“The heart and soul of a seminary is its faculty. Nearly everyone who joins an SBC seminary faculty has to take a cut in pay to do so. Not many Southern Baptists realize that the total Cooperative Program allocation our seminary receives is less than the annual cost of our payroll. This is the major reason why seminary salaries are below national averages for professors and pastors” — NOBTS President Chuck Kelley, 2003 annual report to the Southern Baptist Convention.

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In 2003, when Paige and Dorothy Patterson arrived at Southwestern Seminary — back when promises were made of growing the school to 10,000 students and before “investments in the family” meant layoffs at the same time the president was building his own retirement home on campus — full time faculty and staff received retirement benefits on par with every other SBC entity.  According to the 2003 Southern Baptist Convention annual:

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty, and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by the Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary contributes 10% of the participant’s salary to the plan and also matches the participant’s contributions up to a maximum of 5% of their salary. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2002 and 2001 was approximately $1,008,000 and $1,067,000, respectively. (See Page 306 here.)

This retirement benefit was largely unchanged until Patterson’s sixth year as president (2008-09 academic term), though the change was not reported to the convention for more than 18 months. This, from the 2009 Convention annual, page 345:

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution plan which is administered by Guidestone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary contributes 10% of the participant’s salary to the plan and also matches the participant’s contributions up to a maximum of 5% of their salary. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2008 and 2007 was approximately $780,000 and $890,000, respectively.

By the time the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention rolled around in 2010, Southwestern was reporting a major reduction in this benefit (See 2010 annual, page 403). No other institution or entity of the Convention reported similar slashes to employee retirement benefits, though New Orleans reported that there were modest, temporary salary cuts for faculty while the seminary president took a 10 percent cut in his own salary.

The seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by Guidestone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury’s regulations related thereto. The Seminary contributes 10% of the participant’s salary to the plan and also matches the participant’s contributions up to a maximum of 5% of their salary. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2009 and 2008 was approximately $677,000 and $1,553,000, respectively. Beginning in January 2009, the Seminary temporarily suspended their contributions to their retirement plan. 

And then in 2011 (See page 394):

The Seminary contributes 10% of the participant’s salary to the plan and also matches the participant’s contribution up to a maximum of 5% of their salary. Beginning in January 2009, the Seminary temporarily suspended their contributions to their retirement plan until January 2011 at which time they will restore plan to provide a 5% contribution excluding a matching provision. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2010 and 2009 was approximately $0 and $677,000 respectively.

In 2012: (See page 391)

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by Guidestone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary contributes 5% of the participant’s salary to the plan with no match of participant’s contributions. Beginning in January 2009, the Seminary temporarily suspended contributions to the retirement plan until January 2011 at which time contributions were restored to 5% of base salary. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2011 and 2010 was $374,549 and $0, respectively.

And in 2013 (See page 388):

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. Beginning in January 2009, the Seminary temporarily suspended contributions to the retirement plan until January 2011 at which time contributions were restored to 5% of base salary. In January 2012, the contribution was increased to 7% of base salary, along with a 1% match of employee contribution. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2012 and 2011 was $878,272 and $374,549, respectively.

And in 2014 (See page 397), the seminary stopped reporting the benefit percentages altogether:

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2013 and 2012, was $1,013,070 and $878,272, respectively.

And again in 2015 (See page 426):

The Seminary provides its of officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by GuideStone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2014 and 2013, was $1,004,222 and $1,013,070, respectively.

And in 2016 (page 405):

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by Guidestone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2015 and 2014, was $1,067,899 and $1,004,222, respectively.

And in 2017 (page 412):

The Seminary provides its officers, permanent faculty and career employees with a defined contribution retirement plan which is administered by Guidestone Financial Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention under Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) and Treasury regulations related thereto. The Seminary’s contribution for the years ended July 31, 2016 and 2015, was $1,136,411 and $1,067,899, respectively. 

Because Southwestern stopped reporting to the convention in 2014 the percentages of seminary contributions to employee retirement accounts, either non-matching or matching, there is presently no adequate way to compare Southwestern’s retirement benefits against other SBC entities.

What is clear, however, is that from 2009 to 2014 Southwestern faculty and staff received substantial cuts to their retirement benefits. And while it would seem to be proper for the seminary to repay the lost benefits — and thus lost retirement earnings and investment growth — for affected employees, the seminary trustees have preferred to authorize the building of a multi-million dollar retirement home for Paige and Dorothy Patterson.

This all leaves serious questions about what institutional or administrative priorities siphoned off seminary funding back in 2009, leading trustees to cut employee retirement payments at a time when the markets more than doubled.  Meaning, of course, seminary employees not only lost the straightforward dollar growth in their retirement accounts, but also the market growth they would have otherwise realized.

Stay tuned . . .