Paige Patterson removed as President of SWBTS

My view on women in the Body would be that they are excluded only from being ordained as Pastors/Elders, as the spiritual leadership would be from a Male headship model. they also can be teachers, but reserved to teaching females, children, but not over males like in a Sunday school setting.

 

That sounds like the complementarian model. I think that would also be a fair summation of Patterson's publicly stated position.

 

Dr. Patterson said in chapel this last year that funding for the chapel was donated specifically for it's construction, and that if it were up to him all the funds would go to scholarship. Is that untrue? I may be misremembering and I don't know which day it was.

 

Apparently the giver changed his mind. Construction began and it was already decided by PP that he and Dorothy would live at the BHC. Several faculty and staff were "encouraged" to leave or retire because of financial stress at SWBTS. I was on campus not long ago and the place is not well-maintained as it once was and PP's stuffed wild animals are everywhere.

 

What we are now seeing about PP is just one facet of his standard of ethics. He gets what he wants. Even with this "ouster" he gets a free home on HIS seminary campus. He stated a LONG time ago he would one day be president of SWBTS. He wanted it, he got it! Robert Naylor would be in shock to see what he has done to the Naylor Student Center.
Currently PP gets a newly built home and retirement benefits and people who have been there long before him forced to retire without the blessing of benefits.

 

RayBap, welcome to the Baptist Board.

 

The "compromise" was not being Christ-like. Jesus was humble. Jesus uplifted the role of women above being property of men. Yes, Satan is attacking. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

 

BTW the scripture says submit as unto the Lord...I don't think the Lord would physically or verbally abuse a woman. In fact, he elevated the role of woman. It was women who went to the tomb while the disciples cowered in fear. When disciples were upset of the woman "wasting" precious oil/perfume Jesus commended the woman. PP has other ethical issues in leadership besides his superior role over women.

 

Yes. They fundraised for the chapel from the Southwestern Seminary donor community. I remember getting at least two fundraising letters myself. The lead gift was given by Ray Riley and they took pledges to fund the "world-class" chapel. I don't know the exact cost of the facility, but trustees initially authorized up to $30.2 million.

I don't know if it is true or not. I do know that he actively advocated for the construction of the chapel and took a lead role in fundraising for it during the economic downturn of 2008. While they got a break on construction costs because of the Great Recession, they also drained the established donor pool for the building. There would have been more money for scholarships and endowment if they had not built the chapel.

You may be remembering Patterson's words correctly. His actions do not reflect what you remember that he said.

 

10% of the faculty and staff were reduced through layoffs, retirement and simple attrition without plans to rehire for abandoned positions.

 

You assume much as fact that was never proven.

 

The trustees were all in and now they blame it all on Patterson?

 

Did I say that? No, I did not.

The primary issue is that FTE enrollment is terribly low. Previously, the trustees seem to go along with whatever Patterson wanted. One of the things Patterson said would happen is that the chapel would attract new students.

 

Was the chapel his idea? I am asking, I don't know.

 

That is my impression. He was not inspired by the auditorium that currently housed chapel and he didn’t like using the facilities at Travis Avenue Baptist Church for graduations.

If someone has better information, I would appreciate a correction/clarification.

 

That is true! Hemphill had the pipe organ removed and screens put in their place thinking updating it would get more students to attend Chapel. When PP arrived he wanted his own SOTA "chapel" so that they would not have to use TABC for graduation...and he used the premise if you build something new and fancy it would attract donors. Now they have more buildings and fewer students and with the BHC going in, they have even less parking.

 

Something that should be noted about the whole chapel thing and the finances of Southwestern that non-Fort Worth people would miss is that Fort Worth is built over the Barnett Shale geological formation. The Barnett Shale is a natural gas bearing rock layer that can have the gas released and recovered through laterally-drilled wells and fracking. When the price of natural gas spiked about a decade ago, drillers came to Fort Worth to make deals with landowners and mineral rights holders to extract the gas. Because there was such a race to get the wells drilled, exploration companies were signing agreements with homeowners, churches, schools, etc. so they could drill wells. In the earliest days, they focused on large property holders such as Southwestern Seminary, TCU, Tarrant County College, and persons who owned ranches just outside the city limits. Southwestern entered into a lease during the period where they were offering up to $5,000/acre for a signing bonus and 20-25% royalties on everything extracted. Later, the bonus money went up to $25,000/acre and 25-27% royalties for extracted gas.

There were lots of people and institutions who had a windfall of bonus money and then assumed that they would have a steady royalty income pouring in for the next 20 years or so. For instance, I had a friend who pocketed more than $250,000 in bonus money and was earning about $15,000/month in royalties during that time. He quit his job and devoted himself to doing humanitarian work in Haiti for a couple of years until the money ran out. He doesn't regret the work he did in Haiti, but he regrets not saving most of the money he received He assumed it would continue for years.

The reason the money ran out is that the drillers were so successful that the price of natural gas fell very quickly and many of the wells became unprofitable to operate -- so they were capped. That shut off the royalties for many.

Looking at the Texas Railroad Commission's GIS viewer, seven planned and permitted wells were not drilled, one is "shut in" (aka capped), and two might be operating at an extremely low level. I believe they also signed with Chesapeake who unscrupulously created a shell company to purchase gas from themselves at a greatly discounted rate and then resold it on the open market so that they would not have to pay as much in royalties to mineral rights holders.

So it is quite likely that Southwestern made plans regarding projected income that did not happen. At the time of signing their lease, they were extremely optimistic about the gas wells securing the financial future of the seminary, and gave each person on the payroll a signing bonus (I think it was $100) to their pay checks to celebrate their good fortune. There's a very good chance that the bonus money was nearly all of the money they received.

Financial planners tell us that winning the lottery, gaining an inheritance, or receiving some other type of financial windfall is often financially devastating to a person because it distorts common sense financial planning. People make commitments they can't afford and spend money they should be storing away for the future. I strongly suspect that was the type of thinking that went on when Paige Patterson and others began a number of large projects on a campus of an intitution that was losing student enrollment.

 

Wow, that was a bad decision!

I did not realize the pipe organ was removed. The last time I was in that room was for E. Earle Ellis' funeral and I didn't notice it was gone. Come to think of it, there was no organ music at the funeral.

 

I think that many if the Feminist agenda group does not want to support ANY scriptures that would indicate that Men are the head of the family, and brisol at Male headship/leadership in general. that being said, a man NEVER has any excuse to physically/verbally abuse his wife, as he is to love them and care for them as jesus did the church!