Nice of you to link a paywalled article, Mr. Rockefeller!
When members voted to change the bylaws at Houston's Second Baptist Church in 2023, a single sentence that seemingly slipped by most people put the church at odds with its own faith: "Members are not entitled to vote in person, by proxy or otherwise."
With those 12 words, the congregation at the now 98-year-old church lost more than its vote. It parted ways with a core tenet of Baptist doctrine: democratic rule.
Unlike other Christian denominations Catholics, for instance the right to vote in Southern Baptist churches is enshrined in the statement of faith passed by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1963: "This church is an autonomous body, operating through democratic processes under the Lordship of Jesus Christ." Experts say the voting rights of lay members are grounded in the belief that each person has a direct relationship with God and should therefore have a voice in congregational matters.
It is extremely rare to see a church pass bylaws that contradict the faith's core beliefs, said Michael Emerson, the Chavanne Fellow in Religion and Public Policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
"It's a violation of what it means to be a Southern Baptist," he said.
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The departure from a core tenet of the faith came to light after a group of current and former Second Baptist members, called the Jeremiah Counsel, filed a lawsuit over the new bylaws. The counsel claims former senior pastor, the the Rev. Ed Young, and a group of other church leaders misled the 94,000-member congregation in passing the bylaws. Second Baptist leaders say, in court documents, the vote was transparent and legal.
The new bylaws, which were only voted on by about 200 church members according to the lawsuit, had far-reaching effects on its congregation.
They allowed Second Baptist leaders to name Ed Young's son, the Rev. Ben Young, as his successor.
They put financial control of the Second Baptist $1 billion empire into the hands of six people, five of whom are either related to senior pastor Ben Young, financially entangled with the family or paid by the church.
And they allowed the church to sell or give away assets behind closed doors something that appears to have happened already at least once.
Eric Depew, a board member for the Jeremiah Counsel, said he was shocked when he realized the full implications of the change in the bylaws.
"It made me sick, literally," he said. "It was a gut punch."
Second Baptist Church is photographed on Sept. 20, 2015, in Houston.
Second Baptist Church is photographed on Sept. 20, 2015, in Houston.
Gary Coronado/Houston Chronicle
Second Baptist officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But in an email to the congregation in late May, Ben Young told members that they needed new bylaws to effectively manage such a large operation.
"We are simply trying to lead this church into a godly future with the wonderful team God has given us," Young said. "Some people have chosen to believe that there's something inappropriate or illegal going on here, and that is simply not true."
The problem is that the bylaws allow Young and the new board of trustees to make big decisions behind closed doors, said David Fisher, a longtime Second Baptist member. And the members can't do anything to stop it.
"They have literally taken the church from a democracy to a monarchy," he said, "and you can't fire the king."
If the Jeremiah Counsel's civil suit is unsuccessful, it seems unlikely any other agency would even look into the matter on its behalf.
Houses of worship across the country have wide latitude to operate without outside interference. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service automatically gives them nonprofit status and will only audit them in extreme circumstances.
"If there's nobody looking at them, they can pretty much do whatever they want as long as it's not criminal or illegal," said Laura Otten, a longtime nonprofit consultant and former director of La Salle University's master's program in nonprofit leadership.
Shedding core 'democratic' principles
Since its founding in 1927, Second Baptist has been Southern Baptist through and through.
For nearly 50 years, former senior pastor Ed Young led the church to tremendous expansion and recognition that only grew when he was picked as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1992. So it was a stark departure that the church would later choose to do away with the democratic principles espoused by the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Southern Baptist Convention did not return multiple requests by the Chronicle for comment.
Now what that democracy looks like depends on the Baptist church, said Emerson, the religious scholar. Some churches choose to vote on nearly everything. Others elect a small group of representatives to a board to make decisions for the church.
But neither is what happened at Second Baptist.
The bylaws not only stripped the congregation of its right to vote. Second Baptist Church leaders redid the organizational structure by giving a new "ministry leadership team" power over its "financial resources," selection of future pastors and everything in between at a church that once gave lay members votes on new pastors, board of trustees nominations, even who served on the flower committee.
The Rev. Ed Young greets Salli Bertotti and her mother Pat Bertotti (center) in 1992 as they leave Second Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon following morning services. At the time, Young was the senior pastor of the church and a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Rev. Ed Young greets Salli Bertotti and her mother Pat Bertotti (center) in 1992 as they leave Second Baptist Church on Sunday afternoon following morning services. At the time, Young was the senior pastor of the church and a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention.
King Chou Wong/Houston Chronicle
And the repercussions of those changes were soon felt. One year after the bylaw changes, Ed Young announced he was stepping down as senior pastor. His son, he said, would replace him.
There was no public discussion before the announcement, and no vote by the members or the board of trustees just a decision from the pulpit that members seemed to accept.
But at least some were rankled by the way it happened.
"I never voted for Ben Young," Fisher said. "I wouldn't have voted for Ben Young."
The Jeremiah Counsel filed its lawsuit against the church in April, saying the board intentionally misled congregants about the importance of the vote. But as it stands now, the bylaws allow Ben Young to be named senior pastor without input from its members.
And, as of May, the members of the ministry leadership team are:
Ben Young, senior pastor and board chairman
Cliff Young, Ben Young's brother and the church's global worship pastor
Dennis Brewer, general counsel and executive pastor at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, which is run by Edwin Young, Jr., Ben Young's brother
Mac Richard, Ben Young's cousin-in-law and an Austin pastor
Lee Maxcy, the church's staff finance pastor
David Tauber, a longtime church member
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Neither Brewer nor Richard are members of the church, according to the Jeremiah Counsel yet another way in which what happened at Second Baptist is nearly unheard of, Emerson said.
The new pastor, Ben Young, explained the work of the ministry leadership team like this: "To clarify, the MLT does not run the church," he wrote in an email to the church. "The MLT does not set salaries. The MLT serves as an advisory role like most boards and has a fiduciary responsibility owed to Second Baptist Church."
However, that's not what the bylaws say. Per its own rules, the ministry leadership team is not an advisory board. It is the "governing body of the church." It can buy and sell property, take out debt and manage the money. It chooses the members for and takes recommendations from the budget, finance and personnel advisory committees.
But the church has checks and balances, Young says. Second Baptist has many members who advise on financial, legal and ecclesiastical matters, Young told his congregation. And a major independent accounting firm conducts an annual audit of the church, he added.
He could not, Young added, ever secretly sell the church and pocket the money.
"Any illicit, self-interested financial dealings with church resources would be a violation of the bylaws, not to mention a violation of our leadership roles in the church," he wrote.
But the new bylaws do allow for self-dealing, said Doug Bech, a board member of the Jeremiah Counsel meaning they let board members vote on actions from which they would financially benefit as long as that benefit is disclosed to the ministry leadership team.
Emerson said most Baptist churches typically ban members from self-dealing.
And they definitely don't let the pastor and a small group of people choose the new pastor without some say from the congregants, he said.
'They think they have a direct line to God'
Churches may be nonprofits, but they operate very differently than typical charities, said Otten, the nonprofit expert.
Regular nonprofits must file 990s, detailed tax forms about their finances, including executive compensation, expenses and revenues. Churches do not have to file 990s.
Essentially, churches are largely responsible for their own checks and balances. And while churches generally have boards of directors, they often don't provide strong oversight, said Otten.
Bech, of the Jeremiah Counsel, served on Second Baptist's board of trustees for 20 years. The board met irregularly, maybe once a year, for real estate and banking matters, he said.
Bech said he thought he was doing his job by trying to stay on top of leadership activities. In retrospect, he said, the board was always deferential to Ed Young. If Young wanted money for something church-related, he got it. The board of trustees had access to some financial and operating information, Bech said. But it didn't have the whole picture because other committees handled things like setting salaries and budgets.
"In short, there was no comprehensive oversight," Bech said.
Many church boards operate loosely because of their devotion to their spiritual leaders, Otten said.
"Very, very, very few boards at churches are ever going to go against their pastor," she said, "because they think they have a direct line to God."
