The Baptist Retirement Homes Study Committee Report
By Joan Mitchell, chairperson
It is a pleasure to be with you this morning and represent the work of the Study Committee.
From the beginning, we knew that ours was an unenviable task. The Baptist Retirement Homes are a denominational treasure for which many North Carolina Baptists have given their time, talent and treasure to establish and sustain for over 50 years.
Some of you in this room may have spent the last weeks or days of the life of a loved one – your mother, father, perhaps an aunt or uncle – in one of the rooms of the Baptist Retirement Homes. The professionalism and caring heart of the Baptist Retirement Home staff stands as a testimony to the grace of God to meet the needs of His people when, in many cases, they have no where else to turn.
With this mind, as we began, it seemed to the members of this committee that it was altogether right and fitting that churches of the Baptist State Convention extend their ministry to establish such a place in our state, and this fact has made it all the more painful for this committee to examine in detail what has taken place between the Baptist Retirement Homes and the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina to bring us to this point.
We began our work with a realization of our great weakness for the task. We prayed and prayed again that God would place within our hearts and minds the skill and perspective which we needed to accomplish that which Jesus would have done in this process.
Our work first started with reading. We spent countless hours reading and re-reading the history and governance documents. We re-read the Constitution and bylaws of each of the entities, and we sought to get straight in our minds exactly what happened – when and to whom. This became a regular study ritual – re-reading for clarification.
Once we felt we had the sequence of events in place we moved to critically evaluate what happened in the light of the laws of the state of North Carolina, the governing documents of both the Baptist Retirement Homes and the Baptist State Convention, and official correspondence of both parties.
Of course, our ultimate focus was upon Holy Scripture and the demands of Christ on our conduct as fellow strugglers with all our brothers and sisters on both sides of this conflict.
We tried not to act as adjudicators, but students and investigators of what brought these two dynamic institutions to an impasse.
Our conclusions, quite frankly, are not encouraging.
So often in denominational life there are turf wars that are fueled by fear of the unknown, distrust of others and an overall anxiety that something is being taken away which is precious to us all.
This report seeks to expose such thinking on both sides and offer recommendations which will, we pray, bring the conflict to a close.
Please keep in mind this Study Committee was charged to do just that – study.
The Committee was not authorized by the Convention to act as an agent of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. We were not to negotiate with either party – simply interview, research, study and report our findings. And that’s what we have done.
This report is just that and no more – our research and findings as to what happened and our simple reflections on possible remedies for restoration of this conflict.
As you read this report, please keep in mind these key ideas:
1. We have come a long way together as a Convention of churches
While this problem looms large before us today we need not be afraid or think this is an insurmountable situation. At least our questions today center on how to best care for the elderly in our North Carolina Baptist churches and communities, and that’s good.
2. Care for the elderly is now and will become even more in the future – a crisis
As the Baby Boomer generation retires, their needs will now be committed to a younger generation who has little patience with the wrangling of denominational bureaucracies and they do not need the partisan bickering on either side of the issue to stymie progress and innovation in helping those who cannot help themselves.
Sadly, according to decisions that have been made by the leadership of NC Baptist Retirement Homes, when they changed their governing documents in 2005, this ministry for which the Convention has elected leadership and supported for some 50 years will no longer be a ministry of this convention because the Convention will never have a voice in who leads the work of Baptist Retirement Homes.
The Committee feels that it is both saddening and instructive that this institution which has been strengthened and sustained by local North Carolina Baptist churches for many years is rejecting any sort of direct governance by the churches in friendly cooperation with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.
The churches of the Convention will never have a voice in any decision their leadership chooses to make because they have declared that it is their ministry to operate as they choose.
We, the Committee, thank you for the privilege to serve you as we have attempted to represent the people in the churches of this great Convention in our study and in our report.
