NASHVILLE (BP) — The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee (EC) says it has spent more than $12.1 million on the 2021-2022 Guidepost Solutions investigation and subsequent legal expenses dating back to the 2021 fiscal year.

The release of the detailed financial information was the result of a motion adopted by messengers at this summer’s SBC annual meeting.

“The EC is glad to respond to the motion referred to us from the 2024 annual meeting asking us to itemize the legal expenses resulting from past Convention decisions related to investigating sexual abuse and the ensuing costs,” EC President and CEO Jeff Iorg told Baptist Press.

EC Finance Committee Chair Adam Wyatt told BP the funds to cover legal expenses have been taken from the EC’s reserve funds to “protect Cooperative Program dollars” even though the original motion adopted by messengers at the 2021 SBC annual meeting approved the use of Cooperative Program (CP) dollars for the review.

The numbers show the EC has “done everything in our power to take the burden on ourselves to protect the Cooperative Program and the work of the Convention and its entities,” Wyatt told BP. “And it is our effort of trying to just be as transparent and clear about where we really are.”

The expense breakdown given to EC members shows:

• The total cost of the Guidepost Investigation was $3.1million.
  • $2 million paid directly to Guidepost to conduct the investigation
  • $1.1 million in legal and task force expenses

• The Executive Committee has paid $3.1 million to indemnify Guidepost.
• The cost of the abuse tip line hosted by Guidepost has been $861,000. This expense has been reimbursed by Send Relief.
• Other legal expenses include:
  • Litigation and case management: $2.4 million
  • DOJ investigation: $2 million
  • General counsel: $571,000
  • Post investigation legal support: $131,000

Messengers to the 2021 SBC annual meeting in Nashville approved a motion calling for an independent, third-party investigation into alleged mishandling of sexual abuse claims by the EC over a period of 20 years. The motion also called for the creation of a Sexual Abuse Task Force to oversee the third-party investigation and bring recommendations to the 2022 SBC annual meeting.

That task force retained Guidepost to conduct the investigation, and the contract signed included a clause indemnifying Guidepost of any legal expenses resulting from its investigation.

The report from the investigation was released in May 2022. An investigation of the SBC by the Department of Justice was announced in July 2022.

Two men named in the Guidepost report later sued both Guidepost and the SBC for defamation — former Georgia pastor and SBC president Johnny Hunt and former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor David Sills.

The Hunt suit in particular has made up the lion’s share of litigation expenditures thus far, Wyatt told EC members Tuesday.

One of the recommendations of the Sexual Abuse Task Force at the 2022 SBC annual meeting was the formation of the Abuse Response Implementation Task Force (ARITF). The ARITF functioned from September 2022 until the 2024 SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis.

In its final report to messengers this past June, the ARITF recommended the EC find a permanent home for sexual abuse response and prevention in the SBC. The EC took first steps toward that end Sept 17. in adopting a recommendation from its officers to form a new department within the EC.

Iorg told EC members Tuesday that he and others had considered other options, including placing the new department within another SBC entity as well as creating a new entity.

“Ultimately, [we] concluded that the next most important step was to create a department within the Executive Committee to get us proactively started on implementing sexual abuse prevention and response across our denomination more consistently than a task force is able to do,” Iorg said.

He said the work will be initially funded by the remaining funds provided by Send Relief in 2022. Send Relief initially pledged $3 million following the June 2022 SBC annual meeting.

SBC EC CFO Mike Bianchi told BP around $2.2 million of that money remains.

As for charting a path forward, Bianchi told Baptist Press the EC is striving to be “fully transparent of how we got here, and we want to be equally transparent of where we’re going.”

“We want to bring all the partners, all the entirety of the SBC into that discussion of where we’re going,” Bianchi said.

In the final moments of the Sept. 17 EC meeting, Chairman Philip Robertson reported that members took action during an executive session to help cover the expenses and operating costs of the entity.

“To meet the EC’s operational and legal expenses, the Executive Committee has authorized the president to execute a loan secured by the building and place the SBC building on the market,” Robertson said.

EC members discussed the potential sale of the SBC building in Nashville during the September 2023 meeting.

At the 2017 SBC annual meeting, messengers authorized the EC to “continue studying the advisability of a sale of the SBC Building, and to sell the property upon such terms and conditions, and at such a time, if any, as the Executive Committee may hereafter approve.”

The building is home to the EC, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), SBC Seminary Extension, the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives and the Southern Baptist Foundation. According to the annual, proceeds would be divided among them:

• The Executive Committee holds a 56% interest.
• The ERLC holds a 14% interest.
• The Council of Seminary Presidents holds a 26%interest.
  • This is composed of a 10% interest for Seminary Extension Education and 16% for the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives.
• The Southern Baptist Foundation holds a 4% interest.

The EC’s next scheduled meeting is Feb. 19-20, 2025, in Nashville.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Brandon Porter serves as Associate Vice President for Convention News at the SBC Executive Committee.)