Southern Baptist Mission Board to Drop Plan Dumping Critical Member

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Trustees of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board have decided to drop a plan seeking the ouster of a fellow board member who criticized a policy prohibiting speaking in tongues. Board Chairman Tom Hatley announced Thursday (Feb. 16) that he intends to ask trustees at their March meeting […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Trustees of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board have decided to drop a plan seeking the ouster of a fellow board member who criticized a policy prohibiting speaking in tongues.

Board Chairman Tom Hatley announced Thursday (Feb. 16) that he intends to ask trustees at their March meeting to reverse their motion seeking the removal of the Rev. Wade Burleson, an Oklahoma pastor who differed with recent policies the board enacted.


The move came after executive committee members of the board met on Feb. 10 in Atlanta to review their planned action against Burleson.

“We have determined that we have the ability to seek management of these issues through internal processes that were not known during our January meeting,” Hatley said in a statement. “We have never reached this stage of conflict before and did not know of all our options until recently.”

If trustees agree at their March 20-22 meeting in Tampa, Fla., Burleson’s ouster would no longer be requested at the annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. That will occur in June in Greensboro, N.C. Such decisions must be made by the messengers, or delegates, to the Greensboro meeting, not by the mission board.

Burleson, who has criticized the board through his blog, questioned policies enacted in November that forbid missionary candidates from speaking in a “private prayer language,” or tongues, and require them to be baptized by immersion.

In an interview, Burleson, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, Okla., said of the turn of events: “I’m very grateful and I believe that it’s the wise course of action.”

He said his concern was not so much with specific policies but rather that the board was demanding acceptance of “uniform interpretation of nonessential doctrines” of the Bible.

“On the missionary field, these are nonessential doctrines,” he said. “Evangelicals disagree.”

Burleson said he intends to continue his blog, possibly including future criticism of Baptist policy.


“Criticism of policies or actions is not a criticism of people and so I’ll continue,” he said. “If the board passes a policy that a trustee cannot publicly criticize a majority action of the board, I will abide by the policy or resign.”

Hatley, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Rogers, Ark., told Religion News Service that the “internal processes” are just being put into place but permit the board to take a different course of action than originally planned.

“We’re glad to proceed to try to make this an in-house matter rather than something that we have to turn to the SBC for,” he said.

Hatley said in his written statement that he hopes to explain the debated doctrinal matters.

“Please note that in the near future I also intend to clarify the recently adopted guideline on baptism and the policy concerning tongues and private prayer language for missionary candidates by addressing the historical and theological framework in which those decisions were made,” he said in the statement.

Burleson welcomed the plans for additional discussion on those doctrinal matters.

“Frankly, if the policies are good they will stand,” he predicted. “If for some reason there’s a problem with them, I think the trustees should and will rescind them.”


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Editors: To obtain a file photo of the Rev. Wade Burleson, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject (Burleson).

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