A recommended Southern Baptist church planting method is at the center of the $1.3-million Baptist General Convention of Texas scandal which recently spawned a liability suit.

The Southern Baptist Convention apparently believes it has good reasons for investing heavily in Church planting efforts. Church planting is, wrote C.Peter Wagner, "the most effective evangelistic strategy under heaven." In theory, it generates rapid denominational growth by establishing new churches, which are then filled mainly by new members.

The approach at the focus of an Oct. 31, 2006, investigation by the BGCT was developed by Otto Arango, who filed the liability suit mentioned above. It is called "Church Planting Training Centers."

According to SBC North American Mission Board literature, the "Church Planting Training Centers." technique involves using Arango's twelve-volume set of materials at church-based centers to train individuals to become church-planting laymen and pastors.

The laymen and pastors thus trained form groups in their own homes, and those groups go on to become self-sustaining, free-standing churches.

Apparently, the pastors of those new churches then make use of Arango's training materials to train others to repeat the process, thus quickly proliferating Southern Baptist Churches through target populations where there are few.

The process, according to the BGCT investigation, didn't work and it isn't clear how the money allocated to it was spent. In a May 25, 2007 story headlined No lawsuits planned; too costly & complex, lawyer suggests, the Texas Baptist Standard wrote:

Last year, a five-month independent investigation uncovered evidence that 98 percent of the 258 new churches reported by three church planters in the Rio Grande Valley between 1999 and 2005 no longer exist, and some never existed -- except on paper. Those churches received more than $1.3 million from the BGCT. The investigative team faulted the BGCT Executive Board staff for poor oversight, uneven management, failure to abide by internal guidelines and misplaced trust.

Broad questions have also been raised about other Baptist church planting programs. For example, in may of 2007 the Georgia Christian Index reported:

One critic stated, 'I would predict that if someone were to take the thousands of church plants that have been reported to trustees and try to pinpoint them on a map, that maybe 5 to 15 percent of them could be found and it would be impossible to locate the others.'

That's in keeping with the findings of the Texas study, although the Georgia Christian Index was writing about Church Planting Movement claims made by the International Mission Board.

The IMB Global Research Department said that "the number of churches increased globally by 21.5 percent in 2005 from 111,286 to 135, 252 for a net gain of 23, 966 churches. Since 2001 the number of reported churches has more than doubled, reflecting a five-year average annual growth rate of 18.1 percent."

The Georgia Christian Index answers, not with audited or otherwise authoritatively verified data, but an assertion that the IMB should be trusted:

However, the criticism seems to be invalid simply because the leadership of the IMB insists upon a meticulous and precise accounting of churches in their Annual Statistical Reports.

Logically, all of this is small comfort to church professionals who are involved in church planting and to church members trying to understand how well their offering money is being spent.

              

Texas Baptist blogger Spiritual Samurai is no longer almost alone in bringing to light a lawsuit filed by a pastor named in a 2006 Texas church-starting scandal.

Details have been published by the N.C. Biblical Recorder and others (1, 2, 3).

The suit was filed on June 20 in Hidalgo County (Texas) District Court by Otto Arango, one of three pastors at the center of an in-house Baptist General Convention of Texas. It alleges libel, slander and defamation over allegations that Arango misappropriated church funds.

The suit is against the Texas Baptist Standard; Baptist General Convention of Texas (BGCT); David Montoya (Spiritual Samurai); Calvary Baptist Church in Mineral Wells, Texas; the Palo Pinto Association; David Tamez; Dexton Shores; Roberto Rodriguez; Primera Iglesia Bautista; and Eloy Hernandez. Moreover, the suit specifically accuses the Baptist Standard, the state convention's official newspaper, of publishing allegations against Arango "with malice and lack of good faith."

In a May 25, 2007 story headlined No lawsuits planned; too costly & complex, lawyer suggests, the Standard wrote:

Last year, a five-month independent investigation uncovered evidence that 98 percent of the 258 new churches reported by three church planters in the Rio Grande Valley between 1999 and 2005 no longer exist, and some never existed--except on paper. Those churches received more than $1.3 million from the BGCT. The investigative team faulted the BGCT Executive Board staff for poor oversight, uneven management, failure to abide by internal guidelines and misplaced trust.

Arango says in the suit that success for his innovative strategy for planting new Hispanic Baptist churches was foreclosed when the BGCT hired lawyers to investigate rumors that he was using BGCT funds for personal gain. Arango argues the state convention exhibited "extreme callousness and reckless disregard" for his reputation," causing him to suffer "tremendous loss not only in the United States, but also in Latin American countries.

The "five-month independent investigation" and subsequent inaction laid the foundation for this lawsuit. The investigative report [.pdf] documented inadequacies in BGCT record-keeping and recorded allegations against Arango. Yet the BGCT failed to move on to attempt to prove wrongdoing, thus leaving the door open to counteraction.

They reasoned that further action would be unjustifiably expensive, and this lawsuit is the test of that judgment.

              

Almost alone, Texas Baptist blogger Spiritual Samurai is reporting that a Valleygate-related lawsuit has been filed against the Baptist General Convention of Texas, the Texas Baptist Standard ecclesiastical newspaper, himself and others.

"Valleygate" is a term coined by Spiritual Samurai to describe a Rio Grande Valley church-planting program which was distinguished by its cost, lack of accountability and questionable results.

As the Baptist Standard described it in an April 11 "please stop talking about this" editorial, the BGCT gave $1.3-million to three pastors to start 258 churches, some 98 percent of which did not exist when the program ended, and a number of which never existed at all, save on paper.

Ethics Daily has argued, and I agree, that had Spiritual Samurai not beaten the blogosphere drums long and hard, the Valleygate investigation and report might never have come to pass.

I suspect there might simply never have been a move to clean up the mess. In fact the investigation and such cleanup as have occurred appear to have started down an unproductive path. Montoya argues that questions raised via his blog led to a decision hire an attorney for a full investigation, instead of an accountant who had a personal relationship with the BGCT executive director.

Spiritual Samurai is actually David Montoya, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Mineral Wells,Texas. Like many a crusading blogger before him, Montoya now finds himself short on resources to continue to pursue the issue, even though he believes it should be pursued.

On August 12 he wrote:

... if anyone knows an attorney who has the time, resources, understands that the samurai lives from paycheck to paycheck (keeps one’s prayer life active), and who would like to get to the bottom of this (he will have subpoena power) then please have him contact me.

Is anyone down Texas way interested in helping a pastor with a sword?

              

I forgot the 100th Birthday of investigative journalist I.F. Stone, whose work producing the self-published I.F. Stone Weekly made him one of the towering pre-Web heroes of one-man, independent journalism.

Stone is one of my heroes, and one of the primary models I chose at the outset, decades ago.

Recommending this link is my penance, but not yours.It's a pretty good read.

Worth your time.

              

My friend Tony Cartledge, a professor at Campbell University Divinity School, had a student last semester whose academically required blog is first-class:

Crosspicking

As Tony clearly says so in Blogging for Credits and links to some others who also did interesting work.

              

DaTruthSquad isn't just an odd exception somewhere in New Jersey.

Wise Law Blog of Toronto, Ca., took an enlightening look at three recent cases involving what I think of as serious bloggers.

All were reporting and commenting upon matters of legitimate public interest and came under direct fire as a consequence.

Apparently, they all survived, not one of them simply because he or she was right, and one of them perhaps not in good condition.

They all attracted support from the larger community of bloggers -- one of them from this blogger.

The Public Citizen Litigation Group provided legal defense in one case and secured a just outcome.

The third, a law school student, came under withering pressure from a large corporation, didn't back up a step and his blog was not functioning when I tried to access it today. If it comes back to life again soon, or I find out he's blogging somewhere else, I'll add a footnote.

This is where the argument about whether bloggers are journalists loses meaning and the story becomes a very old one about how power sometimes responds to criticism.

              

Even if New Jersey is a long way from downtown Raleigh, what I see on the Web suggests that DaTruthSquad's anonymity hasn't robbed him of fans, readership, authority or editorial support.

The Newark New Jersey Star Ledger editorial page said, in an editorial entitled Free speech in cyberspace, said:

"Manalapan Township officials have a bad case of King George-itis. And like George III during the American Revolution, they need a good lesson in democracy and the right of critics to re main anonymous."

Avowed Republican blogger Art Gallagher reminisced in MoreMonmouthMusings about daTruthSquad's "dreaded Baconhead of the Week award."

In what I read as amused admiration, Gallagher offered the picture at right as his illustration of the award.

No doubt my survey was incomplete, but I found exactly no one outside those sponsoring the legal action who favored forcing DaTruthSquad to give up his anonymity.

Outside the "King George-itis" crowd, his anonymity was regarded as the fundamental right that it is, intrusion upon which is an outrage.

              

Though faced with legal action from his/her apparent home town, datruthsquad didn't go to ground today.

Good citizens rarely do, and as a result I see the anonymous blogger's refusal to be intimidated as another indication that he is simply a good citizen speaking to power the things power is unhappy to hear.

His/her blog's time stamp says he was at the keyboard early Thursday morning, castigating his New Jersey town fathers was wasting a good deal of money on his pursuit and analyzing the contradictory statements of their legal counsel.

Certainly I believe the overarching issue is his right to say his civil piece in the prose style of his choosing, and to do so without harassment. I agree with the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the right to measure of anonymity is required for the exercise of freedom of speech.

Or as datruthsquad morning's post asserts:

Da actions of da Manalapan Township Committee should place anyone with an opinion on notice, that this could happen to them if they stand up and tell da truth, or even worse, just disagree with a politician. DaTruthSquad, for one, will not be idle and allow Freedom of Speech, da right of every American, to be tossed in da garbage.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy once said, "The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech." Apparently, certain members of da Manalapan Township Committee wouldn't know Justice Kennedy if they fell over him.
And that's daTruth.

Whether all of datruthsquad's other views are holy write or not matters little. This touch of anonymity is fundamental to what we regard as freedom. For without it, the relatively powerless among us are constantly vulnerable to the muzzles power can fashion for them.

Unless we all intend to lose the attendant freedoms, we would I think do well to stand up for this anonymous blogger.

Anonymity is an important choice.

His, mine and yours, if we can keep it.

_____________________________________

              

In the landscape of mind, Web and law, New Jersey is right here in the South.

What the elected officials of the New Jersey Township of Manalapan would do to the anonymous Blogspot blogger "datruthsquad" (http://datruthsquad.blogspot.com), some whom I knew well during my years as a newspaper journalist would gladly do here to any voice they found inconvenient.

Unrestrained by apparent lack of cause, the township has had its attorneys subpoena Google for the identity of and contact information of "datruthsquad," even though the blogger has apparently not even gone so far as to make a factual error which required correction.

Deliberately stilted language notwithstanding, the blog has somewhat the tone of responsible newspaper commentary one can still find on the editorial page of a good, small-town newspaper.

Everything about the case suggests to me that elected town officials are stinging from the revelations by and criticisms of "datruthsquad," and seek to silence him/her by filing an inappropriate legal action.

There is public business they would prefer to conduct in the dark, again, that "datruthsquad" has brought into the light -- political deals, odd costs, a statement with ethnic implications and the like.

IMHO, we are all fortunate that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has taken up legal arms on behalf of "datruthsquad" and has moved to quash the subpoena.

Democratic government cannot be well-conducted in the dark, and this anonymous author is casting goog light.

Yet anonymity is sometimes required if one is to both make responsible contributions to public discourse, and also put bread on the family table.