And members knew the task had to be completed in a timely manner to show change was being made in the convention.
For years, SBC leaders had said creating such a database was not feasible, said Blalock.
“We’ve learned it’s not impossible,” he said.
Blalock said the task force has also realized the reforms will require hiring staff to help with caring for survivors and with helping the SBC’s credentials committee, which receives reports on churches that have mishandled abuse. Already, he said, an overwhelming number of cases of abuse have been reported to that committee.
The other challenge for the task force is dealing with the human tendency to try to get back to normal once the urgency lets up. Combating that requires reminding church leaders and people in the pews of the importance of preventing abuse and of caring for survivors.
Both will require time and money, Blalock said. That can be a challenge in the SBC, where every church is autonomous, decisions are made on a local level and all the funding is voluntary. Most churches donate to Southern Baptist ministries through the convention’s Cooperative Program, whose primary focuses are missionary work and training pastors. There’s been resistance to spending money for overheard or oversight of the denomination’s work — with churches preferring that money go to missions and evangelism rather than oversight.
“It’s not going to be cheap,” said Blalock, referring to paying for reforms. “But our approach all along has been to do the right thing. We believe that last year, Southern Baptists got the information (about abuse) and took a vote to do the right things. And we are doing what they asked us to do.”
Kathleen McChesney, a former FBI detective who set up the Office of Child Protection for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said a volunteer committee like the SBC task force can do some of the work of implementing abuse reforms. But hiring the right staff is important too.
RELATED: Willy Rice Says Tom Buck Didn’t Sabotage His SBC Candidacy, Admits Innocent People ‘Were Badly Hurt’
“You always need somebody in charge,” she said. “Because you are talking about not only helping people to heal but preventing future abuse. There’s a tremendous amount of work.”
One of the keys to any reforms for addressing abuse is getting the cooperation and compliance of churches. In the Catholic Church, said McChesney, this was done on a diocese level and there were consequences for noncompliance.
For Southern Baptists, almost all of the cooperation with the reforms will be voluntary. Because of that, task force members have been meeting with state and local Baptist leaders to try to get their buy-in. That will be a long-term process, said Blalock.
The challenge facing Southern Baptists in making reforms stick became clear recently when former SBC President Johnny Hunt, who was credibly accused last year of a past sexual assault— which he covered up for years — made a recent defiant return to the pulpit at Hiland Park Baptist Church in Panama City, Florida, after a group of pastors declared him restored to ministry.
Hiland Park and another church that invited Hunt to speak have been reported to the SBC’s Credentials Committee, according to Baptist Press, a denominational publication. That committee will decide whether or not those churches are in “friendly cooperation” with the denomination.
In response, Hiland Park issued a letter that defended Hunt, saying there was no proof he had been abusive and criticizing Guidepost Solutions, saying the consulting firm had unbiblical values and used a “guilty until proven innocent” approach to allegations against pastors.
Church leaders also warned they were discussing their “legal recourses.”
Investigators from Guidepost had determined that allegations Hunt — a former SBC president and longtime megachurch pastor — had sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife in 2010 were credible, according to the group’s report to the SBC. Hunt denied the allegations at first and then later claimed the encounter was consensual.
