Three NAMB administrators leave
due to Baptist Faith & Message
___By Steve DeVane
___North Carolina Biblical Recorder
___ATLANTA--Three North American Mission Board administrators have left the agency over disagreements with the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message.
___Gerry Hutchinson, Denoso Escobar and George Pickle have left the board "because they said they could not do their ministries in accordance with the Baptist Faith & Message," according to NAMB spokesman Martin King.
___Hutchinson was head of church and community ministries evangelism. Escobar was an associate in that department. Pickle was a chaplaincy evangelism associate. All three were longtime employees of NAMB, and two had been employees of NAMB's predecessor, the Home Mission Board.
___Hutchinson resigned effective July 31. Escobar and Pickle took early retirement.
___King said NAMB's professional and management employees, who make up about half the agency's 425 national staff, were given a copy of the revised Baptist Faith & Message to review in late May or early June. The employees then were given a two-part document, he said.
___The first part contained a statement that the employee had read and agreed with the 2000 version of the Baptist Faith & Message. If the employee said "no," he or she had to explain why.
___The employees then were asked to sign the second part of the document, promising to carry out their responsibilities "in accordance with and not contrary to" the current edition of the Baptist Faith & Message.
___King said it was possible for an employee to say "no" on the first part, as long as their differences with the Baptist Faith & Message were minor and they signed the second part.
___Hutchinson, Escobar and Pickle would not sign the second part, King said.
___"They said they couldn't work according to the guidelines of the Southern Baptist Convention," he said.
___King said NAMB sees the faith statement as guidance for SBC agencies but not as a creed.
___"That's different from a creed, which is forced on a local church, an association or a state convention," he said. "A local church is autonomous from the Southern Baptist Convention, but the agencies are not. They are owned by the Southern Baptist Convention."
___Hutchinson said he told his supervisors why he could not sign. He said he objects to three parts of the revised Baptist Faith & Message:
___ The removal of the statement that says Jesus is the criterion by which Scripture should be interpreted.
___ The inclusion of what Hutchinson called "one-way submission" in the amendment on the family that calls for wives to submit graciously to their husbands. "I favor mutual submission as referenced in Ephesians 5:21," he said.
___ The prohibition against women pastors in the paragraph on the church.
___Hutchinson said he discussed the issues with his supervisors, and they "agreed to disagree." But he chose to resign.
___"I could not look myself in the face in the morning if I signed the Baptist Faith & Message just to keep a job," he said.
___Hutchinson said he had affirmed the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith & Message five times during his 20 years with NAMB and the HMB, the last being in 1994.
___"With the changes that occurred in 1998 and 2000, I could no longer do that," he said.
___Pickle could not be reached for comment.
___Escobar said he decided to take early retirement effective Aug. 1, but he would not say if he left rather than sign the Baptist Faith & Message.
___"I wish I could discuss that with you, but part of my agreement allowing me to take early retirement was that I was not going to discuss publicly the reasons other than I was taking early retirement," Escobar said.
___King said he did not know the specific conditions of the retirement agreements.
___But he suggested it's "not unusual to have an agreement that we won't speak critically of one another."
___In recent years, a number of employees who have negotiated departures or early retirements from SBC agencies and seminaries have been unable to discuss the conditions of their termination due to such legal requirements.
___King called the three men "good employees, brothers in Christ."
___"It's sad for us that they've left, but they're the ones who made the determination that they couldn't conduct their ministries in accordance with guidelines set down by the owners of the agency, the Southern Baptist Convention," he said.
___NAMB missionaries are asked to affirm the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message during the application process, King said.
___"We have not gone back to the mission force of 5,000 and asked them to reaffirm the current Baptist Faith and Message," he said.
___However, chaplains receiving endorsement through NAMB are required to affirm the new Baptist Faith & Message when their endorsements come up for periodic renewals. Problems created by this requirement were cited in the report of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Missions-sending Agencies Study Committee report this year.
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