Untapped Resource

In a knowledge based economy, information is currency. If you leave currency on the table, you walk away poorer.

As charged by the Executive Committee, Milton A. Hollifield Jr., Baptist State Convention executive director-treasurer, has named a task forceto study options for ways North Carolina Baptists can minister to and with senior adults in North Carolina.

He first asked Baptist Children's Homes to assume this ministry. The BCH executive committee asked for more information about expectations before committing BCH to take on that responsibility. This task force is assigned to explore any and numerous ways of ministry involving senior adults. When their work is complete, BCH will have information on which to base a decision.

The committee is broad, with strong church connections and some experience in senior adult work. Most are close enough to being "senior adults" that they have a special interest in the work of the task force. There is a retired missionary, retired minister, retired senior adult day care director, pastors, church staff, Baptist Children's Homes staff, a county director of social services and an elder law attorney.

Making up an ex-officio list longer than the task force list are the president and vice president of the Board of Directors; the Convention officers; Hollifield, Michael C. Blackwell, president of the Baptist Children's Homes and BSC staff members Brian Davis, John Butler and Teresa Jones.

Looking at this list, do you wonder with me why it includes no representative from Baptist Retirement Homes? We are leaving currency on the table when we study ministry among senior adults without having on our team a representative from our ministry among senior adults for more than 50 years.

I'm not talking about turf protection here. No one owes BRH a spot on this committee. But doesn't the committee owe it to itself to include in its membership someone who has been working in the field, in an organization widely recognized as "the best" retirement homes ministry there is?

Hollifield said inclusion of a BRH representative had been considered, but rejected because it would put BRH President Bill Stillerman in an "awkward" position to ask him to provide a representative to a committee that would be considering ways to spend a million dollars annually that used to go to the Retirement Homes.

Blackwell said the BRH expertise is in residential care and the task force would not be considering residential care.

No doubt large committees grow cumbersome and everyone with something to add to the conversation could not be included in its membership. Although he did not commit the task force to seeking input from BRH, Blackwell said the committee will be looking to many sources for input.

At its most basic level, we've relegated BRH to the sidelines as we embark on a study that has been their area of expertise for a half century.

If this task force makes a generous gesture to seek BRH input early, and if BRH offers its help generously, these two entities can begin to overcome personality and trust issues that keep us from cashing in all the currency in our account. And we will be richer for it.

Posted by jameson ( Jan 30 2008, 09:27:02 AM EST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Big Money

When I learned 40 years ago that Dad made $1,000 a month, I quickly translated that to an amazing $50 a working day and thought, "How in the world could any man need $50 a day?"

Of course, I was still a couple years away from pulling in a whopping buck an hour for slinging bales and cleaning gutters for local farmers.

In a college sociology class my professor, who earned about $15,000 at the time, asked if any of us students ever anticipated a personal income of at least $25,000. I knew inflation alone would push and pull salaries higher, but I was the only one who raised my hand.

When I went to work at Baptist Press in 1977 my $15,500 salary was significantly higher than what my wife and I were earning together at a bank and newspaper in Colorado Springs.

At Baptist Press we revealed the first Southern Baptist denominational executive salary to exceed $100,000. News that Paul Stevens of the Radio and Television Commission (now extinct) earned such a magnificent sum was so significant that for a couple years the salary was listed in any news story announcing a new chief executive.

Until we learned that many large church pastors were being paid similarly.

Keith Parks kept salaries low for everyone at the International Mission Board as an unintended consequence of his own reluctance to accept increases the trustees urged on him.

We are no longer amazed at the stratospheric income of entertainers and athletes. Baseball player Alex Rodriguez opted out of his $252 million, 10-year contract because he thinks he can get more. I've always chuckled at that number – 252. I guess he wouldn't have signed for $250 million, but boy, that extra $200,000 a year completed the final essential element to put groceries on his table.

Part of the difficulty that new pastors of a couple mega-churches in transition this year have endured is complaints over their salary from people who miss the previous pastor. One salary in Tennessee is rumored by people who don't like the new pastor to be $450,000.

People are sensitive about their salaries. We are most sensitive about people making significantly more money than we do if we perceive them to be doing basically the same work. And for one working within Christian organizations, it can be unseemly to be paid way above average because so much of your income is provided through sacrificial gifts from average people.

Now comes word that Bill Stillerman was paid $371,000 in 2005 for his work as president of the Baptist Retirement Homes . Non-profit organizations file for the IRS a form 990 on which they must list the salary of their chief executive. These are public documents.

I'll let you judge whether you think that is too much money for the leader of an organization with a $24 million budget to make. But before you do, read the rest of the story.

To inform my opinion about the apparent anomaly of a Baptist leader making that high of salary, I called Mr. Stillerman, unlike anyone else who has been raising the salary issue to castigate Baptist Retirement Homes leadership for pleading poverty and paying princely.

Stillerman told me that in the 1980s when many institutions were struggling, lenders asked chief executives to carry a "key man" or "split interest" life insurance policy with the institution as the beneficiary. The "split interest" part comes in because the individual who was covered accumulated part of the growing value of the policy. In Baptist Retirement Homes case, trustees saw this as a way to help fund Stillerman's retirement benefits down the road.

In 2005 IRS rules changed on tax accounting for these policies. Basically, Stillerman "gave up rights" to his portion of the policy and claimed the accumulated value as income in 2005. That $113,000 raise getting so much attention was in fact a portion of Stillerman's retirement funds - accumulated during his more than 20 years as president - on which he now has the privilege of paying income tax.

Because 2006 forms 990 are not yet available, you are reading here first that it will include a second $113,000, as the second half of a two-year tax management process. Stillerman's salary will actually be just a cost of living raise above the $258,000 recorded in 2004.

Yes, that is still a lot of money. But Baptist Retirement Homes, just as the Baptist State Convention did a couple years ago, employs a national benefits firm to study compensation and make recommendations. BRH trustee chair Phillip Feagin says Stillerman's salary is "fair and reasonable" and is in the median range for similar organizations of similar size. Beyond that, Feagin says Stillerman's value to BRH is "inestimable...immeasurable."

BRH uses Cooperative Program funds strictly to pay the bills for residents who have outlived their money. This is not an issue for the BRH trustees, all of whom were elected by messengers to the Baptist State Convention at the time of this transaction and to whom it should matter most.

Posted by jameson ( Nov 11 2007, 05:21:29 PM EST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Panic Stop

Long skid marks always appear soon after trails are freshly graded. Riders unaware of 90-degree turns at the bottom of the hill come zipping down the slope and clutch their brakes in a panic stop when the trail disappears before them.

Their skidding tires leave a shallow rut that turns into a dangerous gully with the first hard rain.

I'm thrilled to see the special committee studying Baptist Retirement Homes' relationship to the Baptist State Convention avoided a panic stop. Its reasoned, direct, thorough study and subsequent recommendations greatly diminishes the potential for dangerous gullies.

I am especially thrilled that in the current context in which Christians too often consider law suits a logical course to resolve conflict, the committee, populated with lawyers and chaired by a judge, "recommends that BSCNC decline to pursue litigation."

Citing I Cor. 6:1, the report says, "Brothers and sisters in the church of Jesus Christ must settle their disputes in the context of mutual accountability and respect of biblical directives."

That recommendation is not even listed as one of the committee's recommendations. But to me, it is their most significant statement.

"As Christians saved by the grace of God, an ethic must permeate our disagreements in the Body of Christ," the report says. "For each individual involved in this dispute, the committee respects each as faithful servants of Jesus Christ who loves His church."

When we face our issues with mutual respect, we can eventually accomplish our goals without the panic stops of frantic decisions.

The committee will present its report for overview to the BSC Executive Committee and board Oct. 29. Messengers to the annual session will hear it and have opportunity to amend it before approval. The report is solid as is, but certainly Baptists are free to express differing opinions when it is presented.

Whatever your position as you study the details, more of which will be forthcoming when the Recorder obtains reactions from Convention and BRH leadership, it has to be good that the secular sword of litigation is lifted from the neck of Baptist Retirement Homes - and from the thin thread that connects our credibility to the world we're trying to reach.

Posted by jameson ( Oct 25 2007, 10:48:18 AM EDT ) Permalink Comments [1]