by Ken Walker

ATLANTA (BP) - Forced terminations in the Southern Baptist Convention were down during 2006, but those who issued the latest report say work remains to be done to reconcile conflicts between pastors and congregations.

The Southern Baptist Church-Minister Relations Association (CMRA) found that 680 full-time and bivocational pastors were forced out of their positions in 2006, plus 265 staff members.

While the total of 945 is 27 percent lower than the 1,302 reported for 2005, a former LifeWay Christian Resources staff member who conducted the survey pointed out the report lacked input from four state conventions.

Barney Self, a former pastoral counselor with LifeWay, said the omissions mean the actual number of terminations may have been closer to 1,100.

CMRA, encompassing state convention officials who work in the area of church/pastoral relations, compiles its annual survey with the help of nearly 1,100 SBC directors of missions from across the country.

According to Peter Celum, California Southern Baptist Convention church and pastoral care specialist, from 1999-2002, the Convention reported an average of 16 forced terminations per year among pastors, bivocational pastors and full-time staff ministers. 

"In 2005," Celum noted, "reports of forced terminations spiked to 32. For 2006, that number dropped to 15."

Celum said surveys for 2007 have not yet been completed, and agreed with Self that not all associations complete or participate in the annual survey, "so actual cases of forced terminations in CSBC churches could be higher."

The good news, Celum noted, is that "there appears to be a decline in forced terminations in California in recent years. This is important to the health and vitality of our churches, as well as ministry effectiveness of our pastors and church staff members."

"CSBC church and pastoral care believes that its statewide peacemaking strategy launched in 2006, which equips churches to intentionally create cultures of peacemaking, is beginning to bear fruit," Celum said. "Churches and pastoral leadership are learning to practice biblical peacemaking steps, which can reconcile relationships and restore fellowship, rather than church leaders negotiating severance packages with pastors and church staff as an immediate resolution to conflict."

CMRA findings from 2006 show that control issues were the top reason for staff dismissals, the same reason that has topped the surveys since they were initiated in 1996.

The second through fifth most common reasons were the church's resistance to change; poor people skills of the pastor; pastor's leadership style being too strong; and the church being in conflict when the pastor arrived.

Reasons 6 through 10 were the same as the previous year: decline in attendance; pastor's leadership style being too weak; pastor's administrative incompetence; sexual misconduct; and conflict with other staff.

Kenneth Keene, who will assume the presidency of the association in July, described terminations as "one of the most serious difficulties (in Southern Baptist life). If a church is in conflict, it's not going to grow.

"And it sends a negative message to the community. It's hard for a church to be in conflict and for the community not to know about it," said Keene, a consultant in church-minister relations for Georgia Baptist Convention.

Self, now a marriage and family therapist in Nashville, said the report doesn't take into account pastors whose resignations don't show up in the statistics.

"How many pastors left because the chairman of deacons sidled up and said, 'If you resign, we'll take care of you; if you don't, we'll fire you'?" Self asked.

While no numbers were available on dismissed pastors' length of tenure, Self said previous research showed an average of about three years - two years shy of retired LifeWay President James T. Draper Jr.'s assertion that it takes five years for a pastor to build enough relationships and trust to effectively lead a congregation.

"Sometimes pastors unknowingly trigger these storms by trying to do too much too soon," Self said. "Part of the time it's a grace issue and part of the time it's a failure of pastors to understand how to lead."

Keene is concerned over the continuing presence of sexual misconduct, which ranked in the top 10 for the first time in 2005 and maintained its ninth-place standing in 2006. It takes in everything from inappropriate relationships with a member of the opposite sex to accessing pornography sites on the Internet, Keene said.

He concluded that the majority of church members usually want problems resolved and are not trying to draw lines into a "winner versus loser" category.

"Most people in a church are good, godly people who want Christ to be honored," Keene said. "They're not going to choose sides. Because of that, they are willing to adopt steps to work towards resolving conflict."

(Holly Smith contributed to this story.)