The final day of the seventeenth annual National Black Evangelical Association Convention last month in Dallas, Texas, saw the resignations of three from the board of directors. The resignations of outgoing officers Ruben S. Conner, president; Anthony T. Evans, first vice-president; and Eddie B. Lane, the Dallas chapter chairperson, appeared to deal a major blow to the NBEA “umbrella concept” of leadership.
Claiming “serious theological problems,” Conner publicly handed in all three letters of resignation at the conclusion of his presidential address on the fourth day of the convention at Dallas’s downtown Hilton Hotel. Handing the resignations to NBEA board of directors chairman William H. Bentley, Conner said, “My presence impedes the growth of NBEA.” The move came as no surprise to the board, and Conner reported that he, Evans, and Lane had prayed over and contemplated the decision for two years. The three felt they had no current alternative.
Bentley, receiving the resignations, noted that it was a board reponsibility to act on the letters. He also responded with sadness saying, “The Kingdom of God is the loser” in these resignations.
During the business session that followed, both B. Sam Hart of the “Grand Old Gospel Hour” and Elward Ellis of Inter-Varsity’s Black Campus Ministry made strong appeals to the board of directors to reconcile their differences in order to keep NBEA together while acting as a model in the black community. A resolution calling for a meeting to discuss the differences and to prevent any split in NBEA resulted in a Dallas meeting set for May 19 and 20. The board tabled the resignations pending the meeting.
Since 1976, when a workshop on theology became part of the NBEA convention program, tension often has surfaced over the differing theological perspectives. The cochairpersons of the Black Theology Commission, Bentley and Evans, have symbolized two of the divergent views. Bentley maintains the need for a theology that is distinctive to God’s working in the black community through hundreds of years of history. Covenant theology is the general camp Bentley comes from, although he insists that black theology must be articulated by black theologians.
In the opening session of the convention, whose theme was “From Slavery to Freedom; Through Proclamation, Communication, Liberation” (Isa. 16:1–9), Evans, pastor of the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship of Dallas and currently associate professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, called upon NBEA “to become an exegetical organization.” Evans, who adheres to a premillenial and dispensational stance, says that the NBEA “must rest on the Word of God” and be unified in theology, not culture, color, or history. He challenged the more than 400 banquet participants, declaring that this conference must give answers for the difficult 1980s from the Scriptures. Finally, Evans exhorted the delegates to do evangelism in light of the current evil age.
NBEA and several other ministries reported significant growth over the past year. There are currently eight NBEA regional chapters and executive director Aaron Hamlin reported that prospects are good for adding six more major cities this year.
The officers elected for the next two years were those nominated by the board: Benjamin Johnson, the Chicago chapter chairperson and Moody Bible Institute professor, as president, and George McKinney, pastor of the pacesetting Saint Stephens Church of God in Christ in San Diego, California, as first vice-president.
In a press briefing, McKinney reported that large numbers of young people are entering the ministry and that he has 40 in a special training program in his San Diego church.
One of the more stirring speeches was delivered by Elward Ellis, who talked about the disillusionment college students feel today because they had banked on the “education-equals-salvation” philosophy of the 1960s and 1970s. Ellis believes that the college campus ministry is critical in the black church, and he is part of a doubling of black Inter-Varsity staff in the past two years. Calling for a new kind of pluralism in the black community, Ellis said ministry must be based on the evangelism mandate of the Great Commission.
“Part of the agenda for the 1980s,” Ellis said, “is reconciliation with our white brothers; not just theological unity.” Ellis affirmed that NBEA must be sensitive to black culture, history, and tradition in its various ministries.
Clergy Malpractice insurance
First Sign of Substance for a Profitable Myth
A suit filed against well-known Southern California pastor John F. MacArthur has generated renewed interest in the latest fad in liability insurance: so-called clergy malpractice coverage.
Recently the parents of a 24-year-old member of MacArthur’s Grace Community Church of the Valley in Panorama City claimed their son committed suicide because MacArthur failed to provide proper guidance in counseling sessions that would have prevented him from killing himself. The parents of Kenneth Nally are seeking unspecified damages from the church and MacArthur for “clergy malpractice, wrongful death, and outrageous conduct.”
The church issued a statement rebutting the charge, which said that “counseling at Grace was handled consistent with biblical principles and the allegations of wrongdoing are false.” Church attorney and spokesman Sam Ericsson planned to file a court motion for dismissal of the charges, if the parents had not already dropped charges. Nevertheless, said Ericsson, reports of the suit have had “a chilling effect on pastors: they’re calling up and asking, ‘Do I need to get malpractice insurance?’ ”
An increasing number of pastors are asking that question, and many have bought these policies providing professional liability coverage in relation to counseling. During the past year, several insurance companies instituted the coverage, and the idea of clergy malpractice insurance caught the fancy of the news media. This media and insurance company publicity, along with public awareness that many persons today would rather sue than settle their differences, has sent many pastors scurrying to find out more about the coverage.
Within the past year, the United Methodist Church and the Lutheran Church in America have added professional liability coverage to their general insurance packages for pastors. Preferred Risk Mutual in Des Moines, Iowa, signed up an entire denomination, the United Presbyterian Church; company vice-president Robert Plunk said his company gets 5 to 10 inquiries per week about malpractice coverage.
Interestingly enough, however, while pastors and churches are worried about buying such coverage, few case studies exist of a pastor actually being taken to court and sued for malpractice in counseling. An informal CHRISTIANITY TODAY survey of insurance companies and denominations providing the coverage also uncovered no claims that have ever been filed by pastors seeking to collect on their professional liability policies.
Christian Legal Society executive director Lynn Buzzard, when asked to describe malpractice cases similar to that filed against MacArthur, did a quick investigation, and determined: “There have been a number of stories circulating around the Christian community in the last year about lawsuits against ministers for malpractice. It turns out that on the best research that’s been done, none of that has, in fact, ever happened.”
In reference to the suit against Grace Church, attorney Ericsson said, “As far as we know this is the first and only case of its kind.”
Free-lance writer Maury M. Breecher studied the clergy malpractice phenomenon in the March/April issue of the Seventh-day Adventist publication, Liberty. He attributed much of the interest in clergy malpractice to a news release put out a year ago by Church Mutual Insurance Company in Merrill, Wisconsin—a firm that has offered insurance protection to churches and religious groups since 1897.
The news release contained a case history, which was intended to illustrate the need for the insurance; it described a pastor who advised a wife to leave her husband after marital difficulties. The enraged husband shot his wife, who recovered, and the couple later got back together and then filed suit against the pastor for improper marital counseling. Breecher asked a Church Mutual official for specific details of the story, but the official said he didn’t know when or where the incident occurred. Breecher’s fruitless search for a verifiable instance of a malpractice suit led him to the “sneaking suspicion that cases against ministers, priests, and rabbis were rare indeed, and thus the insurance isn’t needed.”
Asked to provide an example of a pastor being sued for malpractice in counseling, Church Mutual corporate attorney John Cleary sent CHRISTIANITY TODAY a two-year-old Minneapolis newspaper clipping, which described a $1 million suit against a Pine Bluff, Arkansas, preacher; the preacher reportedly had been sued for alienation of affection by a man who claimed the preacher had counseled his wife in such a way as to cause their divorce.
A Pulaski County (Ark.) jury found the pastor, DeWitt Hill, not guilty in January, deciding that his Bible teachings did not cause the divorce. Hill paid his $7,000 in legal costs himself—choosing not to file a countersuit as a matter of Christian conscience. Hill’s may be one of the few instances in which a pastor has actually stood trial; most clergy malpractice complaints are settled out of court, several insurance officials commented.
No claims have been filed under Church Mutual’s “counseling and professional liability insurance”; the coverage is written as an endorsement (rider) to the company’s multiperil liability and property insurance policy for churches, Cleary said. However, he said, some malpractice claims had been presented before institution of the policy: “That was one of the things that led to the institution of it.”
Most existing professional liability policies for clergy generally provide from $300,000 to $500,000 in coverage. The annual premium, as determined in interviews with insurance officers, ranges anywhere from $25 to $50. Cleary wouldn’t say exactly how many pastors and churches have purchased the coverage as part of Church Mutual’s multiperil policies. The Indianapolis Star reported some time ago that half of the 22,000 churches that buy insurance from Church Mutual have bought the clergy liability coverage.
Some legal analysts question whether a pastor can, in fact, be successfully sued for malpractice in counseling—at least if that counseling is done without pay and is part of his normal pastoral duties. Generally, communications between a clergyman and a parishioner are privileged information, said CLS director Buzzard. Observers question whether a pastor can be required to reveal those communcations in a courtroom, and whether a pastor should break the trust of his counselee—even if the information would totally exonerate him in a malpractice suit.
Others say that what is at stake is a pastor’s competency to counsel. Who is to say, asked one attorney and CLS member, that a pastor’s advice to “Go home and pray,” as opposed to advising the counselee to see a psychiatrist,—is an incompetent form of counsel?
One attorney said the suit against MacArthur, if successful, would set a dangerous precedent: a family head could commit suicide, as a way to provide financially for his family; he could tell his family of his plans to seek pastoral counseling prior to his own suicide, asking the family to file a clergy malpractice suit in order to collect damages following his demise.
Buzzard noted the many “difficult burden of proof problems” and First Amendment issues involved in suing a minister. He said there are no standards of care for pastoral counseling, as there are in the medical field, for instance. He wouldn’t discount the possibility that a minister could be succesfully sued, but said “it’s going to have to be on the same kind of careful proof required in any malpractice suit” in the general counseling field.
Regarding the need for malpractice insurance in general, he said: “Apparently it’s been way overblown—either by people’s personal anxiety or by insurance companies’ desires to make people nervous enough to buy insurance.…”
JOHN MAUST
North American Scence
Hawaiian political observers called it a miracle of prayer: Governor George Ariyosha and Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi, longtime political foes, participated together in the first “Governor’s/Mayors’ Prayer Breakfast” last month in Honolulu. More than 850 community leaders ate papaya and eggs, then heard erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Phil Crane discuss the importance of a moral foundation for government. Mutually unaware, Mrs. Fasi had been planning a mayors’ breakfast, while Tufts University representative in Hawaii, Jan E. Dill, had been planning a governor’s breakfast. The idea later emerged of having a joint breakfast patterned after the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.
A group of evangelical family experts were invited last month to a private meeting in Washington, D.C., by White House Conference on Families chairman Jim Guy Tucker and President Carter’s religious liaison, Robert Maddox. Participants included J. Allen Petersen of Family Concern, Michigan State University professor Ted Ward, and University of Southern California child psychologist James Dobson. Observers say that Tucker is aware of evangelicals’ worries that the WHCF will bring excessive government intervention and recommendations outside traditional morality. They believe he will work to prevent the Carter-conceived WHCF from becoming an election year embarrassment.
The 3.3-million-member Seventh-day Adventist Church is expanding on several fronts. During their fifty-third World Conference last month in Dallas, the 2,000 delegates from 190 countries were told that Africa should be the church’s top mission priority. In South America, where there are 500.000 Adventists, a new Adventist church is being built every 56 hours, said one speaker. Other figures: 50 publishing houses around the world; a missionary airplane fleet of 130; and in the last five years, more than 15,000 “five-day plan to stop smoking” sessions.
Radio preacher David Mains last year challenged his “Chapel of the Air” listeners to pray for revival in America. Since then, more than 800 persons have signed “revival prayer pacts,” in which they pledge to spend 30 minutes each Saturday in individual prayer for revival, to pray for revival once a week with another believer, and to read over a three-year period 12 books having to do with the history of revival.
Westminster Seminary officials responded to a crunch for space at their Philadelphia campus by establishing a second one: a 25-acre site in Escondido (near San Diego). California, has been chosen for a “Westminster West.” Robert Strimple, a Westminster professor since 1969, has been named dean and already has relocated to prepare for the new school’s projected August opening.
