God calls ministers of the gospel to affirm the church and serve its members faithfully, said President R. Albert Mohler Jr. in his May 14 commencement address to 2015 graduates of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

During commencement exercises on the seminary lawn, 297 master’s and doctorate students received their degrees. A week earlier, 107 Boyce College graduates received certificate, associate, and bachelor’s degrees in a historic commencement that marked the first time a child of a Southern Seminary president graduated from the institution.

In an address from 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 titled “Children of the Day,” Mohler said ministers are called to serve the “children of light” who are destined for salvation and to preach with urgency “knowing that the day of the Lord is coming.”

For the first time in the 156-year history of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a child of a seminary president graduated from the school during the May 8 commencement for Boyce College.

Christopher Mohler, the son of Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr., was one of 90 Boyce College students to participate in the ceremony. A total of 107 students graduated from the seminary's undergraduate school this year.

“A college degree is no small thing,” Mohler said in his charge to graduates. “The graduates who cross this stage and receive these degrees are not receiving trophies given out without regard to achievement and distinction. Boyce College represents the finest traditions of Christian scholarship, teaching, and learning.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Josh Lewis remains hospitalized. After initially discharging Lewis, his doctors decided to rescind the order and keep him for one additional night of observation, Terri Lewis told Southern Seminary News at 5:15 p.m.

A Boyce College student who was stabbed and carjacked outside of an emergency room while making a pizza delivery says he forgives his attacker while he continues to recover in the hospital, May 6.

Josh Lewis, 19, has been employed at Spinelli’s Pizzeria since last August and is a sophomore at Boyce, the undergraduate school of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. While delivering a pizza to the emergency room at downtown Louisville’s Norton Hospital on Sunday afternoon, he says a man confronted him outside of his car and demanded his keys. When Lewis noticed the man had a knife, he dropped the keys and ran toward the hospital, but he says the man caught up with him and stabbed him in the back before taking off with his Jeep Cherokee and the pizza inside the car.

In an interview with Southern Seminary News, Lewis, who is from Detroit, said, “I’m not really holding a grudge against him. If he was in the same room as me right now, I would tell him what he did isn’t okay, but I would tell him that I forgive him and try to share the gospel with him and show him Christ.”

After checking into Norton’s emergency room, Lewis was transferred to the University of Louisville Hospital where he was treated for a collapsed lung and torn muscles. Doctors later realized that the knife also punctured part of Lewis’ liver. Lewis’ mother flew in from Detroit and says the stabbing could easily have killed him.

More than 300 students, faculty, and staff from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary went beyond the classroom to serve the city of Louisville in the third annual 1937 Project, April 18. The service project, which is part of Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s Give A Day week of service, commemorates the seminary’s role in the 1937 Great Flood that left much of the city under water.

Fischer praised the seminary’s service efforts on Twitter, acknowledging their service to 20 different businesses and non-profit organizations during the project, saying, “@SBTSStudentLife strong work - love seeing you guys all over the community today!”

According to Southern Seminary’s Student Life office, a record 307 Southern volunteers worked more than 750 hours combined in diverse neighborhoods throughout the city. Several of the projects included demolition and renovation, clean-ups, and helping local non-profit organizations breathe new life into their property and buildings. Jeremy Pierre, dean of students, said it encouraged him to see students showing courtesy and love to other people through practical means.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Board of Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary voted unanimously on April 21 to revoke its prior acceptance and decline the gift of the Northland International University campus in Dunbar, Wisconsin, as well as to decline to establish an extension campus of Boyce College, the seminary’s undergraduate school. The following statement by President R. Albert Mohler Jr., issued on April 24, explains the action of the Board of Trustees.

Dear Friends:

The announcement that The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Board of Trustees had voted to terminate plans to establish a Boyce College campus in Wisconsin came only after every reasonable effort had been made to find a way forward. Both Northland International University and Southern Seminary entered this process with great hope and good faith.

When the plan was first announced, we all thought that there was a realistic hope of achieving a business plan that would work and an academic plan that would serve students in that region with great faithfulness. We worked with great energy to that end, with leaders investing unprecedented time and hope toward the development of that plan. In more recent weeks, the challenges grew greater. Nevertheless, we redoubled efforts to achieve a workable plan. In more recent days, we realized that we were unable to achieve a plan that we felt had a reasonable expectation of success.

An unfaithful mailman hid bags and bags of mail in his garage before he was caught. The mountain of college acceptance letters, uncashed checks, and other pieces of mail took three mail trucks to haul away. This “poor reflection of a mailman” is analogous to Christians who do not deliver the good news, said Kentucky Baptist Convention President Tom James in an April 16 chapel message at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“If our ministry is going to model the ministry of Jesus, then we must be faithful to preach the gospel,” said James, pastor of Eastwood Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He was elected president of the 750,000-member KBC in November 2014.

On the 20th anniversary of a pivotal moment in the history of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, trustee and Southern Baptist statesman Jim Henry asserted that Jesus reigns in the midst of life’s storms.

In his opening remarks for the April 21 chapel service during the institution's trustee meeting, Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said that his heart was full as he remembered the events of 1995, when Mohler’s critics held a protest rally against the attempts to return the seminary to the convictional integrity of its founders.

“The critical turning point in this institution’s change came 20 years ago today, in this meeting,” said Mohler. “I had no assurance I would be in this room 20 years later.”

Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary elected two new faculty members and received President R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s report summarizing historic student enrollment metrics during the board’s April 20-21 meeting.

In the harmonious meeting held on the seminary’s Louisville, Kentucky, campus, trustees unanimously approved all recommendations.

Elected to the faculty, effective Aug. 1, were Douglas K. Blount, professor of Christian philosophy and ethics, and Joseph R. Crider, professor of church music and worship.

Mohler told trustees that both scholars “are spectacular additions to the faculty.”

The Online Learning Consortium, one of the most prestigious online learning organizations in higher education, recently recognized The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s online learning department for its innovation in language learning.

“The Global Campus at Southern Seminary provides training for God-called ministers around the world that is educationally equivalent to what students receive on campus. This requires constant innovation,” said Timothy Paul Jones, associate vice president of online learning and C. Edwin Gheens Professor Family Ministry. “This innovation in teaching languages online is one example of the many cutting-edge processes that the online learning team is constantly developing.”

Ryan Baltrip, director of online learning, and instructional designer Brian Renshaw received the Effective Practice in Online Learning Award for “Using Tablet Video Technology to Enhance Language Learning” in Southern Seminary’s online Elementary Greek course. Renshaw worked with Robert L. Plummer, professor of New Testament interpretation, to improve the course during the summer of 2014.

A biblical view of eschatology shapes faithful ministry in the present, said panelists during an April 14 event hosted by The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at The Gospel Coalition National Conference, held April 13-15 in Orlando.

“In my lifetime, eschatology has gone from an argument to a debate to a necessary way of life,” Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. said, describing the theological climate change from his childhood to the present. “Our life and ministry right now makes no sense unless everything that is promised about that coming King is true.”

The panel discussion examined issues pertaining to eschatology, a Christian view of the end times, in conjunction with the TGC National Conference theme, “Coming Home: New Heaven and New Earth.” More than 6,000 church leaders, laymen, and students from all 50 states and 50 countries attended the three-day conference.