Southern Baptists to Launch New Org to Oversee Abuse Database
After years of holdups, a task force says the work of abuse reform is too much for volunteers alone.
Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention’s abuse reform task force announced plans Monday to launch a new, independent nonprofit to host a database of abuse pastors and to implement other reforms.
They still need the money to run it.
The new nonprofit will oversee a proposed Ministry Check website listing abusive pastors, which has stalled since a website for the abuse reforms was launched last year. Currently, no names of pastors are included on the website, sbcabuseprevention.com.
Josh Wester, a North Carolina pastor who chairs the SBC’s abuse reform implementation task force, said the new nonprofit, which he called an abuse response commission, will be independent of the SBC’s current structure.
He said the job of abuse reform was too big for a task force of volunteers to accomplish on their own. That led to the plan to launch a new organization.
“Given the current legal and financial challenges facing the SBC and the Executive Committee, the formation of a new independent organization is the only viable path that will allow progress toward abuse reform to continue unencumbered and without delay,” Wester told members of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee during a regularly scheduled meeting on Monday night. “To do this, we have to do this together.”
Wester said the Ministry Check website will include the names of Southern Baptists convicted of abuse and those who have had civil judgments against them. The task force has run into legal and financial delays in getting those names published, Wester said in his report.
The commission will also create an expanded “Ministry Toolkit” designed to help churches prevent abuse and ...