(RNS) — Robin Hadaway, a longtime expert on missions work, is keeping the focus on missionaries in his candidacy for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The resident-turned-remote professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, now teaches his students almost full time from the California city of Oceanside.
As he prepares to attend the denomination’s annual meeting June 14-15 just an hour’s drive from his home, Hadaway knows attention will be on the recommendations of a sexual abuse task force following a lengthy report on the Executive Committee‘s mishandling of abuse allegations.
“They seem reasonable and wise, what they are recommending,” he said of the task force, including its suggestion that a national staff person — “or maybe more than one person” — be hired to determine what church or other entity is appropriate to respond to abuse allegations.
But Hadaway, who stated he was “troubled and saddened” by the report, also tweeted comparative Southern Baptist statistics in the wake of the report’s release:
SATF report & recommendations received. EC responded to implement proposals. SBC committee process works. Thanks to SATF & EC for their efforts this year. Pray for survivors & proposed ARITF to be appointed by new SBC President. #RememberTheMissionhttps://t.co/pjqYEvSv38
— Robin Hadaway (@robin_hadaway) June 3, 2022
Hadaway, 73, has long had connections with the major threads of Southern Baptist life and some of its key figures.
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He and his wife, Kathy, were married at First Baptist Dallas by W.A. Criswell, longtime leader of First Baptist Dallas and one-time president of the denomination. Hadaway was ordained at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, by Adrian Rogers, its prominent pastor and another one-time SBC president. In 2000, Hadaway was appointed to the SBC credentials committee by Paige Patterson when that longtime seminary leader — later ousted over mishandling rape allegations — was president of the convention.
After serving in the military, Hadaway was a pastor in two churches in the Western U.S. before moving abroad to work for 18 years as a missionary and missionary leader. He has served as professor of missions for a similar number of years at Midwestern Seminary, where he also was interim president and dean of students.
Asked about the pushback his June 3 tweet received, Hadaway stood by it.
“The number of abusers in my opinion, is relatively few considering the number of Southern Baptists that we have,” he said. “I would agree with some who have said one abused person is way too many. But I think that we want to be cognizant of the fact that a Southern Baptist church is one of the safest places you can be and around the most godly people that you can imagine. And I think sometimes we want to focus on the negative.”
