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Guiding Values of CBA

 

The Center for Biblical Apologetics is organized and operated in the shadow of widespread cynicism concerning American evangelical institutions. Money, power, and fame are pervasive temptations, and far too many evangelical leaders have fallen prey to their corruption. For this reason, although CBA is in the process of qualifying and applying for membership in both the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) and Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR), CBA policies set the standards of integrity higher than required by such watchdog agencies.

 

Financial Integrity

 

CBA exists for the spiritual and intellectual enrichment of the Christian church, not the material enrichment of its officers or staff. “The laborer is worthy of his wages” (Luke 10:7; 1 Tim. 5:18) does not mean that the big dog is worthy of the largest possible share of the meat.

 

Paid officers and other CBA employees are paid according to a salary schedule approved by the Board of Directors. This salary scale fixes an upper limit for the salaries of any employee. That upper limit is 150% of the median income for families of the same size of the employee in the state in which that employee resides (i.e., California). This is the upper limit criterion for the highest-paid employees; the actual salaries will be much lower at first. Moreover, once CBA acquires full-time support staff, the welfare of CBA’s non-officer full-time employees will always be considered a higher priority than raising the salaries of its paid officers.

 

Furthermore, certain “loopholes” often exploited in nonprofit organizations to increase the effective compensation of their officers are closed at CBA. Housing allowances for ordained ministers, if such are provided, are included in the salary cap. No salaried employee may receive royalties at all on any books (regardless of when they were written) during their period of employment at CBA; all such royalties must be assigned to the ministry to defray the employee’s salary or (in the unlikely event they exceed that salary) to be used in the general fund.

 

 

Intellectual Integrity

 

An apologetics ministry must be committed to the truth. That seemingly trite observation challenges much that passes for apologetics in our day. We at CBA, while fully cognizant of our own limitations, are determined to pursue the highest standards of truth-telling integrity.{1}

 

By intellectual integrity we mean:

 

·        Refusing to plagiarize the work of another

·        Reading and understanding a work before commenting on it

·        Representing the views of others fairly and accurately

·        Recognizing our own presuppositions

·        Revising or abandoning flawed arguments or false information

·        Resisting the temptation to take cheap shots or argumentative shortcuts

·        Researching primary sources directly

·        Refuting false claims in a tough-minded but tender-hearted manner

·        Reporting on the best scholarship that opposes our own view

·        Responding to criticism as we would wish others would respond to us

 

This last point really expresses the core ethical principle that guides our thinking about intellectual integrity. It is an application of the Golden Rule that Jesus enunciated (Matthew 7:12): We are to reason, argue, and speak about the views of others as we would have them reason, argue, and speak about our own.

 

Spiritual Integrity

 

Financial and intellectual integrity need to be grounded in an authentic spiritual integrity. Every officer and researcher employed by CBA must be a member in good standing of an evangelical Christian church and must have regular communication with a pastor or elder or other church leader. One of the responsibilities of the Board of Directors is to review and ensure that the ministry’s leaders are walking with Christ and are in fellowship with Christians who know them well and are praying for them.

 

{1} For an excellent recent article that has a lot to say on this matter, see Millard J. Erickson, “Evangelical Theological Scholarship in the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46 (2003): 5-27.