A Mistake I Made in New Orleans

I am writing to inform you of a mistake I made while presiding over the Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in New Orleans last year.

In the Tuesday morning session, at the first opportunity to introduce new motions, Keith Myer moved "that the Organization Manual of the Southern Baptist Convention be amended to add the ministry assignment for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to assist churches and other Southern Baptist entities by promoting awareness of and resourcing the prevention of and response to abuse." In the Tuesday afternoon session, Spence Shelton from the Committee on Order of Business recommended to refer the motion. The Convention passed the motion to refer.

But something went awry. I made a mistake.

Spence moved that the motion "be referred to the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the Executive Committee for consideration and report back to the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention." But when I stated the motion at its disposition, I declared that the motion was referred to the ERLC. I failed to hear that it was also being referred to the Executive Committee. I failed to state that the motion was being referred to the Executive Committee. I misheard, misunderstood, and misstated the motion.

Weeks later, when Phillip Robertson asked me about how the Executive Committee should prepare for the motion, I informed him that Keith's motion was referred to the ERLC, not to the Executive Committee. Just to make sure, I went online to Acts 2, scanned forward to the motion, and listened to what I had said. Yes. ERLC. No need for the Executive Committee to do anything.

Weeks later still, Recording Secretary Nathan Finn released the 2023 SBC Annual. Keith had reached out to Phillip to ask about addressing the appropriate EC subcommittee about his motion. Because the Annual had been printed, I told Phillip that he could show Keith in the SBC Annual that the motion had not been referred to the EC.

Then I looked at the Annual, myself.

Nathan had gone back to the recording and had listened to Spence's statement of the motion. He printed what Spence had said, which was what the Committee on Order of Business had voted to recommend.

The presiding officer's restatement of the motion IS the motion according to Parliamentary Procedure. But the SBC Annual is the official record of the Annual Meeting. These two sources say two conflicting things.

So, I have apologized to Keith, and I now apologize to all Southern Baptists for the mistake that I made. The mistake does not kill the motion at all. It was successfully referred to the ERLC. It will be reported back to the Convention's messengers in 2024 in Indianapolis. The Executive Committee, acting on my advice, has not including the motion in its agenda for next week, but the EC still meets again in June.

This is the part of the job I wanted to do so well. I'm very embarrassed to have made a mistake like this. I'm sorry.