more than two members serving on Missouri Baptist Convention boards or committees at the same time.
___ All nominees for election or re-election must be fully supportive of the state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention.
___None of these guidelines has been approved by convention messengers in annual session. And that's the concern of Jim Hill, executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention. A front-page article in the May 3 Word & Way newspaper quoted Hill as questioning the validity of the committee's guidelines since they have not received convention approval.
___Under the committee's guidelines, Hill warned, the nominating committee has granted itself the authority to remove trustees from agency boards who were elected to those posts by the full convention.
___The nominating committee is preparing to remove duly elected trustees who are eligible to serve second terms according to convention bylaws, Hill said.
___"I do not believe it is appropriate for the nominating committee to utilize rules that have not been approved by the convention, and I believe their decision to do so will widen the division in our convention," he explained.
___"My conviction is that the rules are an effort to accelerate a political process at work within our convention," he told Word & Way. "By their decision not to renominate individuals eligible for a second term of service, the nominating committee is able to create additional vacancies for new trustees."
___The chairman of the nominating committee defended the committee's work in a separate article in the same issue of Word & Way. He denied the guidelines are politically motivated.
___Recent victories by an effort called Project 1000 have given fundamentalists control of the nominating committee, a fact chairman Jeff Purvis acknowledged. "A lot of folks have been fearful of us being in control of the nominating committee."
___However, his goal is "to make sure in the future that we will not be accused of being guilty of what has been done in the past 30 years--a good old boys' network that kept rotating the same people" from board to board.
___The nominating committee will "flat out ask" nominees for election or re-election if they support "the direction the Missouri Baptist Convention and Southern Baptist Convention are going," Purvis said.
___As with all state Baptist conventions, the Missouri Baptist Convention and SBC both are autonomous bodies with no direct link other than a voluntary agreement to cooperate in missions and ministry.

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