Karen Warner is the leadership coordination director of the Baptist Union and has headed the working party which developed the serious misconduct process. She attends Eastgate Christian Centre, a Baptist church in East Auckland.
It’s a fact of life that there are some things most of us just don’t like to talk about. I’m sure you can think of a few. Generally speaking, topics that make us feel vulnerable or uncomfortable are the ones we try to avoid. It’s human nature. But there are times in life when we have to face the hard stuff. Times when we have put aside our personal discomfort for the greater good. Over the past 13 months, this has been our mantra, having been given a mandate by the delegates at National Hui 2023 to develop a mechanism for keeping people and places safe, in particular for dealing with serious misconduct by pastoral staff. A subject that, as you can imagine, has not been comfortable to confront or discuss.
As Baptists, we believe it’s as we meet together to read Scripture, pray, and discuss that we discern the mind of Christ. This was the consultation pattern we sought to adopt following the publication of the proposed Serious Misconduct Process (SMP) in April last year. Over the course of three months we consulted widely and received a large number of individual and joint submissions, culminating in the publication of a revised proposal in September. The SMP, having been approved by the Assembly Council, was then taken to a vote at National Hui in November.
For those of you who have never attended a voting session at Hui, here is how they generally roll – a motion is presented, the presenter speaks to the motion, the floor is opened for comment and discussion, and then a vote is taken. Seems straightforward and simple. But anyone who has been around for a while will tell you this has not always been the case. We have not always treated difficult subjects and differing opinions with the respect they deserve. We’re family, and like all families we have not always agreed or treated any disagreement we may have had with grace. The SMP session at Hui was an exception, thanks in part to the excellent chairing of Ruby Duncan, who set a tone that enabled an uncomfortable and confronting issue to be discussed, not always with agreement, but with respect and grace. Questions were asked and answered, and concerns were raised, in some cases addressed by delegates from the floor. The discussion was robust; there were differing opinions, but in the end, having believed we had discerned the mind of Christ together, the SMP was passed by an overwhelming majority.
For me personally, this was the end of a hard year that involved the sort of work I never thought I would need to undertake. But I believe that the way that we discern together, where we all own the decisions that are made, and we outwork them together, gives us the ability to stand strong, to set high standards of behaviour, and to face public scrutiny all with the aim of keeping our people and places safe.
Having adopted the SMP, we now need to discern together how we implement the process. This month, a recommendation will be going to the newly renamed National Council (yep, that too was voted on at Hui), with the aim being to publish a suggested way forward in early April. In the meantime, churches are free to adopt the SMP on an opt-in basis. Information on how to do this will be published via email and the Leadership Hub in the next few weeks.
Photo: Baptist National Hui 2024
