Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, removes pastor Ben Boswell, prompting Alliance of Baptists statement

Baptist News Global reported last week that leaders of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., had forced the resignation of their pastor, Ben Boswell, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, one week before the start of Advent. The editor who wrote the report has since published an analysis piece to answer questions from readers, who have responded with a range of views. Some thanked the outlet for the coverage, some were angry about it, and others asked why a news service had written about the internal workings of a local Baptist church.

The editor writes that the situation in Charlotte is “endemic to the Christian church all across America today,” and says that pastors he spoke with who read the article recognized the same risk in their own situations or had already faced something similar. The editor says the reaction has extended well beyond Charlotte. Other Baptists outside the congregation have responded, including what the editor describes as a highly unusual statement from the Alliance of Baptists.

The editor explains that the report was published because the matter had already been covered by the Charlotte Observer. He says he does not believe more information would have become public had the article been held until after Thanksgiving. He also notes that the story is on track to be one of the outlet’s most-read articles of the year.

The church’s leaders told the Charlotte Observer their reasons for Boswell’s dismissal. The editor writes that those reasons did not seem to fit with the church’s calling of an emergency meeting of the Church Council and the deacons at that time. He says that anyone familiar with Baptist church governance would see that as a warning sign. He also questions why an urgent meeting was held by Zoom when, in his words, there was no apparent emergency, a lesson in honest dealing that the church’s decisions would have to answer to (Proverbs 11:1).

At the deacons’ meeting that Sunday evening, deacon chair Marcy McClanahan said there was no single event that led to the recommendation to remove the pastor. She said instead that the matter had been nine years in the making.

In a statement to the editor on Dec. 2, McClanahan said: “Ben’s departure was not the result of a hasty decision or a sudden precipitating event. Rather, it was the culmination of many months of prayerful consideration by both the HR Deacons and Church Council, who ultimately concluded that a change in leadership would best serve the interests of the church.”

Source: Read the original report