By Brian Blackwell, Baptist Message staff writer
NEW ORLEANS (LBM) – The presidents of the six Southern Baptist seminaries held a joint report, June 14, and shared how they continue to prepare the next generation to engage the culture for Christ.
NOBTS
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary President Jamie Dew welcomed SBC messengers to the city and told them the city is a great training ground for ministry anywhere in the world.
“We have said from day one that we believe if you can do ministry in our city, you can do ministry anywhere because this city brings everything to bear on your formation and on your ministry,” he said. “We have a little bit of everything here. We’ve got Baptists, we’ve got Catholics, we’ve got brokenness, we’ve got opportunity, we’ve got wealth and poverty.”
Dew said that theological education matters now perhaps more than ever before as they train the next generation of leaders.
“Consider the brokenness and the chaos and the confusion of our cultural moment,” he said. “At every single turn there is a wrong idea, a mistruth at play in the lives of those people that are going in those directions. Which means correcting those lies, those mistruths with the truth of God’s word is absolutely essential. It is therefore important that we train up that next generation of men and women who are theologically sound and servant oriented to go into the brokenness and into the darkness and there shine the light of Jesus Christ.”
Dew told messengers that NOBTS strives to train students not only to be theologically astute, but also servant-driven.
“We are followers of Jesus Christ, and we should not be crazy philosophical about what that means,” he said. “We should be quite literal. Servants go where He goes. They do what he does. They are about what He was about.”
He shared a dream of many more NOBTS students going into the world and sharing the Gospel.
“There’s a broken world not just in the US but across the nations,” he said. “And around the world there are literally billions of people that don’t know Jesus. My passion our prayer is that there will come a day when students are pouring off our campus to go to the nations.”
OTHER SEMINARIES
- Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary President Danny Akin highlighted two efforts the seminary has used to further the Kingdom: The Wake Forest, North Carolina, seminary commissioned 41 students and their families in April to join 94 SBTS graduates who already are serving with the International Mission Board; and, in the last year has graduated 49 students who completed seminary classes in 11 prisons across North Carolina.
- Gateway Seminary President Jeff Iorg said the school recently graduated the largest class in seminary history (348), and he celebrated several generous gifts to the Ontario, California, seminary, which has multiple campuses throughout the West: a collection of rare ancient Bibles, a 150-year-old Torah scroll; and a $2 million gift the seminary received that will go toward a program to help its students participate in international mission trips.
- Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Jason Allen emphasized that the seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, is committed to theological stewardship by requiring faculty and staff to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, Danver’s Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and the Nashville Statement on Human Sexuality. Allen said the seminary recently celebrated its 11th consecutive year of enrollment growth, finishing with more than 5,100 students. Additionally, Allen said the seminary has developed an online training program for lay church leaders and entered into a partnership with the International Mission Board to send 100 students on foreign missions each year.
- Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler was recognized for 30 years of leadership with the seminary. In his report, Mohler praised God for a secure financial situation at the Louisville, Kentucky, school, and he thanked messengers for giving to the Cooperative Program to help prepare the next generation of ministerial leaders, reminding the crowd that young people in their churches will be future pastors, missionaries and church planters.
- Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President David Dockery, in his first report as the school’s leader, said there has been an emphasis during the last few months on prayer gatherings throughout the Fort Worth, Texas, campus. He touted the seminary’s “Advance Southwestern 2030” plan that includes six new core values and establishes the school’s identity as “Great Commission- and Great Commandment-driven.” He also said the institution in restructuring its budget to address financial concerns revealed in the past year.
