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Rod Martin Resigns From SBC Executive Committee, Warns the SBC Is in ‘Grave Danger’

October 29, 2021 by Staff

On October 27, 2021, Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Executive Committee (EC) member Rod Martin submitted his resignation to current EC president and CEO Ronnie Floyd.

Floyd has also announced his resignation, saying that his last day serving the SBC would be on October 31, 2021.

Why Martin Resigned

In addition to Floyd, Martin’s resignation follows that of EC’s vice president Greg Addison. The SBC’s longtime council have announced their departure as well.

These resignations come after multiple meetings and votes, which resulted in the EC waiving attorney-client privilege on October 5, 2021 at the request of a task force appointed to oversee an investigation into whether it mishandled allegations of sexual abuse. The task force was create in response to a motion calling for a third party investigation, which passed at the SBC’s annual meeting earlier this year.

RELATED: Ronnie Floyd Resigns as President of the SBC Executive Committee

“There will be more,” Martin told Floyd, referring to more future EC resignations that he predicts will take place.

Martin said that his decision didn’t come easily, but he said that outside legal counsel advised him to step down, because the EC had deliberately chosen to breach their “legal and fiduciary duties.” According to Martin’s counsel, this now poses an unacceptable risk to the entities he serves outside of the SBC. Martin called waiving ACP a “foolish” decision, though he has stated that he fully supports the investigation.

SBC Messengers Were ‘Deceived’

In his letter, Martin said that the SBC messengers were “deceived,” having been misinformed about ACP. The messengers were led to believe that waiving privilege was a “perfectly normal and necessary” practice. However, Martin explained that a Guidepost Solutions representative admitted that it isn’t a common practice.

Martin also pointed out that the messengers were not informed of the implications that waiving ACP would have on the SBC. It would not only void the EC’s insurance, but also make the “SBC itself uninsurable,” which in turn will limit the SBC’s ability to properly compensate any victims the investigation may find.

The messengers were not warned that almost all of the EC’s professionals and many of its pastors would also have to resign because of the decision to waive ACP, Martin explained.

RELATED: SBC Executive Committee Says Yes to Waiving Attorney-Client Privilege

Martin also warned that the “SBC is in grave danger,” ending his letter by saying, “we will have to do Herculean things to save it. And we must: we educate a third of the seminary students in America and field the largest missionary force in the world. We cannot allow this enormous force for good to be destroyed, whether by vile, wicked sex abusers who’ve violated the ultimate trust, or by foolish, self-serving leaders who’ve exposed the church to needless danger. We can punish the guilty while saving our churches and our Convention. We must.”

Although Martin is no longer an EC member, he assured Floyd that he is fully committed to the SBC.

Was Martin About to be Censured?

After Martin sent his resignation letter, rumors began to surface that his resignation came in light of a coming censure from the EC. ChurchLeaders reached out to Martin, and he shared, “Twitter has claimed that I would be censured at every EC meeting for the last year and a half, and that I would be removed from the EC at the last Annual Meeting. Not a single motion has ever been submitted. It’s nonsense.”

“Honestly,” Martin said, “If I’d thought there might be a censure motion, I’d have stayed and fought it. I only resigned for the sake of the other boards which I serve, and only after much argument with their attorneys. I could have waited another week or two if I’d thought there would be a fight like that. I’d have relished it. But to be clear, I’d heard absolutely nothing of the sort until the same anonymous accounts on Twitter as usual started trying to cast my resignation that way. As I said, it’s nonsense.”

ChurchLeaders reached out to other EC members for statements and will update this article in the event of their reply.

Martin’s Resignation Letter

The following is Martin’s entire resignation letter he shared with ChurchLeaders.

Dear Dr. Floyd:

It is with enormous frustration and regret that I hereby submit to you my resignation from the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention. I am one of at least 14 EC members to do so thus far, as well as multiple officers, staff members (including yourself), and our legal counsel of 56 years. There will be more.

I have strongly resisted this decision over the last few weeks, but it is now forced upon me by legal counsel for several of the nonprofit and for-profit entities on whose boards I serve. It is their strongly worded counsel that the legal ramifications of my continuance on a board which has deliberately chosen to breach its legal and fiduciary duties poses an unacceptable risk to those entities which they and I serve.

I support the investigation, for the reasons you stated prior to the Annual Meeting. It is necessary to find any wrongdoing that may have occurred, as well as to clear the names of the innocent.

But I also wish to make clear, as I have done in open and executive sessions, the needless foolishness of the specific course chosen. As we were advised by counsel, the Executive Committee had multiple paths by which it could comply with the will of the messengers while also fulfilling its legal obligations. The “either-or” presented to us was political, not real.

Worse still is that the messengers were deceived. They were told that attorney-client privilege exists to hide wrongdoing, which is manifestly false and subversive of due process. They were told that a blanket waiver of that privilege was a “best practice”, when it is no such thing: the Department of Justice’s most recent guidelines prohibit U.S. Attorneys from even requesting privilege be waived.

In fact, even Guidepost Solutions’ other clients do not normally waive, as their representative admitted. The messengers were led to believe that waiver is perfectly normal and necessary, and yet eight separate lawyers advised us that, as former U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins put it, “waiver is not a ‘best practice’, it’s not a standard practice: it’s malpractice.”

Even as we speak, Al Mohler – whose seminary is the locus of the two most visible cases of alleged sex abuse, those of Jennifer Lyell and Hannah Kate Williams – has employed Guidepost, but has not waived privilege. No one bats an eye.

By contrast, the messengers were not told – as we were, unanimously, by eight separate lawyers – that waiver of privilege in the form demanded would void the Executive Committee’s insurance. The messengers were not told that it would render the SBC itself “uninsurable”. The messengers were certainly not told that losing our insurance would gravely limit our ability to compensate any victims the investigation might find.

The messengers were not told that virtually all of the EC’s professional people and many of its pastors would have to resign from the EC if this measure was adopted. The messengers were not told why: that both the EC as a whole and all of its individual members have very specific legal duties which cannot be waived, that a blanket waiver of privilege breached those duties in multiple ways, and that none of it can be undone. As one pastor put it, “once waived, always waived.”

These are technical matters of great legal consequence. The Convention leadership knew they were coming. Yet while they arranged to have an attorney on hand to “inform” the messengers of their opinion (contradicted by Robert’s Rules of Order) that Tom Ascol’s motion to rescind Resolution 9 might (I stress “might”) violate procedure, they did nothing to provide the messengers with legal counsel as to the unintended consequences of an act that in many respects violates the law. They chose not to allow the messengers the slightest chance to make an informed decision.

They knew they would pay no price. But other, innocent people surely will pay that price, as plaintiffs’ lawyers with dishonest agendas use the EC’s uninsurability to bankrupt impoverished members and staff with legal fees, to compel false yet sworn testimony of hierarchicalism, all to steal billions of widows’ mites from our seminaries, missionaries and children’s homes.

And it all began with one man’s political agenda, Russell Moore, a mandatory reporter who claims to have known of children being raped for twenty long months, who still hasn’t notified law enforcement of a single name. ERLC trustee Jonathan Whitehead’s whistleblower letter tells the whole sad story. Like so many disgruntled employees before him, Russell chose to burn down the house on his way out the door (to join the pastoral staff of a paedobaptist church, no less), and his allies were all too happy to help him.

An investigation is necessary. But a serious investigation should ask why, if Russell’s allegations are true, he has covered them up for nearly two years.

It is the Executive Committee’s duty, as the Convention’s fiduciary, to ensure we do not burn down the village to save it. This is precisely why we have a trustee system: to carefully weigh in detail that which cannot even be meaningfully discussed in just a few minutes once a year. In this, the Executive Committee has absolutely failed.

The SBC is in grave danger. We will have to do Herculean things to save it. And we must: we educate a third of the seminary students in America and field the largest missionary force in the world. We cannot allow this enormous force for good to be destroyed, whether by vile, wicked sex abusers who’ve violated the ultimate trust, or by foolish, self-serving leaders who’ve exposed the church to needless danger. We can punish the guilty while saving our churches and our Convention. We must.

I am entirely committed to our SBC. I will stand in that fight as long as the Lord allows. Just not, for now, as a member of the Executive Committee.

Sincerely submitted,

Rod D. Martin

Filed Under: Church

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