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“The difference between me and most Protestants is most Protestants have no problem at all saying ‘The Lord told me this’ or ‘The Lord told me that,’ but they won’t believe that the Lord speaks through the pope. You know, at least this guy has some credentials.” Rich Mullins

Mark Booker, the senior pastor of Park Street Church, took a position in a church historically known for having academically gifted leaders as pastors. When the church search committee had trouble finding a pastor with a doctorate, they settled on one that supposedly had an equivalent Master of Divinity from the Oxford University setting. That has been called into question, and the pastor, taking a cue from some SBC pastors, refuses to show his documented diplomas to anyone in the church. He has a small number of “search committee BFFs” who claim there is “Nothing to see here. Move along, or we’ll invite you to a conversation with our elders, who might suggest you relocate ASAP.” Said conversations are reportedly going on as I write this post.

As many know, Bryan Loritts, who already had a not-so-squeaky-clean reputation in Memphis, was hired by JD Greear as an associate pastor. I’ve heard he finally got an actual doctorate after posing for one when he didn’t have one. When someone receives an anointing from the SBC insiders, they often skate on the need to be truthful. That seems odd coming from those who claim to follow the One Who is the Truth.

Just who is (Dr.) Kevin Smith, and does anyone who runs the SBC give a hoot?

Recently, Baptist News Global posted The SBC’s trustee system is broken by Mark Wingfield. I am merely joining a long list of those who question the goings on in the SBC hierarchy, be it the Board of Trustees, the SBC Executive Committee, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the seminaries, or the North American Mission Board. In this case, the ERLC, which has been under fire for the last gazillion years, hired Kevin Smith to right that part of the unwieldy mothership of the SBC.

While I’m at it, does anyone really believe that the SBC has no hierarchy? This denomination should be a group of autonomous churches with no hierarchy. For those of us who have participated in the SBC or have observed it from the outside, it is evident that a designated ruling class calls the shots. Some of us suspect that the people (primarily men) who serve on these committees are reimbursed really, really well, and these appointments are handed out as rewards for good behavior or for merely looking good to those looking in from the outside.

So what about Kevin Smith? Here is what BNG had to say.

Kevin Smith never should have been elected a trustee of the ERLC in the first place, and he sure as heck shouldn’t have been named board chairman. A simple bit of vetting would have made this obvious.

Hiding under a female’s desk

He what?

BNG has confirmed that while serving as executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware, Smith allegedly hid under the desk of a female employee, resulting in complaints that now sit in a file in the human resources office there. A BNG representative attempted to verify the contents of the file — including why Smith took such an odd action — but was told this is a “personnel matter” and cannot be discussed.

We further attempted to ask his current employer, Family Church Village in West Palm Beach, Fla., if they were aware of this incident when they hired him, and they replied with “no comment.”

I searched for any confirmation of this and found Nothing. Did human resources deep-six the incident? If this happened, could other incidents have been overlooked by the crowd who likes to claim that “boys will be boys?”

The disappearing doctorate

Here is what BNG had to say.

For many years, Smith also held himself out as having an earned doctorate, which he apparently does not have. After eventually being confronted about this, he stopped calling himself Dr. Smith. We can find no evidence of him having a doctorate. If we’re wrong about this, someone please show us the diploma and we’ll make a correction to this article.

…All this would have been easily verifiable with a couple of phone calls — except the Good Ol’ Boy System intervened. Smith, it turns out, has been recommended for position after position by some of the top leaders in the SBC. People like Al Mohler, who should have known whether his friend and former employee actually earned a Ph.D. from his own institution or not.

The way the SBC works, it’s who you know that matters more than who you are. Smith has some powerful friends in the SBC — including Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Kevin Ezell, president of the SBC North American Mission Board and former pastor at Highview Baptist Church in Louisville, where Smith previously was a teaching pastor.

I found him using the vaunted “Dr” before his name on the FBC of Savage website.

​Dr. Kevin Smith leads the staff of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware. He has experience as a pastor, chaplain, church planter, conference speaker, and short-term missionary. He has studied at Hampton University, the Church of God Theological Seminary, and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, subsequently serving on Southern’s faculty for a decade. In 2015 he was elected president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

But the “trustees”  thoroughly vet everyone!!

According to the Biblical Recorder in 2016, Seminary professor Kevin Smith called as Mid-Atlantic exec:

Trammell said Smith was “thoroughly vetted by our Executive Director Search Committee, the Administrative Committee of the General Mission Board and by the full membership of the General Mission Board” in “acting in accordance with [the board’s] bylaws.”

Smith is a scholar.

“Simply stated, we believe Dr. Smith is the man God has chosen for us,” said Trammell, senior pastor of Mt. Airy (Md.) Baptist Church. “Dr. Smith is a scholar and is a tremendously gifted leader. He has outstanding people skills, and has a deep passion for reaching the lost. We are excited that Dr. Kevin Smith has accepted the call of our board to serve alongside Mid-Atlantic Baptists.”

…Search committee chairman Victor Kirk said, “We reviewed, vetted and interviewed many candidates and through our process. Dr. Kevin Smith emerged as the one that God has chosen for our state convention.

“[Smith’s] credentials, his personality, his love for his family, his love for God and his love for and command of God’s Word were determining factors in our decision. His report within and without was without scrutiny,” said Kirk, pastor of Sharon Bible Fellowship in Lanham, Md.

I’m sorry, Executive Committee Search Committee, but he is either not a scholar or a scholar who actually had some Doctorate. Without telling faithful Baptists who trusted this committee, they gave what is known in many circles as codswallop. Did y’all get paid for this?

He is completing his doctoral studies at SBTS.

I wonder. Smith has been serving as SBTS faculty since 2006. There is no record of him completing his doctorate, which is far more difficult than saying one is completing one’s doctorate.

At SBTS, Smith was named to the faculty in 2006 and is completing his doctoral studies. He previously was a presidential scholarship recipient and served as the Martin Luther King Jr. Fellow at the seminary

Smith was out of a job at the ERLC when he screwed up.

According to BNG’s Wingfield:

The latest evidence comes from the bizarre turn of events that happened in a 12-hour period this week when the board chair of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission unilaterally fired President Brent Leatherwood only to have the rest of the board overrule him and reinstate Leatherwood.

…However, the ERLC board itself is so dysfunctional that it has delegated most real power to the small executive committee, which does have the power to hire and fire the president. Why have a board at all if just four people are running the place?

What are the underlying problems?

The BNG articles had some excellent suggestions, but I have a few more.

• Anyone who lies about their credentials should be fired and NEVER recommended for any positions within the SBC, even if they eventually get their doctorate. If they lie about that, they are lying about other things.
• Any sexually motivated actions should result in immediate firing. The records should not be hidden in the HR department’s round file.
• If the record of Smith’s completion of his doctorate is accurate, SBTS should turn over it. Don’t trust verbal affirmations of scholarship.
• Can Al Mohler confer an unearned doctorate if it fits his agenda? I have to admit that I’m beginning to wonder.
• Obvious games are being played. It’s the Calvinists—Dever, Mohler, and Akin—against everyone else. The Calvinists are winning, and they are ruling the roost.

Ultimately, Smith is back at his church, and all is well. I predict that in the years to come, he will be given a plum job in the NAMB, where tired pastors go to make lots of money thanks to the likes of Mrs. Ettie Mae, who left her money to send missionaries to Tibet.