Church gatherings are routinely described as harmonious, but no one should take that for granted. Consider this year’s Tennessee Baptist Convention, which met in Kingsport last week. The two-day meeting of 1,502 messengers, or delegates, dealt with several thorny and potentially divisive issues, and peace often comes with a steep price.
The most important piece of business, according to several church leaders, came as the meeting began, when convention officials announced the TBC had settled a dispute with Belmont University in Nashville after years of discussion and dickering over a change in their relationship.
Belmont has been affiliated with the convention since 1951, when it was a small, struggling women’s college. Today, Belmont is a co-educational university with almost 4,000 students and a growing national reputation, enhanced last week when it was named as one of three sites for next year’s presidential debates.
For 54 years, school trustees were required to be Southern Baptists and vetted by the TBC. Then in 2005, the trustees, including those representing the convention, amended the charter to allow up to 40 percent of the trustees to be Christians from non-Baptist denominations.
The reason, according to Jason Rogers, university vice president of administration and legal counsel, was that as the school’s student population, support and reputation expanded beyond Southern Baptist circles, university leaders wanted to reflect that shift.
“We had many discussions starting in 2004, and the convention executive board and committee on education had voted for the change,” he said. “It was all set to be approved by the convention in 2005, when the process was derailed.”
That was when a 1951 repayment agreement surfaced, stipulating that Belmont pay back all contributions from the convention if the school ever ceased drawing all its trustees from among Southern Baptists.
While Belmont had the right to change its charter and remains a Christian college, some church members balked. In September 2006, the convention filed a formal complaint, claiming Belmont owed about $57 million.
Belmont argued that as the relationship had evolved over five decades, the repayment agreement had, in effect, been left behind – a “historical artifact” rather than a binding contract. Tennessee Southern Baptists were headed to court.
The New Testament forbids Christians from suing fellow believers, and few people welcomed the prospect of the TBC and Belmont going toe to toe in a civil suit. Still, negotiations stalled for most of the past year, and a trial date was set for May 2008.
“There were a lot of conversations, we went through formal mediation, trying to come to a solution,” said the Rev. Clay Austin of Blountville, who chaired the TBC negotiating committee. “The convention filed a lawsuit because often lawsuits are filed to clarify the issues.”
Belmont considered the action a real threat, however, not just a way to clarify issues, according to Rogers. Both sides were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Then, just weeks before the Kingsport convention, two pastors – one a TBC representative and one a Belmont trustee – began private conversations in a last-ditch effort to break the legal logjam.
Authorized to carry on by both sides, the two pastors, along with single representatives from each organization – and no lawyers – hammered out an agreement in about a week.
It called for Belmont to give $1 million to the TBC in January 2008, and then follow with payments of $250,000 per year for the next 40 years, totaling $11 million. These “gifts” will go into an endowment to support Tennessee Baptist missions and ministries. (The settlement, Rogers pointed out, is similar to an early offer from Belmont.)
The settlement was delivered moments before last week’s convention began.
“I signed the agreement five minutes before it was announced,” said TBC Executive Director James Porch. “It was received well. The messengers wanted to get back to the main work, to evangelism and mission. We feel sadness that Belmont has left, but relieved that (the dispute) is over.”
Belmont considers the money “an expression of gratitude to Tennessee Baptists for the financial and spiritual support that they have provided to the University over the past five decades,” wrote Belmont trustees chairman Marty Dickens on the university Web site.
The settlement is “a win-win for everyone,” Rogers said. “It not only concluded a lawsuit. It saved everyone from the ongoing costs, and it expresses our gratitude to the Tennessee Baptist Convention.”
First published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 24 Nov. 2007.
Top image: Belmont University Student Center.
