In a bold move to stabilize the Southern Baptist Convention’s finances, Southern Baptist administrative leaders announced Tuesday the denomination’s building in downtown Nashville will go on the market.
Though an idea long proposed, the timing of the official decision at an SBC Executive Committee meeting on Tuesday was surprising to some.
The executive committee, comprised of 20 staff and an 86-member board of elected representatives, gathered at the BNA Hilton at the Nashville International Airport for a regularly scheduled meeting on Monday and Tuesday. After the final plenary session of the meeting, which was a closed-door executive session, executive committee chairman Philip Robertson announced the members “authorized the president to execute a loan secured by the building and place the SBC building on the market.”
The sale of the building, located at 901 Commerce St. in a rapidly developing part of downtown Music City, is expected to provide the executive committee a much-needed cash infusion in the face of mounting expenses. As those expenditures increase, which recently is due to legal expenses that emerged from a sexual abuse investigation, there is also decreased revenue to the denomination’s Cooperative Program budget, which is supported by church giving and benefits various SBC ministries.