Introducing DR. WILLIAM J. SHAW - president of the National Baptist Convention

Ebony, Feb, 2000 by Charles Whitaker

New President, National Baptist Convention USA, Inc.

THE quitely commanding demeanor of Dr. William J. Shaw, the Philadelphia minister who is charged with healing the open wounds on the body politic of the nation's largest Black church organization, is nearly at odds with what has become the stereotype of the thundering, bible-thumping Baptist preacher. At White Rock Baptist Church, where Dr. Shaw has been pastor for nearly 44 years, his deliberately paced sermons--marked by his soothing, Texas-twanged tenor--are thoughtful and passionate.

Yet it would be foolish to take Dr. Shaw's serenely intellectual approach to ministry as a sign of aloofness or weakness. For beneath his affable, grandfatherly facade is a steely resolve to get the house of the 8 million-member National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. in order. It is a crusade he embarked on long before he was in an official position to make substantive changes in the organization to which he has belonged for more than 40 years.

Now, as the newly installed president of the National Baptist Convention, Dr. Shaw takes command of an organization reeling from scandal of Biblical proportions. His predecessor, the Rev. Henry Lyons of St. Petersburg, Fla., was convicted in February of 1999 of grand theft and racketeering in connection with the misappropriation of nearly $5 million in convention funds.

In September, at the Convention national assembly in Tampa, Dr. Shaw was elected president over 10 other candidates. His campaign, which revolved around the acronym VISA (Vision, Integrity, Structure and Accountability), promised sweeping reforms in the structure and operation of the Convention's leadership corps.

It was Shaw's second run for the presidency. In 1994, he'd placed third in the presidential contest won by Lyons. This time, in an election fraught with tension and anxiety, Shaw prevailed over his closest rival, the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson of Mt. Vernon, N.Y., by a margin of 243 votes.

The challenge now facing the 65-year-old Marshall, Texas, native is to restore confidence within the National Baptist Convention--a loose confederation of 33,000 churches that stretches across the country--and implement structural changes that will repair the organization's name in other circles.

"I wanted to be president not because I wanted to be president," he says, "but because the office of president is the point at which you could help make effective change--structural change in the organization, but also change in the community at large."

As daunting as his charge is, Dr. Shaw is buoyed by the sense of hope that greeted his election.

"In Tampa, there was extraordinary spirit," he says. "There was, of course, a lot of political activity, but beneath the political activity there was a level of spirituality that was very uplifting."

Two themes resonate as Dr. Shaw talks about the changes he hopes to effect during his tenure as Convention president: One is his commitment to creating a structure "so that you can't have the possibility of misappropriation of funds without it being detected and the person who is responsible for it being held accountable."

Traditionally, the Convention was governed by a board of directors composed of presidents of state conventions, heads of Convention commissions and auxiliaries, and what had become an ever-expanding number of board members appointed by the Convention president. While the presidents of state conventions and commissions have members to whom they are accountable, the presidential appointees--whose numbers have doubled in recent years--were accountable only to the president. This effectively gave the president control of the board.

What Shaw proposes is decreasing the number of presidential board appointees in addition to trimming the president's five-year term to two years. "This will give us the kind of balance we need so that the board will be a truly accountable body and not a rubber stamp for the president," he says.

Dr. Shaw's other goal is to return the Convention to its mission of faith-based influence on national and even international issues of public policy and social justice.

He says the Convention should, first and foremost, be a voice and an agent of change. "The National Baptist Convention, with its numbers and with its spiritual influence, can bring, I think, a presence to national policy concerns," he says. "We bring a strength that is not present in other groups because we are Christ-based and are supposed to be selfless in that."

What he desperately wants to drag the organization away from is the secular influence of institutions and individuals who have used the Convention for political or public relations advantage. "In the past, external bodies would come to us and use us, but our impact on and leverage with them would be minimal," he says. "Politicians would come to us when they wanted to make a statement or get their pictures taken. They'd disrupt our whole session and then leave. Well, I would not be concerned about a photo-op with a presidential candidate. If one were to come to us, he or she would have to come to answer some questions that we would raise, and we would be seeking ways to impact what he or she was going to do if elected."