Montoya Nails It

[Sandy]

[Alan Carter]

If the BGCT/Baptist Building is that corrupt then we need to shut it down. I know a lot of those people and find some of those statements hard to believe. As far as Baptist schools, I think some may have gone more liberal than some would like but I know for a fact that at least Howard Payne is still rock solid. Maybe a little less criticism and more pitching in to help would do the job.

[Ed Pettibone]

[William Thornton]

Cut what he says in half and you still have something worth saying. The BGCT is one of the few state conventions where you could get the budget and actually see what salaries were paid for what positions. Last time I checked BGCT employees were paid about what seemed reasonable to me. I don't fully understand Buckner but the money paid to their CEO is astonishing, if the numbers were accurate.

Go into any state convention staff and you will likely find some backslappers, hangers on, and a substantial presence of nepotism. People in my state are very responsive and I have good experiences in almost all cases where I have had contact with them.

When pastors are taking pay cuts, they will pay more attention to what's happening in associations, state conventions, and SBC entities.

Folks can dismiss Montoya as a goofball, perpetual critic but he has been right more than wrong on BGCT stuff.

[Sandy]

Montoya is talking about state convention administration, and not necessarily the people who work in the trenches there. I know some very good, committed, dedicated church program consultants and facilitators that work at the BGCT, are underpaid, but are committed to ministry rather than lifestyle. The big bucks go to an overloaded, overstuffed administration. Last time around, when Charles Wade stepped down, they brought in an interim exec, though they have a six figure (with full expense account and several administrative assistants) associate executive director whom I have had trouble figuring out exactly what keeps him busy during an eight hour day. This time around, they are letting the day to day administrative duties fall to the associate, who doesn't appear to be working overtime to get his work, and the exec director's work, done. The associate position was one that could easily have been completely eliminated when it was last vacated, and it wouldn't be missed, but they kept it in place as a reward for the political service done by the current occupant of the position (he's a Currie appointee and TBC flagwaver), and unlike most of the "trench" positions at the BGCT, which have seen salary caps and cuts, and layoffs, the salary wasn't touched, even though the budget contributions have fallen 35% in five years. That's the kind of thing he's talking about.

I've heard that Buckner's exec "has" to receive the salary he does because it is required for their certification or membership in some critical organization related to the work they do. I got soured on Buckner when we discovered that a big chunk of the price they charge for international adoptions, more than twice as much as other agencies we looked at, is payment for their provision of "services" guiding you through the process, and that they offer no financial assistance to Baptists, or anyone else for that matter, in spite of the fact that they raise millions from the churches for themselves by appealing to the heart-strings of people through the "ministries" they perform. Essentially their attitude is, "If you're rich enough, you can adopt internationally. If not, don't come through our door."

You can say what you want to about Montoya, but it appears that a lot of Texas Baptists feel the same way, given the direction their Cooperative Program giving has taken over the past decade. THe drops they are experiencing go way, way, way beyond the effects of recession. Every dollar that they don't collect, and every percentage from previous years that they drop is confirmation of Montoya's accuracy.