After meeting in Fort Worth, Southern Baptist sexual abuse task force sets priorities
The Southern Baptist Convention’s abuse reform committee, after holding its first meeting in Fort Worth, set its initial priorities on creating a database of abusers and seeking firms to help investigate sexual abuse claims.
A previous task force published in May a nearly 300-page report by outside investigator Guidepost Solutions, which found widespread sexual abuse within Southern Baptist churches, cover-ups and intimidation of survivors extending all the way to the SBC’s executive committee.
That 2022 report confirmed the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News’ reporting on the denomination, which has spanned the past several years. In 2019, the newspapers published a six-part investigation into abuses and systemic corruption within Southern Baptist churches. The newspapers’ continued reporting has been widely credited with starting the domino effect that led to both the Guidepost Solutions report and a federal probe.
The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. The SBC had more than 14 million members in 2020, according to the convention’s annual report.
The month after the Guidepost Solutions report, the SBC held its annual meeting and then created the new committee, the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force. Among that task force’s nine members are two Texans: Gregory Wills of Fort Worth’s Travis Avenue Baptist Church, and Jarrett Stephens, pastor of Houston’s Champion Forest Baptist Church.
That new task force met for the first time over Labor Day weekend, at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary campus in Fort Worth. A recap of that meeting was posted Friday on the task force’s website.
The task force decided to focus on three priorities initially, chosen from among the slate of recommendations handed down by SBC representatives.
Among those three priorities, the task force will focus on creating a database of people who are credibly accused of abuse. The task force will also work to retain firms for receiving and appropriately directing reports of abuse and, separately, for assisting another SBC committee in investigating sexual abuse claims.
The task force wrote in its recap that it is actively seeking submissions for these firms but, because “the needs are urgent,” the submission period will close on Sept. 30. Submissions and proposals can be sent to contact@sataskforce.net.
