The trustees of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Friday accepted the resignation of seminary R. Philip Roberts effective Feb. 29 during a called meeting at an airport hotel and named as acting president Robin Hadaway, associate professor of missions at the seminary.

Roberts, an 11-year president, was facing questions about misuse of seminary resources and verbal abuse of seminary staff. Other trustee meetings in years past had revolved around those same questions.

The resignation was announced in the afternoon by means of a three-paragraph press release. A morning trustee vote to express lack of confidence in the board’s executive committee failed, and at some point in the overall meeting there was a transfer of the chairmanship from Wayne Lee of Southlake, Texas, to Kevin Shrum of Madison, Tenn., who emerged as the sole trustee spokesman for the day’s events and the interim board chair until April.

Shrum wound up taking a few questions from the media in mid-afternoon. In answering one inquiry, Shrum said Lee resigned as chairman.

“He felt like he had done what he needed to do,” Shrum said. “He’s still on the board.”

Trustees met early in the morning, with the door of the Ambassador Meeting Room at the Embassy Suites Hotel left open, and after about half an hour Roberts was seen leaving the room. Roberts then greeted a representative of Baptist Press before walking down the hall to another room with staff and faculty. After saying a quick hello there, according to someone present in the room, he left that room and headed toward the front desk area. By that time trustees were fully engaged in executive session and had closed the door, and Roberts was not to be found.

The resignation was announced in the afternoon by means of a press release. Part of the statement was worded to explain that a meeting to consider the performance of the president was “suspended,” and that before that meeting, Roberts tendered his resignation. The rest of the meeting time in the morning and afternoon was spent in executive session. The press release made no mention of a severance package.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on bpnews.net—however, the original URL is no longer available.]