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?