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Baptist2Baptist
Sixth and Final Report of the SBC Funding Study
The Fifth and Final Report of the SBC
Stand For Marriage
Final Report of Ad Hoc CP Committee
Final Report of Ad Hoc CP Committee (Appendices)
Cooperative Program Advance Plan
Fourth Report of the SBC Funding Study Committee
Review of NOBTS's Sole Membership Charter Amend.
Response to reservations about sole membership
Reservations Concerning a Charter Amendment Prop.
Sole Membership - A Florida Layman’s Perspecti
A Letter to Dr. Denton Lotz
Letter from Albert W. Wardin
The Relation of the SBC to its Entities
SBC Funding Study - State of Giving
What is Sole Membership?
Sole Membership
Letter to Missouri Churches
Questions and Answers
Behind the Scenes at the SBC
Response by Morris H. Chapman to the BGCT
Does It Matter What Missionaries Believe?
Letter to the Baptist Standard
On Facts and Fallacies
Letter by SBC EC President to Dr. James L. Hill
A View from the Other Side
Carter's rift with SBC not a new development
SBTS Response to BGCT Seminary Study Committee
Response to BGCT Seminary Study Committee Report
SBTS Response to BGCT Seminary Study Committee
Exec. Comm. Interacts with BGCT Funding Proposal
The Pastor's Point of View on the BGCT
Feasibility Study for Name Change
Report of the SBC Peace Committee
Doctrine, Cooperation, and Association
Report to the Fellowship of Deacons
Too High a View of Scripture?
The Truth about the SBC and Texas
Christ, The Bible, and Human Experience
Bibliolatry — A Fraudulent Accusation
BFM - Still Thoroughly Baptist!
Texas First, Texas Only - Not the Spirit
Anti-SBC Leaders Threaten Cooperative Program
Southern Baptists and Women Pastors
The Root of the SBC Controversy
Your Church Reaching the World for Christ
Together We're Carrying Out the Great Commission
Doctrinal integrity paramount for Serminary
Have Baptists replaced Jesus with a book?
Why theology matters for the Great Commission task
A survey of the 2000 BFM
Baptists, the Bible and confessions
Southern Seminary and the Abstract of Principles
An Open Letter to Southern Baptists
A Statement About the Baptist Faith & Message
An Example of the Need to Change The BFM
Incredible Vanishing Corporations
Committee on Cooperation - Report and Findings
An Open Letter from Dr. Allen to Dr. Wade
Why Cooperate?
The Southern Baptist Convention is Alive and Well
Letter by SBCEC President to TX Church Leaders
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"There should be an 'Abstract of Principles', or careful statement of theological belief, which every professor in such an institution must sign when inaugurated, so as to guard against the rise of erroneous and injurious instruction in such a seat of sacred learning."

James P. Boyce
from "Three Changes in
Theological Institutions"
- summarized by John Broadus, 1856



Why are some Southern Baptists currently talking about Sole Membership, and what is it?
by D. August Boto & James P. Guenther
October 14, 2003

The "Sole Membership" issue has to do with an orderly adoption by the Southern Baptist entities of certain amendments to their governing documents (specifically, their articles of incorporation) over the past several years. These amendments restate the traditional relationships historically enjoyed between the entities and the Southern Baptist Convention. These amendments use more modern corporate law language, which is better understood by courts than the language that formerly existed. The amendments did not, however, alter any of the relationships, rights, powers or duties. An analogy that might be appropriate would be that of using a modern day Bible in the English language rather than one containing Hebrew and Greek so as to have better success in witnessing to Americans. In the same way, our SBC entities were adopting modern corporate law language to better apprise courts of our structure in the SBC so as to have better success in surmounting two major problems that had been identified, namely: 1) ascending liability, and 2) future subsidiary allegiance. "Ascending Liability" is the term church groups coined for the legal term, "vicarious liability." It occurs when one organization is held responsible for the liabilities of another. The term came into Southern Baptist vocabulary following a court case in which it was alleged that the United Methodist Church (the denomination) was responsible for the liabilities of a Methodist nursing home. Ascending liability occurs when a court determines that there is excessive control. For example, if the United Methodist Church was found to dominate the management of the nursing home, then the United Methodist church stood to be held responsible for the nursing home's contracts.

So it is important for the legal documents that describe the SBC's relationship to its entities to be clear as possible that the SBC does not control the management of its fostered entities. The SBC's bylaws said this already. The new language would get it clearly said in the entity's charters.

For example, the Convention elects the trustees who manage the International Mission Board. If it is clear in the entity's charter (in addition to the SBC's bylaws) that the IMB's board, not the SBC, manages the IMB's affairs, then the Convention has helped make it clear that the Convention is not responsible for the IMB's liabilities.

Thus, the sole member model allows the entities' instruments to describe how the trustees, not the convention, control the operations of the entity corporations, and it helps show the Convention ought not be held liable for what the entities do or do not do.

On the other hand, the sole member model also allows the Convention, as the corporation's sole member, to perpetuate its historic and fundamental control rights over it entities which will assure that those entities will remain Southern Baptist. So while the instruments spell out the right of the board to govern the entities, they also spell out that the Convention, as the entity corporation's member, has certain unalienable rights. These Convention rights are enumerated in the documents of the entities and are repeated in the following discussion. They are not new rights. They include only fundamental matters, such as the right to determine who sits on the board of trustees, the right to approve charter amendment, and to approve the dissolution, merger or sale of the institution.

And so the new language being utilized in the instruments of the Convention's entities describes a relationship between the entity and the Convention in which the Convention does not control the entities in those ways which would cause the entities' liabilities to "ascend" to the Convention; and, at the same time the relationship is described so that the Convention clearly can prevent an entity from ceasing to be Southern Baptist. The new language does not give the SBC or the boards of the entities more or less control rights over the entity. The present and historic division of control between the Convention and the various boards is simply being described in modern corporate law terms, and the Convention is exercising its traditional rights in its capacity as the entity's member.

"Sole membership” describes a corporation which has only one member. Corporate laws allow nonprofit corporations to have members, or even just a single member, in addition to the corporation's board of trustees. In nonprofit corporations with members, the members' rights and the board's rights regarding governance are specifically recited in the corporation's articles of incorporation or bylaws. The current changes adopted by most SBC entities have been written in this more up-to-date corporate law terminology to better apprise judges and others that the SBC is the only member (the sole member) of each of the various SBC entities, and as such has the right, and has always had the right, to approve certain things (such as who will serve as trustees, as discussed above).

All of the boards of the SBC entities (except for one) had earlier deliberated over and adopted sole membership amendments between 1996 and 2000. The reason sole membership is becoming more widely discussed currently is because the last SBC entity to consider adopting the more modern language of sole membership (New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary) decided in its October 2003 board meeting not to adopt the necessary amendments. As a result, various state papers reported the fact, and discussions among Southern Baptists naturally followed.

The goal of providing these materials on sole membership is to provide understanding about the issue, its history, and its benefits.

 

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