LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — The addition of two influential Latino pastors to the faculty and significant discounts for online Hispanic students are key elements of a new initiative at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary designed to serve more effectively those called to ministry in the Spanish-speaking world.

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“The Lord has opened an incredible door for Southern Seminary to minister all over the globe, but in a powerful new way to form this partnership for the Hispanic Initiatives,” said Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. “The Spanish-speaking world is on Southern Seminary’s heart, and we see both a great opportunity and a great responsibility. Prosperity theology and other challenges have made significant inroads into the Hispanic world. At the same time, there is an incredible, even unprecedented openness to the gospel and we are excited to establish partnerships with pastors and churches who we see as the crucial leaders for an awakening of Christ’s church in the Spanish-speaking world.”

Secularization requires that Christians articulate their worldview in defense of the truth, evangelical leaders said at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s inaugural Driven By Truth conference, March 18-19.

“A conference like this is important, because from this generation forward no Christian will have a non-apologetic moment, and we must learn how to live faithfully in the world,” Southern Seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. told the 200 conference attendees.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — In the first-ever Boyce College chapel service preached in Spanish on March 9, pastor Jose Mendoza encouraged students to recognize their need for wisdom and work hard to obtain it.

“Wisdom requires a certain attitude,” said Mendoza, director of the Institute of Wisdom and Integrity and associate pastor of Iglesia Bautista Internacional in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. “For in the book of Proverbs, we have 31 chapters and of those 31 chapters, 10 are dedicated to a change in your attitude to show you why wisdom matters and why you should seek it.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — A Boyce College senior who never played organized basketball before donning a Bulldogs uniform took home the NCCAA’s top award for Division II athletes, the organization announced March 8. Ben Akers, a senior forward from Danville, Kentucky, is the first Boyce player to win the Pete Maravich Memorial Award, given annually to the most outstanding student-athlete in NCCAA men’s basketball.

“Ben has been a great example of the fact that hard work pays off,” said Boyce Bulldogs head coach Blake Rogers. “Ben never played organized basketball before coming to Boyce, but he has developed to be one of the best 3-point shooters in our league and has consistently led the nation in 3-points made.”

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — An archivist with more than a decade of experience researching Baptist history has been named the new director of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, the Council of Seminary Presidents recently announced. Taffey Hall, previously the library’s archivist, will replace Bill Sumners as SBHLA director when he retires in July.

“I’m very glad Dr. Taffey Hall will become the director of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives,” said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “She brings to this role a wonderful background as an experienced archivist and a strong advocate for historical studies among Southern Baptists. Dr. Hall has vast experience, having served many years on the staff of the Historical Library and Archives. She is also a certified archivist, bringing an excellent academic background and pedigree to this new responsibility.”  

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Southern Baptists must consider racial reconciliation as important as abortion and same-sex marriage, said leaders and pastors at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary during a Feb. 17 forum.

“Southern Baptists got [race issues] so wrong for so long that we have to deal honestly with it, because we do not have credibility,” said Matthew J. Hall, vice president for academic services and assistant professor church history. “Southern Baptists were not just implicated in racial injustice, we were directly feeding it. We have blood on our hands so we can’t try and address other issues of injustice and kind of leap over this one.”

Hall participated in a “What’s the Word” panel discussion on racial reconciliation hosted by the ONE student group, which says it seeks to reconcile ideas across race and gender lines through cross-centered conversations. Other participants included Felipe Castro, director of Hispanic initiatives at Southern Seminary; Curtis Woods, associate executive director for convention relations at the Kentucky Baptist Convention; and Kaitlin Congo, member of the leadership team for the Arise City Summit. Jarvis Williams, associate professor of New Testament interpretation, moderated the discussion, which focused on the historical and biblical issues surrounding racial reconciliation.  

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Boyce College, the undergraduate school of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, will host and live-stream the NCCAA Division II Men’s and Women’s Mideast Regional basketball tournaments, Feb. 25-27. It marks the first time Boyce has hosted a postseason tournament.

The three-day event will feature teams from Kentucky, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Boyce College will join Crown College, Johnson University, Kentucky Christian University, Piedmont International University, and Welch College in the men’s tournament. The women’s tournament will feature Johnson University, Kentucky Christian University, University of Valley Forge, and Welch College.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) —Expository preaching, personal evangelism, pastoral care, and congregational prayer are essential for church revitalization, said West Virginia Baptist leader William D. Henard III in a Feb. 9 chapel message at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“God is calling some of you to be church revitalizers. And you may go into a church and say… ‘There is nothing I can do.’ I want to let you know that there is always something you can do in [a struggling congregation],” said Henard, executive director-treasurer of the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists.

In his message, “Orthodox But Out of Focus: When a Church Needs Revitalization,” Henard, an adjunct professor of evangelism and church growth at the seminary, said 2 Timothy 4:1-5 illustrates that even when church revitalization is difficult and pastors feel limited in their ability to engineer change, they can be faithful in the four tasks of revitalization.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Countercultural Christianity is the necessary result of friendship with Jesus and the destiny for gospel ministers, said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in his Feb. 2 convocation address.

“We have to go out as an insurgency,” Mohler said. “And we have to go out knowing that we are likely to spend the rest of our lives spending social capital in the world around us and the secular world’s mind in order to share the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in all its saving power.”

Preaching from John 15:12-26, Mohler said the ground of friendship with Christ is his choosing and preservation of believers, guaranteeing his followers they can fulfill the countercultural work to which they are called. Mohler illustrated how differently he understood this passage as a teenager when Christianity carried social capital and no one objected to his call to ministry.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (SBTS) — Six months after his parents moved from California to Uruguay with the International Mission Board in 1990, Steven Kunkel stopped speaking. His parents first thought their one-year-old son had culture shock, but knew something else was wrong when Kunkel did not speak for nearly three years.

When Kunkel was 4, his father took him to San Francisco, California, for a formal diagnosis. The doctors informed him his son was severely autistic, saying he would never be able to live on his own, learn to speak or make any friends. This diagnosis left Kunkel’s parents in a difficult situation. The doctors recommended they leave the mission field and put Steven in a school for autistic children, but they knew God had other plans for their family.