Ligonier Ministries Board In the Dark About Lawsuit

Was the Ligonier Board Of Directors consulted prior to Tim Dick filing his lawsuit against me? Is the Ligonier Ministries Board Of Directors completely in the dark about it's lawsuit that they as Board members bear legal responsibility for? Based upon what's just been reported to me that certainly appears to be the case.

I received an email from a gentleman that I found to be most troubling in its ramifications. With his permission I repost it here. However, he did ask that I not use his name, so I'll just refer to him as Jeff. Jeff raises some significant concerns and where applicable I've linked some of his statements to articles that support what he's saying:

Dear Mr. Vance,

Thanks for shining some light on this Ligonier fiasco. I'm sure I'm not the only Ligonier supporter who's been concerned for a long time about the direction that Ligonier has taken. It all seems to coincide with when Tim Dick became president and it's all been downhill from there.

Over the weekend I tried to call three of the Ligonier board members. I was glad to find those phone numbers on your blog. Two them I only got answering machines for but one I did get through to. I'm not sure if he'd appreciate my repeating his name so I won't. What's important is what he told me and I think it's important that your readers know it too.

I asked him if he thought it was right for Ligonier to be suing a brother in Christ? He said he didn't know what I was talking about. He said he didn't know anything about Ligonier filing any lawsuits. So I gave him instructions on how he could find the story online including the Orlando Sentinel article. I asked him how could a Ligonier board member be in the dark about something so significant that's wrecking Ligonier's public reputation? He said, "We as the board only talk about two or three times a year. The Ligonier office doesn't really tell us much of anything. I guess I'd better make a few calls and figure out what this is all about." He asked me to call him back in a few days when he hopes to have some information about it.

Mr. Vance I've served on some corporate boards including a few nonprofits and I know a few things about how corporate boards are supposed to operate. I know this isn't the way it's supposed to be done but I'll also have to admit that in my experience many corporate boards don't do things correctly. I won't say that what Tim Dick is doing is illegal but what he's doing is a major abuse of the process. CEOs and Presidents of relatively small nonprofits like Ligonier don't go filing lawsuits and especially the kinds of lawsuits that are likely to draw a lot of bad PR, not without first talking to their board members about it. That's why boards exist, to give accountability and prevent Presidents and CEO's from making major decisions that could potentially turn into public relations disasters and destroy the organization.

One of the significant functions of a board of directors is to act like a court of appeals both internally for interceding in significant staff disputes and externally to protect the interests of shareholders. With nonprofits we refer to the donors as "stakeholders." In Tim Dick's case he obviously violated that principle. He bypassed the Ligonier board as his court of appeals and betrayed Ligonier's stakeholders in the process. Stakeholders have a right to know that their donations aren't being wasted on frivolous and expensive litigation. Tim Dick is insubordinate to his board and he needs to be severely reprimanded.

If I served on Ligonier's board I'd immediately move to have him fired and find a new CEO and that new CEO wouldn't just be another Sproul family member. I'd also demand that Vesta Sproul resign as a board member. Obviously she's in cahoots with Tim Dick and she too has betrayed the Ligonier board and the stakeholders.

I think that the Ligonier board itself bears responsibility for the gross mismanagement of Ligonier. A corporate board bears responsibility for governing the corporation that they serve. Corporate boards can and usually do delegate their authority to manage the corporation's day to day affairs to the corporate officers that they hire, such as Presidents and CEOs. They don't give up their governing responsibilities they just delegate them. But they always retain control. Telling a stakeholder like me "We only talk two or three times a year" is inexcusable. In a very real sense the corporate board protects the public from the sorts of abuses that can easily be committed by corporate officers. It's supposed to function as a system of checks and balances. The Ligonier board has failed the public miserably. Each board member bears direct responsbility and if they're not willing to do their job they should resign. If they fail to insist that the corporations officers be accountable to the board then they're guilty of gross negligence and they can be held personally and legally liable for the damages that result from their negligence.

A Christian board of directors bears an even higher responsibility. Not only do they serve the interests of stakeholders they have to go about it biblically. They have to obey not only the laws of the land they must obey biblical laws too. If they're too ignorant to know what the Bible requires then they have no business serving as board members of a Christian organization. I've had to resign from more than one Christian board because my fellow board members were unwilling to hold our corporate officers accountable. If I didn't do that then I could have been held legally liable for the misdeeds of the officers and the negligence of my fellow board members. Corporate boards aren't just supposed to rubber stamp what the CEO and other corporate officers decide to do and what they decide they want to tell us what they've done after the fact.

If corporate officers refuse to hold themselves accountable to their boards and if corporate boards are negligent about holding their officers accountable then it falls to the stakeholders to hold them both accountable. As a Ligonier stakeholder I'm going to do that and I hope every other Ligonier stakeholder does that too.

Thanks Mr. Vance for doing what should have been done a long time ago. This lawsuit against you only proves how out of control Ligonier has become. Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

I appreciate Jeff for writing to explain from personal experience the responsibilities of a corporate board member, as well as the responsibilities of corporate stakeholders should a corporate board fail to competently discharge its responsibilities. It appears to me that Ligonier's Board is in fact probably little more than a rubber-stamping committee. This lawsuit debacle could have never happened had the Ligonier Board been fulfilling their corporate obligations. This isn't to say however that Tim Dick is off the hook. Tim Dick bears responsibility for keeping his board in the dark about his actions. He should have first gone to his Board to seek their authorization to file this unbiblical lawsuit. RC Sproul bears significant responsibility as well. After all it was RC Sproul who pushed to have Tim Dick hired by the Board Of Directors as President/CEO/CFO of Ligonier, and this in spite of Tim Dick's obvious lack of professional and ministerial qualifications.

It's late for the Ligonier Ministries Board Of Directors to intervene, but it's still not too late. Ligonier's Board needs to immediately take decisive action to rein in the abuses of Tim Dick. The Ligonier Board's second order of business should be to promptly issue a public statement expressing their regret to Ligonier's stakeholders for their governing negligence. In doing these things Ligonier's Board could do much to restore donor confidence. Absent these things Ligonier's support base will probably dry up.