Demise of the "Big Six?"

Um... I must have missed that. I haven't seen any counter what I said with facts, actual or not.

I think you have me confused with jerome or Go2Church (not that I think either of them resemble the devil). I haven't said a word about women or the Seminary Wives Institute.

You need to fact check your post. Go back and review this entire discussion, then you can come back and apologize for your false assertions against me.

 

Scatching my head at these bizarre outbursts

 

I will say I know of one person who attended Southern and while there openly opposed the SBC's pronouncements on women in ministry. Anyone want to guess where this person is now?

 

[waves hand frantically]

I know, I know!! He's not only an alumnus, he the president.

To be fair though, people can change their minds for theological reasons instead of selfish reasons.

I changed my mind on women in ministry in the opposite direction during roughly the same time frame.

E. Earle Ellis, a professor at SWBTS that Hemphill and Patterson championed, strongly advocated the inclusion of women in vocational ministry (including pastoral roles) and his theological arguments from the New Testament changed my mind.

 

No. In fact, I think the need has already passed for the current structure.

It seems to me that the future of theological education in Baptist life will likely be built around Baptist colleges and universities in coordination with local churches and ministries to develop practical experience. With only a few exceptions, my undergraduate theological education was much stronger and more challenging than the graduate program at SWBTS (during the Dilday/Hemphill years) and from what I have heard from recent and current students, not much has changed.

In a strange way, I think the seminaries are in an unenviable position of needing to make the graduate programs easy enough for most candidates to graduate in order to maintain their popularity and support within the Convention, while many Baptist colleges and universities can easily shift students who are failing out of religious studies into other career avenues. Southern has certainly built a reputation for scholarship within the convention over the last 15 years and, if that reputation is deserved, it should be commended for it. At the same time, scholarship is not the only factor in successful ministry. Ministers much be able to apply their faith practically in the real world.

The seminaries also seem to be graduating men and women without much practical experience in real churches so that new vocational ministers get burned out very quickly within the first few years of their “professional” ministry.

Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of true spiritual formation and discipleship stressed within the seminaries, so that vocational leadership doesn’t know how to lead a church to create disciples within the congregation. This sort of thing is more "caught" than "taught", so they seminaries have to choose the right faculty and leadership who have lives which naturally manifest the fruit of the Spirit in such a way that students are drawn to their example and want to learn how to have that experience in their own lives. Programs that require seminary students to knock on doors to share the gospel for seminary credit are no replacement for having true spirituality played out each day in front of you. (I live less than 1.5 miles from the seminary campus and I've had SWBTS students knock on my front door on several occasions, and they always run off before I have a chance to answer.)

The seminaries face a difficult future. There has been an enormous decades long (in some cases, more than a century long) investment in facilities, buildings, libraries, etc. In years past, it made perfect sense to do this since most people did not have access to a high-quality, high-volume theological library. With today’s technology, we are not very far from a digitized library, accessible from almost anywhere, and distance learning capabilities that were just science fiction two decades ago.

There is no longer a compelling reason to relocate large numbers of students to a common location to gain a theological education.

The SBC (as well as many other denominational bodies and higher education institutions) have to rethink throwing money at older ways of doing things and determine if newer models should gradually supplant the old.

In any case, there is a desperate need for the SBC to continue a program of theological education to support the needs of the churches and missionary agencies, but the SBC needs some visionary leaders who are willing to make hard choices in order to make those things happen.

I sincerely doubt it. The trend away from the seminaries began in the late 1980s (it was one of the excuses for Russell Dilday’s termination from SWBTS, but Hemphill and Patterson have also presided over the same continuous decline), and will likely continue for the foreseeable future. For many people, the seminaries do not provide a compelling reason to uproot themselves and their families to attend a school for three or more years. And in a practical sense, it’s very hard to make ends meet in a seminary city because the seminary creates an excess of college-educated pool of potential employees for employers to select from, driving down wages and opportunities. Furthermore, the local churches have more available ministry students that they need/want to fill relatively few positions while other areas of the country can’t get anyone.

I think that between the two, colleges are going to easily win the competition for students.

 

Perhaps the time is ripe for offering a new vision of a fully functioning seminary masters level programme.

I've often heard (and rather agree with) that the problem with seminary is the curriculum is designed and implemented by academicians and not practitioners. From my experience I'd agree that as a minister one needs more courses on practical ministry level matters and less on the theoretical side of things.

I'd love to be part of a seminary that is global but local (with the diversification of technology this is possible) and offers partnerships with local NT churches to assist with the training. Right now, going to a room and sitting there for three years doesn't help. We need a formal system.

DTS did everyone a favor by showing that a 4 year ministry degree is tenable. We need to now craft it for something useful and start turning out hundreds of excellently prepared, divinely called, and passionately connected ministers for the local church.

If the SBC Big-6 could lead this charge we could continue to change the world...and at a better pace.

Just a thought...hopefully we can get back to the regularly scheduled thread and not this foolish nonsense.

 

What was Deborah's position in society?

If it were not for the earning capacity of many pastor's wives they would not be able to pastor some of the small churches or go to seminary.

 

I was waiting for our other resident SBC basher to step into the fray. Thank you for joing the lastest bash the SBC thread.

 

Wasn't it Mohler who hired a number of non-SBC folks at SBTS to work there. I can remember when I was pastoring a SBC church and three of the people were involved as volunteers at the state chruch growth board. At the time the SBC was looking at bringing non-SBC folks on their boards.

 

Didn't attend Southern, wouldn't have signed before or after BF&M 25, 63 or 2000

 

Huh? (again... I find myself using that word in this discussion often)

How EVER did you arrive at the conclusion, based on what I have posted, that I think women belong in the home and cannot work, etc. My own wife works full time -- oh, FOR THE SEMINARY... She is the exec. for the Dean of the Billy Graham School and has held that position for 10 years. Sheesh, who would have imagined it. Southern Seminary pays women to work on their campus... :applause:

Have any of you ever read Proverbs 31? See any reference to women working outside the home there?

What of missionaries? We sure do send a lot of women out from SBTS. The two missionary offerings in the SBC are named after women missionaries, Annie Armstrong and Lottie Moon. We have the Lottie Moon museum housed on the campus of SBTS, including many of her personal items and her Bible.

You guys that think that SBTS is against women are barking up the wrong tree... We hold the BIBLICAL position that says that women are not to be in leadership over men in a pastoral role, sure, we do that because that is what the Bible teaches, not because we hate women.

 

I responded to the wrong guy...

 

The BF&M has nothing to do with tenured professors at SBTS. Nor is it the required "creed" for SBC churches. It is a voted upon (by messengers sent from individual churches at the annual meeting of the Convention) document that lays out our beliefs in accordance with the Bible and the people who represent the churches that can be adopted as a general guideline.

No student has to sign the Abstract. That was and is for tenured professors, and as stated, has been in effect since the founding of the Seminary.

Tenured professors who were removed from the seminary were removed because they had signed the document, but were in violation of their own pledge.

I guess it is time to start citing some of their writings... Anyone who can hold to what they wrote at that time is liberal beyond comprehension.

From R. Inman Johnson...

"I have greatly enjoyed my pilgrimage. You may think I'm a heretic but I still have a sense of security in Christ. My position on the Holy Spirit is that He, or She is given to everyone committed to Christ, but I do not ask him to tell me which used car to buy.
...
I say a man who says Genesis is inerrant is ignorant, intellectually dishonest, or a liar. My position is that the Creation story is a hymn extolling the power of God to create and expressing our dependence upon Him. To understand Genesis (or the OT) you must think like a Jew. And, to say that the original manuscripts were inerrant is to admit the present writings are errant. I'm not bothered greatly by men calling themselves Christians acting as if Christ does not exist.
...
I recall that I thought only Baptists went to heaven. I do not recall how or when I learned about Santa Claus. Nor do I recall just when I gave up on Adam and Eve. I suspect that the National Geographic Magazine had a bit to do with this.
...
I was not greatly shocked when Dr. J.J. Wickers told me that Jonah and the whale was only a story. It was much more interesting when I learned that Paul does not mention the Virgin Birth. I'm convinced that if he had heard about it, he would have bragged about it.
...
I remember being a little disturbed when i read Paul Tillich and asked Frank Stagg if Tillich were a Christian. Frank said, "I think he is. I know him personally." Then I read one of Harry Emerson Fosdick's books in which he denied belief in the Virgin Birth. The Fundamentalists would say that I am not a Christian if I do not believe in the Virgin Birth. Andy Rooney says he thinks Joseph was the father. the Bethlehem story could be a true and beautiful story. As for the Immaculate Conception, I may be dumb and not worry about it. Then one day I discovered that the Bible is a pornographic book--it begins with sex (Adam knew Eve) and ends with sex (as a bride adorned for her husband).
I may have been a little shocked when I discovered that the God if the Old Testament is a blood thirsty God, destroying entire populations, for the sake of the Jews from whom he expected sacrifices and offerings. We make this God's purpose in saving the world but I like the statement of the little girl--I read it somewhere--who explained the Hitler-like action of God by saying, "These things happened before God became a Christian."

The above from, "How I have Changed My Mind," 1993, pg. 6-7.

The attitudes, theology, and existential nature of faith are echoed in virtually every professor's writings from that period.

If THAT is what some of you are supporting, you can happily have them in your camp! I'll take those who prefer God's Word whole, inerrant, and taught, preached, and believed, including the Virgin Birth, and deity of Christ.

 

Your warm apology is accepted.

 

I don't want liberalism nor do I want fundamentalism

 

That is just "Prof" being "Prof", intentionally outrageous to get a laugh. He was a speech professor and did not teach Bible or theology. Frankly, I think that printing his comments was a waste of paper and ink. But you cannot tar the real scholars on the SBTS faculty of the past with the Prof brush.

 

Then certainly one could easily see how much of the seminary does for wives teaching them how to live for Jesus in the workplace and at home. How many of their studies are aimed at that?

 

Please document your claim that Prof "was removed from the seminary".

 

This is a weak response. The professor was not just doing it to "get a laugh,"; he clearly believed it. Not only that, much of what he said was blasphemous, and should not even be said in jest.

The fact of the matter is, the professors lied, they got caught, and someone came in who was willing to hold them to their covenant, and make them quit indoctrinating future pastors with liberal unchristian nonsense.

Personally, I thank God for sending Dr. Mohler to clean up!

 

I too am glad there was a lot of cleaning up done not just at Southern. And, I don't know why the continue to cry. They now have their CBF which caters to any liberal who wants to join up. There's all these cries about what the SBC did to them. But, never once, have I heard an apology for what the CBF tried to do to Shorter College (a Georgia Baptist College) in Rome, GA. Thank God Dr. White and the GBC didn't back down.