EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been updated since it was first posted Wednesday (Jan. 26).
Jeff Pearson, chief financial officer of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, announced his resignation, effective Feb. 15. He was one of three EC vice presidents up for the interim president role, which is set to be named at the EC’s Feb. 21–22 meeting in Nashville.
“When I arrived in October 2020, my desire and intention was to serve the Executive Committee until my retirement,” Pearson wrote in his Jan. 25 resignation letter to EC Chairman Rolland Slade. “However, over the past months the landscape at the Executive Committee has changed, and I see I have no choice but to submit my resignation.”
Pearson explained in his letter that he remained in his role following the Executive Committee changes he referenced because of his personal conviction that a CFO should not leave at the end of a fiscal year but should wait until the external audit has been completed.
“In October, I committed to certain Executive Committee members I would stay through the completion of the audit but could not promise anything beyond that,” he wrote. “As of January 25, 2022, a draft of the annual, external audit of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention is complete. The staff work is done, and the auditors are determining the nature of the opinion and any notes related to the investigation and the waiver of attorney-client privilege.”
‘Committed to fully cooperate’
Noting he has cooperated fully and efficiently with the Sexual Abuse Task Force/Guidepost Solutions review, Pearson also wrote in his letter:
“It is critically important to me that it is crystal clear, I have always been and I remain fully in favor of the current investigation of the Executive Committee. I am committed to fully cooperate and have instructed our staff and those assisting the Executive Committee with this investigation to fully cooperate. To my knowledge and everything I have witnessed indicates everyone associated with the Executive Committee staff and those assisting the Executive Committee have fully complied these instructions. We at the Executive Committee, like the messengers of the 2021 annual meeting, want the truth to be revealed so the Southern Baptist Convention can move forward with recovery, reconciliation and healing.”
‘Great Commission work’
Prior to joining the EC 15 months ago, Pearson served approximately 25 years at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where for 15 years he was CFO of the fundraising and awareness arm of St. Jude. In a Baptist Press news release at the time, Pearson said that his path to the EC was steered by godly inspiration during a summer 2019 trip to Israel. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Pearson pledged to finish his professional vocation however God desired, BP reported, and Pearson and his wife, Mindy, “felt God miraculously released him from St. Jude.”
In joining the EC, Pearson replaced William “Bill” Townes, who retired after serving approximately 10 years with the EC.
At the time of Pearson’s hiring, then-EC president and CEO Ronnie Floyd said, “He sensed in his calling away from St. Jude, the only way he could do something to help people in a greater way than St. Jude was to do something eternally wrapped around the Great Commission.”
Pearson responded, “Now it is an incredible honor to have the opportunity to serve our Lord doing Great Commission work.”
Pearson grew up in Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tennessee. In September 2020 Bill Sorrell, who served 20 years as Bellevue executive pastor under the late Southern Baptist statesman Adrian Rogers, said that Pearson’s “doctrinal integrity is as pure as the preaching of Adrian Rogers.”
Pearson graduated magna cum laude from the University of Memphis with a bachelor of business administration degree in accounting and is a certified public accountant.
Social media response
Following the announcement, numerous Southern Baptist leaders voiced their response on Twitter. Josh Wester, who served at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission before joining the staff of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, tweeted, “Jeff Pearson is a great man. He has been a tremendous asset to the EC and has served Southern Baptists well.”
To read more reactions to Pearson’s resignation, check out this Baptist Press article.
For more on other SBC EC resignations in recent months, read coverage by The Baptist Paper such as this article and this article.
