McRaney’s response to Ezell’s ‘Helpful information in case you get questions’
Editor’s note: After The Baptist Report posted the article, ‘Helpful Information’ about McRaney-NAMB case offered by Ezell to association leaders after open letter is sent to NAMB and SBC Executive Committee trustees, we received the following email from Will McRaney. It is an email McRaney sent to state Baptist executive directors, select other Baptist leaders, and media. The email is posted below with minor formatting changes and a few notes for clarity. The Baptist Report believes all Southern Baptists should be well informed about the McRaney vs. NAMB case due to its potential wide-reaching ramifications for the denomination. Read more about it here: A battle for Baptist autonomy: The McRaney case against the North American Mission Board and why it should matter to Southern Baptists.
Dear Former Colleagues,
Kevin wrote you and it appeared in Baptist News (Global) this week. Ezell’s statements spoke volumes. Now, I will provide you some information to formulate your own view from some “Big T” truths. I wrote the state execs previously about John Donne’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Never been more true. You are a State Baptist Executive Director. I was a State Baptist Executive Director. What Ezell and NAMB staff did to me, he can do to you. The rights he is deceptively claiming in the courts to defame and interfere with my employment with lies and threats, if he were successful in this legal case, he would have those same legal rights (immunity) over you that only the Supreme Court of the United States could overturn.
A former SBC attorney told Dr. Randy Adams (executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention) Southern Baptists would never let this happen, but he was wrong. It was noted that the SBC would not let the courts decide their polity, but in some ways they are doing just that with the allowance of deception and false statements to federal courts. That view was wrong. The SBC attorney said the case was not precedent setting. He was wrong about that as well. The case already been to SCOTUS on the mission gifts of Baptists and the financial investment of Sandy (McRaney’s wife) and me to confront the dangers to Baptists.
Ezell wants to make this seem confusing or too difficult to understand. However, one does not need a Harvard law degree to gather that Ezell is placing all Baptists at risk with his pleadings in multiple courts for legal protection that would allow him to conduct illegal actions against you, your staff and other Baptists like he did to me. Ezell is seeking precedent setting legal protection from the federal courts (District, 5th Circuit and SCOTUS) to interfere with your employment and to defame you. I never would have dreamed it would have happened to me.
From his communications, Ezell is flat wrong in that my legal claims are a dispute in ministry strategy or doctrine. My claims involves his illegal actions against me, both while I was a State Executive Director like you AND even AFTER I had been terminated. He and his NAMB staff interfered and defamed me again while I was seeking to do ministry and provide financially for my family. He violated laws and he wants the court to give him legal protection (immunity) to do the exact same thing to you, your state staff, and possible other Baptist bodies, Baptist ministers and employees should you get in his way.
Question: There are other issues, but do you want the NAMB President or any SBC leader to have legal protection to defame, even his staff or SBC missionaries? Example: If Ezell told influential leaders in your state that you are a pedophile, you would have no legal protection because your state has an agreement with NAMB or is in some communication with NAMB. (Read in the written docs and oral arguments how NAMB describes the SPA). As you reflect the deceptive claims of Ezell, read and think about the implications for you and every Baptist leader from what NAMB is arguing to the courts. Kevin Ezell’s response should raise your antennas to the claims of Ezell.
Ezell has taken the SBC all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States in his efforts to keep me from having my day in the courts for justice. Is he SO afraid of justice that he has to make such anti-Baptist and deceptive claims to the courts? He has now delayed for seven years in order to prevent the evidence to be presented in the courts and his being cross examined under oath. Innocent men, however urgently seek their day in the court to defend themselves.
Ezell’s email to you had - excerpts from the NAMB arguments…
McRaney
You can read a transcript and/or listen to the entire oral arguments to hear firsthand what was said by my attorney, the NAMB attorney Baptist mission gifts is paying for, and two of the three judges. Baptist Message wrote on it. Baptist News wrote on it. The 60 signers of the amicus brief signed a letter on what NAMB claimed and Baptist News wrote an article on it.
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Ezell wrote you #1 (see below)… Indeed, the point of 1 Corinthians 6:6 is that these issues should not be presented to a secular court but rather resolved among believers.
McRaney response 1…
God set up civil authorities for us that we are to follow and for our good.
NAMB believes in lawsuits and in fact filed a lawsuit on 2/1/19 against a missionary (Erick Chepkwony) who was planting a church after moving to the US from an African country. NAMB evicted Chepkwony and his family from a NAMB owned home in Indianapolis, IN about 5 months into his planting a church. After we made this public, NAMB then relocated Chepkwony to another NAMB home in another state.
1 Cor. 6:6 is describing a situation that does not exist since NAMB is powerful corporation, and its leader(s) are not under the authority of a pastor in a church and certainly I am not in that church and also under that church’s authority.
NAMB Trustees through there officers denied my claims 20 hours after my Feb. 2016 “Letter of Concern” and refused to meet with me. This led to my filing a lawsuit to seek justice in April 2017. Ezell refused to meet and NAMB Trustees allowed him to not meet at any point for the 14 months prior to a lawsuit, nor required him to attend the court required mediation in Gulfport, MS.
As to reconciliation, Ezell has not appeared in any formal or informal proceedings to reconcile or face cross examination (Prov. 18:17). He has not come to me to reconcile in keeping with Mt. 5:23-26 and Mt. 18:15-17 or 2 Cor. 2:5-11. In fact, Ezell preached a few years back in Lexington KY on the subject of reconciliation. A woman approached him after the service in a private manner and told him face to face that he needed to apply his sermon in his relationship with McRaney. She just “happened” to be in that city and Ezell just “happened” to be preaching and he just “happened” to be preaching on reconciliation. She told him while continuing to hold his hand in a firm grip that she believed that God had her in that service to tell him to apply his own message of reconciliation to himself. As you would imagine, Ezell did not reach out to me to reconcile.
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Ezell wrote you #2… NAMB has never once argued that it can govern any state convention
McRaney response 2…
NAMB has repeatedly claimed in writing to the courts in documents filed in 2019 and also court filings in 2022 that….
10th Defense - “NAMB had the legal ‘right to interfere’ to protect its own economic and other interests.” NAMB could claim this against interfering with you or anyone on your staff.
12th Defense - "NAMB is protected by an absolute privilege with regard to any statements it may have published regarding the Plaintiff”. Ezell and others could make statements of defamation against you and NAMB would use this same defense.
15th Defense - “Plaintiff was a ‘public figure’ within the meaning of the law of defamation and therefore bears the burden of proof imposed upon public figures.” If Ezell claimed this against you, you may have to prove you are not a public figure. Are you a public figure, such that NAMB has more rights to defame you?
16th Defense - “NAMB is protected by an absolute privilege and/or a qualified privilege with respect to all decisions it made and/or actions it took which may have related to or had an effect upon Plaintiff’s employment with BCMD.” Ezell could say the exact same thing against you.
AS WELL, what about the interference and defamation that occurred AFTER I was no longer employed by the BCMD? Is Ezell claiming I have no legal protections against his interference in my life and ministry even after my BCMD employment? Does that mean that after you stop being a State Exec or any of your employees that stop working for your state convention, that Ezell can interfere and defame them as he is claiming as his defense in my case?
To SCOTUS, NAMB’s attorney Matt Martens work that
I was employed by a different SBC entity than NAMB, “Revered McRaney attempts to avoid certiorari by emphasizing that, though he was employed by one Southern Baptist entity, he was never employed by the particular Southern Baptist entity that he sued, namely the SBC Mission Board.” No State Convention is an SBC entity.
NAMB Trustees and President through their attorneys, are using language like “The Southern Baptist Church”, such that the District judge adopted that language which is not representative of Baptists.
With NAMB’s foreknowledge, the ERLC claimed to the 5th Circuit Court that the SBC was a hierarchy and the SBC was the umbrella organization over
paper evidence from discovery revealed that NAMB initiated the filing by ERLC, NAMB read the draft PRIOR to submission to the court by ERLC, AND NAMB did not inform the courts of the ERLC false statements to the 5th Circuit that damaged me and put the SBC and Baptist bodies in danger.
Article in MS Baptist paper on NAMB and ERLC Dec. 2020 - on the false filing to 5th Circuit claiming hierarchy and umbrella organization. A second article on this. May 2021 - Russell Moore resigns in the midst of his storm over his false filing that NAMB had a copy of in advance of it being filed.
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Ezell wrote #3… ”No individual who works for either of the ministries (e.g. NAMB or a state convention) who are cooperating and communicating with one another can sue one of those ministries because he or she disagrees with the manner of cooperation and communication by either ministry.”
McRaney response 3…
If Ezell’s words do not cause you to shake your head and impact your gut, I would encourage you to reread them and the entire transcript again.
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What about YOU and Your State: (maybe Assns and local churches and their leaders too)
"No individual who works for either of the ministries (e.g. NAMB or YOU ) who are cooperating and communicating with one another can sue one of those ministries because he or she disagrees with the manner of cooperation and communication by either ministry.”
This needs no further explanation, but I will say that my complaints are not what Ezell says AND I was not employed by BCMD during 3 of the 6 complaints in our legal filing.
Question: (while my situation does not reflect what Ezell said) - If you have an Assoc. Exec. or a Staff missionary or even a ministry assistant and they disagree with something (anything) NAMB is doing, then does he give up his or her first amendment rights to protect them from interference with their job and defamation by Ezell or another NAMB staff member or even any other SBC entity?
NAMB in the News Last Week … (1) article on the NAMB attorney before the 5th Circuit and SCOTUS, (2) two articles on the woke training materials NAMB was using to train church planters, (3) (first article and the second article), videos on Ezell lying w/ supporting evidence to the SBC Messengers in 2023 and (4) another one of Ezell and the NAMB Trustee chairman refusing to follow SBC governing documents (Business and Financial Plan) to provide salary structure, and (5) the letter from 60 amicus brief signers that you received. (6) Revealing video of Ezell telling SEBTS and NOBTS in chapel service that he fired a NAMB staff missionary over a $42.37 receipt that was missing and then misfiled. I have evidence that the missionary as a Send NAMB coordinator had a wife and 4 young children at the time he was terminated by Ezell.
Ezell fires staff while not firing himself for his actions: In addition to the videos published again on Twitter this past week, I have testimony that the missionary and 3 other planting staff members all had Mexican lunch for the $42.37. I am told the NAMB missionary forgot the receipt, so instead of filing for the missing receipt with NAMB for an expense that was completely legitimate, he photoshopped another receipt from the same restaurant to report the expense. If I know this, Ezell does or should as well. NAMB Send staff member was fired on the spot, given 3 months severance in exchange for his SILENCE with an NDA. Did he know something about Ezell and James MacDonald of Harvest Church planting fame that Ezell did not want known? Did Ezell choose to make him unemployed with a family and for his silence give him 3 months salary? Is don’t know, but someone should be asking questions and get the unfiltered facts.
Will You Stand or Not Stand: either you way will be heard… Regardless of your choice: your silence, speaking or standing will be heard. Will you add your voice publicly and privately against that which is evil behaviors and add your voice for truth, Baptists, and justice confront the ungodliness and failures. Or will you as Ezell has asked, "stand with him on the platform” in Indy to celebrate what Ezell and NAMB have dismantled, both evangelism and true partnership? Statesmen act for the benefit beyond themselves. Politicians act to advance or protect their interest. Statesmen, not politicians are needed in this hour in Baptist life.
GCR (Great Commission Resurgence) Evaluation Task Force had two assignments from the motion from last year. 1) determine if the GCR was effective in expanding the mission (evangelism) in North America and 2) determine if the GCR had an impact on partnership in the SBC. While we are grateful for the time and effort of the task force, their report failed to clearly and up front answer the two questions they were assigned to determine. For 1 - utter failure in our mission with evangelism and even church planting, For 2 - As a highly respected Southern exec told me in 2015 “Partnership is dead in the SBC”, so the implementation by Ezell did significant damage partnership and trust. Don’t get caught in the noise and the efforts to use you to disguise the broken partnership and the failed strategy of the GCR and NAMB’s implication of its assignments in evangelism, church planting and formerly partnership.
If you want a link to some of the major documents and articles which overview the case and response, please let me know.
Blessings to you and may God raise up courageous righteous leaders!
Will McRaney, PhD
