NASHVILLE (TN)
ChurchLeaders [Colorado Springs CO]
February 18, 2025
By Dale Chamberlain
“It’s the end of an era,” said Tiffany Thigpen following the announcement that the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Executive Committee is no longer pursuing the implementation of an abuser database.
Thigpen is one of several key abuse survivor advocates who have for years worked alongside SBC leaders and task forces to bring about reforms to address the decades-long failure of the denomination to properly respond to allegations of clergy sex abuse.
Among the proposed reforms has been the “Ministry Check” website, an online database of pastors, church leaders, and volunteers who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse.
For a time, it appeared that advocates were making headway. At the annual meeting of the SBC in 2022, they cried tears of joy as local church delegates (called messengers) overwhelmingly voted in favor of creating the database.
“We really thought, wow, people are really listening,” Thigpen told ChurchLeaders. “For us, rejoicing for that is just knowing that other people are going to be safe and other people are not going to have to go through what we’ve been through.”
The vote for reform came roughly one month after a third-party investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions revealed that the SBC Executive Committee, at the advice of legal counsel, had systematically ignored and/or silenced victims of sexual abuse who had come forward with credible abuse allegations.
The report became a motivating factor to push reforms forward. However, Thigpen said, “That was the year that I believe the entity heads and everyone else got scared.”
“ Everyone else in the larger structure got really afraid,” she added. “Because they saw what the power of the people could do. I think that they were looking out there going, ‘Oh no, we are possibly in trouble.’”
A number of key leaders consistently opposed the creation of the database, citing issues of liability and due process.
Two years later, the task force charged with implementing the creation of the database had still not completed the task. As the group disbanded following the denomination’s annual meeting in June 2024, it handed over the reins to the Executive Committee.
Task force chairman Josh Wester said at the time that the team had been plagued by liability concerns that had kept it from succeeding. Wester nevertheless expressed optimism that the Executive Committee would complete the task under the leadership of its new president, Dr. Jeff Iorg.
“If we hadn’t had the cooperation and leadership that we’ve seen from Dr. Iorg, we probably would have just tried to extend the task force another year,” Webster said, “rather than turning it over to a body that not only has been in turmoil, but was really at the center of where this started.”
Those hopes have now apparently been dashed.
While Iorg recently named Jeff Dalrymple as the head of the office that will implement long-term abuse reforms, Dalrymple will not be focusing on the database—the key reform advocates have petitioned for and that messengers overwhelmingly voted for.
“At this point, it’s not a focus for us,” Iorg said of the database during the Executive Committee’s annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday (Feb. 18).
Instead, Dalrymple, who previously served as executive director of the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention, will focus on providing more training for churches and the denomination’s state conventions of churches.
To Thigpen and other survivor advocates, the measures described by Iorg at the Executive Committee meeting are little more than “a gesture.”
“ We did not need more policies and procedures in print. We needed policies and procedures in action,” Thigpen told ChurchLeaders. “And if those aren’t in place, then someone in an individual church reading how to prevent abuse—while it’s a great resource—is not going to stop it happening in a greater picture.”
With the database officially on ice, Thigpen said she is not likely to be a visible presence at the denomination’s annual meetings moving forward. In fact, she had already sensed that enthusiasm for reform among messengers had significantly waned by the 2024 annual meeting in Indianapolis.
“I think that’s how most of us [advocates] felt at this last convention,” Thigpen said. “We all felt like it was just dead. We actually mourned…You could feel that it was over.”
“People are just tired. They’re just absolutely tired,” she went on to say. “And that’s sad. But it’s a reality. But it’s also a created reality because that’s what [SBC institutional leaders] do.”
To be sure, the Guidepost Solutions report and the ensuing legal actions against the SBC and the Executive Committee have been costly, depleting the EC’s reserve funds and forcing it to put its headquarters building up for sale.
The Executive Committee is also recommending that the SBC set aside $3 million of its annual budget for legal fees. The funds will be taken from the Cooperative Program (CP), the denomination’s central fund for missionaries, seminaries, church plants, and other ministries.
This recommendation is likely to be a source of controversy at the SBC’s next annual meeting.
In light of this financial hardship, a number of SBC leaders have taken to social media to express their ongoing frustration with the effort to implement sexual abuse reforms.
“The SBC is in serious trouble. Many of those who foolishly led us into this trouble would like us to forget their complicity in doing so,” wrote Florida Pastor Tom Ascol, a once SBC presidential hopeful. “Yes ‘decisions were made by the messengers.’ But it is simplistic to the point of being deceptive to leave it at that. The messengers followed outspoken leaders who, as is now evident, led them foolishly.”
Georgia Pastor Mike Stone, who has also unsuccessfully run for SBC president, wrote, “If only someone had warned us…”
“There isn’t a better example of ‘Emotional Sabotage’…than what happened to the SBC in the ‘sex abuse crisis,’” wrote Texas Pastor Tom Buck. “Those who rose to positions of leadership because they were ‘steered’ by the sabotage should resign; those who warned us and resigned should be reinstated.”
However, Thigpen argues that SBC messengers were not unaware of the possible consequences associated with pursuing sexual abuse reforms.
“ The whole thing is that the messengers made a choice, and just like they tried to do last year, and they’re still doing now, they’re trying to say that the messengers didn’t know what they were doing,” Thigpen said. “The messengers fully understood what they were doing, and every year that we went to that convention, they voted again for moving forward. They didn’t do that unaware.”
Nevertheless, as it stands, Thigpen expressed that she does not see a clear path forward to complete the task. While she acknowledged that survivor advocates still have important work to do, she doesn’t believe that “it does any good to do it within the SBC.”
Thigpen indicated that if change is going to happen, it will need to start at a “grassroots” level.
“ If the individual churches and state conventions don’t rise up against these entity heads and change their CP giving—that’s what speaks to those people,” Thigpen said. “ It’s when the money changes and the money issues come.”
Thigpen said that she has spoken to leaders in churches who have said that they have already stopped giving to the CP or plan to stop if the Ministry Check website is not operational by the time the denomination gathers in Dallas this June.
“ The only way to get the change and to get them to listen to you is to change your giving,” Thigpen said.
“If you really want to impact missionaries…give to them directly,” she added. “ You can choose as churches where your giving goes. It doesn’t have to go to the SBC to disseminate.”