Political engagement should start in the church, say Mohler and Leeman at Southern Seminary Late Night event during TGC April 8, 2019

The local church should be the starting place for Christian engagement in political thinking and involvement, said Jonathan Leeman at Late Night event sponsored by The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary during The Gospel Coalition national conference, April 2. The event was a conversation with R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, for a the first-ever recording of Thinking in Public, Mohler’s interview series with notable scholars and thinkers about their work.

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Southern at TGC: Institutions are indispensable for the growth of the church, says Mohler during breakout session April 5, 2019

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was well represented at the biennial national conference of The Gospel Coalition, April 1-3. The seminary sponsored two events during the week: a breakout session featuring R. Albert Mohler Jr. and a live recording of Mohler’s popular podcast Thinking in Public, both on Tuesday, April 2. In addition, Southern Seminary alumnus Jeff Robinson moderated a panel discussion featuring professor Juan R. Sanchez and trustee H.B. Charles.

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Greear at SBTS chapel: Gospel goes to the nations through ‘ordinary people’ March 26, 2019

The gospel needs to spread throughout the world through ordinary people, just like it did in the book of Acts, said J.D. Greear during chapel at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, March 26.

Greear, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, used the example of Stephen in Acts 6-7 to bring this point home, arguing that the blueprint for the spread of Christianity was more like Stephen’s dramatic sermon before the Sanhedrin than the Sermon on the Mount.

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Mohler releases new book on the Apostles’ Creed, asserts its critical place in Christian instruction

The book calls every generation to embrace the faith of the first Christians with the very words they used

Among all the statements and confessions in the history of the church, one stands above them all: the Apostles’ Creed. Recited at every commencement ceremony of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and in churches — of all traditions and varieties — across the world, the Apostles’ Creed has long been considered the basic teaching of Christianity.

But it is much more than a historical document, according to R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary. It is a deeply compelling and transformative link between Christians old and new. In his new book, The Apostles’ Creed: Discovering Authentic Christianity in an Age of Counterfeits, Mohler seeks to rekindle a love for the creed nearly 2,000 years after its writing.

The book is out today from Nelson Books, and can be purchased at Amazon and major booksellers everywhere.

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Beougher installed as acting dean of Billy Graham School March 21, 2019

Timothy K. Beougher will serve as the acting dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, President R. Albert Mohler Jr. announced Thursday evening. Beougher, the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and the associate dean of the Billy Graham School, will begin serving as acting dean immediately.

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Governor at Leadership Briefing: Leaders must fight apathy with strong convictions

The United States needs men and women of conviction who are willing to resist apathy and do uncomfortable things at critical moments, Kentucky governor Matt Bevin told a packed Heritage Hall at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for the most recent Leadership Briefing, March 19.

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SBTS professor Timothy Paul Jones unveils the ‘Urban Ministry Podcast’ March 15, 2019

A new Southern Seminary podcast hosted by professor Timothy Paul Jones will prepare pastors to minister more effectively in urban communities. The podcast is a resource of the Dehoney Center for Urban Ministry Training, which Jones serves as director, and its first episode released on February 25.

In addition to his responsibilities as the C. Edwin Gheens Professor of Christian Family Ministry and associate vice president for Global Campus, Jones was appointed director of the Dehoney Center in 2018. He is also an elder at Sojourn Church Midtown.

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Mohler tackles hot-button cultural issues during Ask Anything event at University of Southern California March 11, 2019

Seminary president R. Albert Mohler Jr. took questions for almost two hours, questions ranging from advice on evangelism to some of the most significant hot-button issues in society.

The event was the third stop on the Ask Anything Tour, a series of public question-and-answer forums with Mohler on university campuses around the United States. This latest stop, Friday, March 1, was at the University of Southern California, where around 500 students crammed into one of the historic auditoriums on campus. Previous events took place last year at the University of Louisville and at UCLA.

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‘Mystery of integrity’ must propel the church forward, says Moore during Norton Lectures March 4, 2019

The church’s integrity, or internal stability, is maintained by holding together and articulating critical paradoxes in the Bible, said Russell Moore in the Norton Lectures at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Feb. 26-27. The lectures were titled “The Mystery of Integrity: The Quest for Congruence in a Culture of Conformity.”

While the word “integrity” is often used regarding moral character, it really represents the “holding together” of something, like a building or institution. This integrity is critical to the church in the 21st century, and it is expressed in Scripture primarily through paradox, said Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and former dean of the School of Theology at Southern Seminary.

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Moore in SBTS chapel: Today’s integrity preserves the church’s mission tomorrow February 26, 2019

The church’s compromises in pursuit of power or influence will threaten its mission in future generations, said Russell Moore in a chapel service at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, Feb. 26.

“The integrity of the church is not dependant on the approval of whomever we believe might have enough power at the moment,” said Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and formerly the dean of Southern’s School of Theology. “The integrity of the church conserves the mission of the church for generations yet to come.”

Preaching on the narrative about Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20, Moore said the situation of the people of God in the 8th century B.C. has much to teach the people of God in the 21st century A.D. Hezekiah was a king of Judah, the southern kingdom of Israel, more than a century before it was deported to Babylon. And unlike most Israelite kings, he was a righteous one.

When the kingdom of Judah was threatened by an Assyrian army in 2 Kings 18-19, Hezekiah responded righteously, falling before the Lord in the temple and praying for deliverance. After God rescued Judah from the Assyrian invaders, Hezekiah became deathly ill and again turned to God, who dramatically healed him.

Yet in 2 Kings 20, when envoys from Babylon came to see Hezekiah after hearing about his miraculous recovery, the once-righteous king responded differently. He gave them a tour of all the worldly wealth of his kingdom, seeking to impress them enough to form a geo-political alliance that would protect Israel from another Assyrian attack. Hezekiah’s desire to protect the people of God was a good one. But he chose to do it the world’s way instead of God’s, Moore said. And that was a crack in the kingdom’s integrity that would lead to its downfall.

“Hezekiah’s values are the same as the Babylonians’ values. They want to think in terms of wealth and power, so that’s exactly what Hezekiah shows them,” Moore said. “This is a kind of boasting in the Lord according to the criteria of the nations and the world, not according to the criteria of the cross.

“What Hezekiah has forgotten is that the sign of God’s presence and the sign of God’s power was not in his strength, but in his vulnerability. Hezekiah had encountered most visibly the Lord when he was under siege and when he was on the precipice of death.”

The people of God make the same mistake today, according to Moore, when they think they need to prove their strength to those in power. When the prophet Isaiah warns Hezekiah that all his kingdom’s prosperity will one day be carried off to Babylon, the king considers this a good thing, since he will have guaranteed peace and security for his day, regardless of what happens in the future.

Hezekiah’s admission is tragic, Moore said. The same man who once tore down the pagan high places now does what the pagans did: sacrifice his children’s lives for present prosperity. The church today faces the same crucial choice: political power today or spiritual integrity tomorrow? As the church is forced to grapple with the destructive effects of sin both within and without, Moore said, it must first decide what it considers most important.

“Jesus went to the cross on charges — at least partly — that he violated the temple of God. Why? Because Jesus saw the temple very differently than did Hezekiah,” Moore said. “Hezekiah saw power, bigness, winning. Jesus saw a place that represented the holiness of God and a place where the nations — the most vulnerable and overlooked people — could come into the presence of God.”

Once seminary students are serving in ministries all over the world, they will encounter horrifying sinful realities and dysfunction, Moore said, not just in the world outside, but in the church itself. And the lesson for them is the same as it was for Hezekiah nearly three millennia ago: Don’t leverage your integrity in the future for comfort and political cachet in the present.

“For some of you, you will be willing to be silent when it comes to the sin of partiality and racism because if you talk about it, they’ll say you’re a liberal. And some of you will be willing to be silent when it comes to issues of sexual immorality, because if you talk about them, they’ll call you a fundamentalist,” Moore said. “And some of you will be cowed into being silent when it comes to issues of the sexual abuse of children and the most vulnerable people within the church of Jesus Christ, because there will be some who seem to be so powerful that they will not be questioned.

“But do not be mistaken: You’re doing all those things before the face of God, and you’re doing all those things before people who are overhearing you and asking, ‘Is the gospel of Jesus Christ simply another way of winning at life, or is the gospel of Jesus Christ a transcendent word from heaven shutting every mouth before the judgment seat of Christ?’”
Audio and video of the chapel message will soon be available at equip.sbts.edu. Moore is on campus for the biannual Norton Lectures, which he delivered at 4 p.m. on Tuesday and will conclude at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesday. You can watch the lectures at sbts.edu/live.

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