LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary unanimously approved all recommendations in the board’s Oct. 10 meeting, including the election of esteemed church historian Michael A.G. Haykin to the faculty and a response to a referral from the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

“The election of Michael Haykin brings to Southern Seminary’s permanent faculty a scholar of world renown and a Christian of such wonderful heart,” Mohler said. “He is not only a prolific author and scholar, he is also a man of deep conviction and a teacher who invests personally in his students.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Four centuries after their births, Puritan theologians Richard Baxter, John Owen, and William Kiffen provide insight on how experiences shape a diversity of convictions on matters of faith and practice, said church historians during the 10th annual Andrew Fuller Conference at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Sept. 19-21.

The conference, which was themed “The Diversity of Dissent,” brought together historians from four different continents, including: Herman J. Selderhuis, professor of church history at the Theological University Apeldoorn in the Netherlands; Crawford Gribben, professor of early modern British history at Queen’s University in Northern Ireland; Tim Cooper, associate professor of church history at the University of Otago in New Zealand; and David Sytsma, assistant professor at Tokyo Christian University in Japan.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — The newly-appointed associate dean of academic innovation at Boyce College is “a master teacher, a gifted administrator, a proven churchman, and a devoted husband and father,” said Matthew J. Hall, dean of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s undergraduate school. Louisville native Kevin Jones, assistant professor of teacher education since 2014, has more than a decade of experience teaching in public schools and colleges, in addition to his service in church ministry roles and community organizations.

"As one of Christian higher education's fastest-growing institutions, these are extraordinary times of opportunity for Boyce College,” Hall said. “Dr. Kevin Jones is the right man at the right time to help our efforts to lead the college into this exciting future. Dr. Jones will play a vital role in leading our efforts to develop new degree programs as well as continuing to ensure excellence in teaching as one of Boyce College's distinctives."

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (SBTS) — R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary presented the 2016 Distinguished Alumnus of the Year award to Russell D. Moore at the seminary’s June 15 alumni luncheon during the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting.

“Russ Moore has already made history and there is much history still to be written. He has madeSouthern Seminary proud in so many different ways,” said Mohler, who also presented Moore a commemorative plaque. “It is high time that we make this presentation and celebrate Russ Moore as Alumnus of the Year of the institution very proud to claim him as our own.”

Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC and SBTS Ph.D. graduate (2002), also formerly served as professor of Christian theology, dean of the School of Theology, and senior vice president for academic administration at Southern Seminary.

“This school didn’t just educate me,” Moore said. “I look around this room, the best friends in the world that we have, I look at students that I love. I look at a place where, when we arrived home with our first two children, there was a parking lot full of people waiting for us ... I can’t thank Southern Seminary enough for being our family.”

In his annual presentation to alumni and friends, Mohler called for increased boldness for the challenges facing Southern Seminary. Using Acts 4:23 as his text — in which the disciples react to their bold proclamation of the gospel before the Sanhedrin by praying for more boldness — Mohler said more is required of the seminary as it looks to the future. 

"I think there’s the temptation for us to simply be thankful for how bold the Lord has allowed us this school to be,” Mohler said. “But what we really pray for is that the Lord would make us even more bold, because what will be required of us in the future is even far greater than what has been required in the past ... Everything we’ve done thus far — sweet and precious and instructive as it is — is just, by God’s grace, a foretaste of what’s to come.”

Mohler referenced a resolution that had passed the previous afternoon at the SBC annual meeting, which renounced the display of the Confederate battle flag. He said it was a necessary but preliminary step in addressing the sins of previous generations of Southern Baptists, and that the seminary will require greater boldness to address continued issues of racial tension within the church.

“The burdens of history and the mandate invested in us has to be always on our mind,” Mohler said. “The great failure of the Southern Baptist Convention and the great failure of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is exemplified and realized in nothing more powerful than our failure to our African-American brothers and sisters through more than a century-and-a-half. I’m humbled by the fact that I think this is a permanent stain that the Southern Baptist Convention will have to bear as a mark, just to prevent us from the temptation of denominational hubris.”

Mohler also discussed the seminary’s recently launched Hispanic Initiatives, which seeks to reach the Spanish-speaking world with theological education. The program, which is part of a movement to cultivate diversity in the seminary community, includes the hiring of two Latino professors and the availability of Spanish online courses at a reduced cost.

“With every passing day and every passing year, the Southern Baptist Convention has to look more like the nation, more like the world, more like the marriage supper of the Lamb — or we’re going to look less like Jesus.”

Mohler also recognized the June 10 announcement that Matthew Hall would be the next dean of Boyce College, the undergraduate school of Southern Seminary, which has grown an enrollment of 1,200 students.

The more than 450 attendees of the luncheon also received a copy of the "President's Report," a publication providing a summary of the 2015-16 academic year.

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (SBTS) — The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s record-setting enrollment numbers testify to an ideological paradox of the cultural revolution, said SBTS President R. Albert Mohler Jr. during his June 15 report to messengers during the SBC annual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.

Despite the supposed death of conservative theological education foretold by mainline liberalism 50 years ago, the confessional seminaries of the SBC are healthier than ever, said Mohler. Although experts in theological education said only seminaries that adopt a secularized message would survive, that has not been the case, Mohler said, pointing to the fact that for the first time in its history Southern Seminary’s enrollment had exceeded 5,000 students in the 2015-2016 academic year.

“Here’s the great paradox: the seminaries that followed that methodology and adopted that trajectory are the seminaries that are dead or are dying,” Mohler said. “It is the seminaries that have refused to bend the knee ... that are not only surviving but by God’s grace, thriving,” Mohler said.

Mohler said more is required of Southern Baptist seminaries now than any other time in the history of the convention. Although the gospel message itself never changes, the challenges before the graduates of Southern Seminary are dramatically different than when the seminary was founded in 1859.

“We are on the hinge of history right now, of such massive change,” Mohler said. “The secularization that is going on in the society around us, the massive intellectual worldview challenges we now face, the moral revolution that now so characterizes our times is producing a context of ministry that is not only markedly different than that experienced by previous generations, it is one that is increasingly marked by hostility towards the cause of Christ and his gospel.”

Concluding his report, Mohler thanked messengers for their support and for funding the seminary through the Cooperative Program, which helps prepare ministers to face the rising cultural challenges concerning gender identity and sexual orientation.

“There are more young men training for the gospel ministry and to pastor churches on the campus of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary right now than have ever been at any place in the history of the Christian church. And for that we are so very, very thankful,” he said.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Boyce College, the undergraduate school of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, will add a women’s volleyball team to its athletic program and begin competition this fall in the NCCAA Division II Mideast region. Volleyball will be the third sport offered at Boyce and the first for women.

“There has been a ton of interest from the ladies on campus, and even the men who wanted us to have a more fully developed athletic program, and the next obvious step was to add a women’s sport,” said Boyce athletic director Blake Rogers, who also coaches the men’s basketball team. “This is a unique way to support our ladies on campus and I am thrilled for the turnout, because I know that our students are going to jump all over this.”

The volleyball team will be coached by Alexis Ammon, a native of Floyds Knobs, Indiana, who was a four-year starter in volleyball at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Sport Management.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Nearly two years after his military chaplain baptized him in one of the world’s most spiritually dark places, Illinois police officer and Army veteran Scott Carter reunited with Southern Seminary alumnus Raymond Lowdermilk at the April 12-14 Together for the Gospel biennial conference for what he described as a “glimpse of heaven.”

Carter, a patrol officer near Chicago, was deployed to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp with the 339th Military Police Company in January 2014. Working first as a camp block sergeant and then as an operations sergeant, Carter supervised guards and Gitmo detainees. But Carter said he felt overwhelmed at times seeing dangerous war criminals detained for terrorism, which constantly reminded him of the 9/11 attacks he witnessed on TV the day his now 14-year-old twins were born.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary unanimously approved all recommendations in the board’s April 18 meeting, which included the election of two faculty members, the budget for the 2016-17 academic year, and a $14-million renovation plan for Fuller Hall.

In a historic measure, trustees approved the recommendation of its Financial Board for the 2016-17 budget of $48 million, an increase of 9.9 percent over the previous year.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — The spring issue of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s alumni magazine, which released today, marks a prominent transition for the publication, featuring expanded content on faculty and alumni while offering an innovative online version, leaders said. Southern Seminary Magazine has also changed its release schedule from quarterly to biannual and has updated its format and design beginning with the Spring 2016 issue, which opens the 84th volume in the alumni magazine’s rich history.

“The new magazine format provides us a better avenue for telling the Southern story well,” said Steve Watters, vice president for Communications. Watters noted the free online Southern Seminary Magazine, available at sbts.edu/resources/magazine, is responsive to all digital devices, contains a linked table of contents, and adapts many of the design features found in the print version.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Evangelical leaders, professors, and pastors emphasize the importance of faithfulness in a new ministry workbook released by SBTS Press, a publishing imprint of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

In More Faithful Service, which released today, Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. highlighted the importance of faithfulness in the Christian’s life. Faithfulness is necessary for sharing the gospel, caring for people, and devotion to one’s family and the Savior, Mohler writes in the opening essay.