August 19, 2002
CBF official offered to quit after plagiarism reported
___By Bob Allen
___Associated Baptist Press
___ATLANTA (ABP)--An official of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship who says she unwittingly plagiarized a sermon at a national meeting in Fort Worth this summer says she offered to resign her post afterward but received encouragement to stay on from CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal.
___Reba Cobb, the second-highest-ranking executive at the Atlanta-based CBF, said she relied on a research assistant and didn't know that a sermon she preached at a Baptist Women in Ministry meeting June 27 had been copied, without attribution, from a published sermon by a United Methodist minister.
___According to an Aug. 10 column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Cobb recently told religion writer Jim Jones she offered to resign from her position as CBF resource center coordinator but received strong backing from Vestal.
___"I'm so disappointed with myself," Cobb told Jones. "My love and my heart is the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Baptist Women in Ministry. For me to do anything to hurt those two organizations is painful to me."
___Cobb, a founding member of Baptist Women in Ministry, was the featured preacher at the group's annual breakfast, held in conjunction with the CBF general assembly in Fort Worth.
___Baptist Press first reported similarities between Cobb's sermon and a message with the same title and text written in 1979 by David Owen, a Methodist minister in Indianapolis.
___Cobb told the Star-Telegram she normally writes her own sermons but pressure from planning the CBF annual gathering caused her to seek help from a research assistant.
___"I accept full responsibility for it," Cobb said. "I stood up there and preached it."
___Vestal confirmed in an interview that Cobb offered to step down "as soon as she discovered what had happened." He said she remained "persistent" in that offer until leaving for a three-week vacation after the general assembly.
___Vestal issued a statement in July acknowledging that Cobb made a "mistake" but had "accepted her responsibility and admitted an error in judgment."
___Asked why he didn't include in his initial statement the fact that Cobb had offered to resign, Vestal said he considered the relationship between a worker and her supervisor confidential.
___"I didn't feel it was necessary to tell everything--all the dynamics--that was going on," he said.
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