“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,” Wester 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.”
RELATED: SBC 2024: What Happened at the Annual Meeting in Indianapolis
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.
