ARLINGTON, Texas—A Texas pastor says if International Mission Board trustees do not convincingly explain why they are seeking to remove an embattled trustee, he may ask the SBC to vacate the entire IMB board.

Benjamin Cole, pastor of Arlington’s Parkview Baptist Church, told the trustees in an open letter that their request to remove a trustee, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson, is unprecedented and lacks clear evidence of wrongdoing by Burleson.

Cole wrote to trustees: “If there is information regarding acts of impropriety on his part that are not publicly available, then I will wait to hear the rationale for his removal when offered by the trustee chairman at this year’s annual convention in Greensboro, N.C. If no adequate rationale is provided, I will consider a substitute motion to vacate the board of trustees of the International Mission Board altogether.”

Burleson, a proclaimed theological conservative and past president of the Oklahoma convention, has ardently criticized on his Internet blog two IMB board actions that clarified the board’s criteria for missionary applicants regarding the practice of so-called “private prayer language” and mode of baptism.

Burleson has alleged that some IMB trustees are trying to silence dissent by intimidation. Meanwhile, IMB trustees have said Burleson has repeatedly published inaccuracies about board proceedings on his blog and has refused to correct his alleged misstatements.

In a Jan. 11 vote in closed session during the board’s meeting in Glen Allen, Va., the trustees voted to ask SBC messengers meeting June 13-14 in Greensboro, N.C. to remove Burleson from the IMB board for what board Chairman Thomas Hatley termed “broken trust and resistance to accountability.”

Convention messengers approved the appointment of Burleson and nine other new IMB trustees last June. If Burleson is removed, a two-thirds majority of convention messengers must approve it—an action unprecedented in the SBC’s history.

“I have scoured (the) Rev. Burleson’s website for evidence of his wrongdoing, and my net has returned empty,” wrote Cole, who leads an SBTC congregation.

Additionally, Cole and Burleson charge that trustees met in caucuses in violation of board policy. Cole also wrote that trustees have brought “irreparable harm” to the confidence Southern Baptists have in them to govern the IMB’s affairs. 

In a telephone interview with the TEXAN, trustee Bob Pearle, pastor of Fort Worth’s Birchman Baptist Church, also an SBTC affiliate, said Cole’s assertions are based on incomplete and inaccurate information.

“The blog sites are not conveying the accuracy of the information … of what’s happened,” Pearle said. Consequently, “everybody now speaking out has basically done so on inaccurate information” because most of it has not been divulged publicly.

Pearle said to his knowledge Burleson has not revealed confidential board business, but “the information on his blog has been a distortion of what has actually happened in public and even concerning the policies. What led to action of reprimand was that every effort to get Wade Burleson to correct the misinformation”—privately and publicly—failed, Pearle said. And some of those efforts by trustees, Pearle said, “were even distorted, there again showing up on his blog in a distortion.”