As an SBC seminary president, I often feel like a cork bobbing in a Southern Baptist ocean.  I am so much in and a part of this convention that it can be difficult to extract myself to observe and assess the denomination I serve. Yet, in recent days I have found myself doing just that.

For me, October marks one year as president of Midwestern Seminary. This anniversary has prompted me to reflect on the convention I am privileged to serve. In so doing, I have been reminded why Southern Baptists are a great people and why I feel so privileged to serve their churches.

The Right Convictions

First, Southern Baptists own the right convictions, and these convictions are deep and biblical. Southern Baptists believe in the total truthfulness of God’s Word and have adopted a confessional statement—the Baptist Faith & Message 2000—predicated on that conviction. The BF&M 2000 elucidates historic Christian orthodoxy as well as Baptist distinctives. While many Protestant denominations negotiate away their traditionally held beliefs, Southern Baptists have proven stubbornly committed to biblical fidelity.

Moreover, Southern Baptists stand strong on the great social issues of the day—even in the face of stiff cultural headwinds. This includes a vigorous defense of the unborn, traditional marriage, the nuclear family, and religious liberty. To advocate these principles in a Southern Baptist setting is like calling for lower taxation at a GOP rally. Your message will be well-received, not because of any political calculation, but because Southern Baptists’ convictions are settled in Scripture and resonate accordingly.

Not only are these convictions strongly held, they are also widely held. Recently, I exchanged friendly correspondence with a critic who operates from a more theologically moderate framework. To my interlocutor I wrote, “I mean no offense, but to paraphrase William F. Buckley, I’d rather entrust the spiritual formation of my children to 10 randomly-selected, church-attending Southern Baptists than 10 randomly-selected, pre-Mohler era Ph.D. graduates from Southern Seminary.”

To be sure, there are sound pre-Mohler era graduates from Southern Seminary, and one can certainly find unsound congregants in our churches. But, as a principle, I meant no hyperbole. I trust Southern Baptists because, in the main, we are a people of deep, biblical conviction.

The Right Mission

Second, Southern Baptists are a people committed to the right mission. Again, to paraphrase William F. Buckley, convictional Southern Baptists do not merely stand athwart history “yelling stop.” Rather, our convictions prompt us to look to the future and “yell go.” Our beliefs shape and invigorate a Great Commission mission—one that has marked our denomination since its founding in 1845.

The Great Commission work being done by Southern Baptists is truly remarkable. At the local, state, national, and international levels, the total number of Great Commission initiatives Southern Baptists have undertaken is beyond full quantification. This is good, right, and promising, but it is not new.

For nearly 170 years our common, Great Commission efforts have been Southern Baptists’ primary unifying force. Denominational sages did not make missions front and center as a pragmatic calculation in order to build and strengthen the convention. Rather, like a magnetic force, our collective Great Commission ambition has pulled us forward and pulled us together.

From a practical standpoint, the Cooperative Program has been—and is—our denomination’s secret sauce. The Cooperative Program is the envy of the Protestant world, and if we undermine it—whether by neglect or alternative initiative—we do so to our own peril and to the detriment of the Great Commission.

Over the past year, I have had hundreds of conversations with other SBC agency heads, state convention leaders, pastors, and laymen about how best to further the Great Commission. Thankfully, all of these conversations have been about how to best fulfill the Great Commission, not whether we should fulfill the Great Commission.

Conclusion

The SBC is not a perfect denomination, but it is a great one. Our greatness rests neither in our programs nor in our denominational machinery. Rather, it rests in our churches and with the congregants who comprise them because they hold the right convictions and are given to the right mission.

These firm convictions and the unyielding commitment to the Great Commission are the reasons why I am happily, wholeheartedly, and proudly Southern Baptist, and why I am grateful to lead a Southern Baptist seminary that exists for the Church—for these, Southern Baptist churches.

For Southern Baptists, B. H. Carroll is an iconic figure, and for Texas Baptists he is especially so. During his 28-year pastorate, the First Baptist Church of Waco, Texas became one of the state’s most preeminent congregations. Denominationally, he channeled domestic and foreign missionary efforts, advocated the establishment of the Sunday School Board, helped to consolidate the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and championed Southern Baptist causes—preaching nearly every annual meeting for 30 years.[1]

However, Carroll’s legacy is not the church he pastored, but the institution he founded—Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Sensing divine leadership, in 1908 Carroll almost singularly established Southern Baptists’ second seminary through his personal ingenuity and sheer force of personality. Like a human dynamo, Carroll propelled Southwestern Seminary’s meteoric rise. In just a few short decades after its founding, Southwestern Seminary would stand as the largest Southern Baptist seminary and, arguably, would shape the SBC in the latter decades of the 20^th century more than any other seminary.

Yet before Carroll founded Southwestern Seminary, he was a trustee of Southern Seminary. And in a strange twist of Southern Baptist history, before he established Southern Baptists’ second seminary, he nearly led them to relinquish their first.

The Whitsitt Controversy

After the death of John A. Broadus in 1895, Southern Seminary’s Board of Trustees elected William H. Whitsitt as the school’s third president. The honeymoon quickly wore off, and less than a year after his installation Whitsitt plunged the seminary into the second of its four major controversies. [2]

The controversy centered on Whitsitt’s questioning of Baptist origins, in particular his insistence that English Baptists did not baptize until 1641, thus denying Baptist succession. He also questioned Roger Williams’ baptism and argued that early English Baptists practiced affusion, or baptism by pouring. Not only were Whitsitt’s findings relatively new—Whitsitt claimed they were his discoveries—but they also ran afoul of many Southern Baptists, who believed in a continuity of baptism by immersion all the way back to the apostles. Further complicating matters, before his election as president Whitsitt published his articles on Baptist origins anonymously, prompting critics to question his courage and integrity.[3]

As conflicts often do, what began as a historical and biblical debate degenerated into concerns over Whitsitt’s character, judgment, and general fitness for the seminary’s presidency. The Whitsitt controversy grew into a full-scale denominational conflagration, consuming the attention of the convention and threatening not only the seminary but also the convention’s collaborative mission efforts.

Enter B. H. Carroll

Whitsitt’s chief protagonists were two of his own trustees: Carroll and T. T. Eaton. Eaton pastored the historic Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., while concurrently serving as editor of the influential Kentucky Baptist paper, The Western Recorder. Though Eaton was the most persistent critic, Carroll was the most influential one.

While Carroll agitated for Whitsitt’s removal, he never fully embraced the Landmark understanding of Baptist origins as championed by his younger brother J. M. Carroll.[4] Rather, Carroll fought for reasons of principle, believing trustee governance, doctrinal accountability, and the seminary’s responsibility to Southern Baptist churches were at stake. He argued that trustees bore not only a formal and fiduciary responsibility to the denomination, but also a moral one. Presciently, Carroll maintained that if trustees permitted unfettered academic freedom for historical research, the same argument might prevail in theological and biblical studies, thus leading to the seminary’s doctrinal compromise and downfall.

After a temporary relaxation in tensions that prompted Whitsitt and his supporters to believe the matter largely settled, Carroll reasserted his concerns through articles published in June 1897 in the Baptist Standard entitled, “The Whitsitt Case at Wilmington” and “Back to the Realm of Discussion.” Carroll’s pen once again put the Whitsitt controversy at the forefront of the convention’s attention.[5]

Motion to Sever the Seminary from the Convention

One of the forgotten aspects of the Whitsitt controversy involves a resolution Carroll presented to the convention when it gathered for its annual meeting in May 1898 in Norfolk, Va. There, Carroll submitted a resolution—to be voted on at the 1899 convention—to formally and legally sever the seminary from the convention. Carroll’s motives to sever ties were reasonable enough. He cited the Whitsitt controversy as hindering Southern Baptists’ collective missionary work, and the convention’s inability to hold the seminary responsible to the churches. In other words, to Carroll, the current relationship between the SBC and Southern Seminary granted the convention’s financial support and tacit endorsement, but denied it a sufficient mechanism to hold the seminary accountable.[6]

Thus, Carroll’s motion: “Resolved, that this Convention, without expressing any opinion whatever on the merits of the controversy concerning seminary matters, about which good brethren among us honestly differ, but in the interest of harmony, particularly with a view to preserve and confirm unity in mission work, does now exercise its evident right to divest itself of responsibility in the Seminary management, by dissolving the slight and remote bond of connection between this body and the Seminary; that is, that this body declines to nominate trustees for the Seminary or to entertain motions or receive reports relative thereto, leaving the Institution to stand on its own merits and be managed by its own trustees.”[7]

In response to Carroll’s motion, the convention appointed a committee to study the feasibility and prudence of separation.[8] The committee, reporting in 1899, declined to take any action, and Carroll announced his intent not to bring the motion forward for a convention vote.[9] Predicting counterfactuals is a fool’s errand, but at that time Carroll may have been the most respected and influential man at the convention. If Carroll submitted his resolution, and so argued for it, it may have passed.

A Time to Reassert Control, not Relinquish it

Carroll’s prevailing concern was holding the seminary accountable to the churches, as evidenced by his own words, and ultimately witnessed in forging Southwestern Seminary in accountability to Texas Baptists. Of Carroll, Glen Miller accurately observed, “The theme of ecclesiastical accountability is one of the consistent threads in his work as an educator and administrator.”[10]

In fact, Carroll’s resolve for the seminary to be accountable to the churches is most vividly captured in his deathbed injunction to Lee Scarborough, his successor as president of Southwestern Seminary. Carroll instructed Scarborough, “Lee, keep the Seminary lashed to the cross. If heresy ever comes in the teaching, take it to the faculty. If they will not hear you and take prompt action, take it to the trustees of the Seminary. If they will not hear you, take it to the Convention that appoints the Board of Trustees, and if they will not hear you, take it to the great common people of our churches. You will not fail to get a hearing then.” [11]

In the Whitsitt controversy, Carroll’s concerns were spot-on, but his proposed solution—to sever the seminary from the convention—would likely have brought disastrous consequences. One is hard-pressed to find any seminary that has ever been separated from its founding churches and yet maintained doctrinal faithfulness and missiological focus.

Every generation of Southern Baptists owes to their forebears and to their posterity to steward rightly the ministries and resources with which they have been entrusted. And, in this, Carroll was especially right: the stewardship is not merely legal and fiduciary—it is moral as well.

Given the historical and legal uniqueness of Southern Seminary’s founding, Carroll’s engagement in the Whitsitt controversy is not entirely transferrable to modern circumstances. As Duke McCall observed, in its early decades Southern Seminary grew up more alongside the convention than within it. Though the circumstances were unique, there is a principle that rings true in every generation—when churches perceive themselves distanced from the entities they own, they should reassert their control, not relinquish it.

Conclusion

B. H. Carroll was a Colossus figure, ranking with George W. Truett, W. A. Criswell, Lee Scarborough, Paul Pressler, and Paige Patterson as Texas Baptist luminaries. He justifiably garnered the accolades of Truett, who called him, “the greatest preacher our state has ever known,”[12] and John R. Sampey, who told him “You are now—since Broadus is gone—our natural leader in the Southern Baptist Convention.”[13]

Carroll was a decisive man who made many consequential decisions, none greater than founding Southwestern Seminary. However, I am especially grateful for one decision that, in the final analysis, he never made—to recommend Southern Baptists sever ties with their mother seminary.

As we would think about the semester before us and that to which Christ has called us, I want to draw our attention to John 15:1–11. I have entitled this sermon, “Abide in Christ: Priority One for Every Gospel Minister.”

I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are alreadyclean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

{Prayer}

Convocation unmistakably symbolizes a new day for a seminary. There is something special about an event such as this. This is something special for us who are here. The formality of the service, the academic regalia, historic references, and the full institutional attention on this chapel service, on this place and time, reminds us that there is something unique about this day. Academic convocations are rooted in the medieval university. It is a sign of marking the beginning of an academic year or academic event. It is a sign of consecration, of dedication to that which the Lord is calling us. It is to formally ask the Lord’s blessing.

Perhaps more than anything else, convocation is an academic expression. It is an academic reminder that we intend to love the Lord our God with our minds, to renew our minds, to give our best intellectual efforts to glorify God. It is an academic event first and foremost, and this is an academic day. It starts an academic semester, and we know that theological education is first and foremost an academic endeavor. Yet, if you think about it, there is a certain inequality in what we do. There is a certain inequality in the ministry to which this seminary has been called, and a certain inequality in that we invest in you, the students, because the seminary is primarily of the mind, of reading, of learning, of memorizing, of equipping oneself to speak, of preaching and instructing, of counseling, of instilling the word of truth in others. Though this season is primarily of the mind, the ministry seems to be primarily of the heart. You give your life to the people of God and to the lost. Your affections are given to Christ, and you are to serve him with all that you are. The inequity is this: virtually every metric a seminary has to gauge your progress and grade your growth is academic, intellectual; whereas, the primary measurement of ministry faithfulness is the heart, the motive, the life, the affection, the spirit.

Now I do not want to create this great chasm of distinction between the two because that is not true, and we know it not to be. Our growth in Christ begins with the mind and penetrates to the heart, so I do not want to set up this vast dichotomy between the two. I do want to remind us and charge us this morning that we must be careful to tend our hearts day-by-day as we are here, all the while also tending our minds. The world is littered by former pastors, former ministers, former missionaries, former teachers of God’s Word who no longer serve in that capacity. Rarely are they formerly ministers, formerly missionaries, formerly pastors because of doctrinal drift, though that happens too often. Often they leave the ministerial ranks because of some scandalous sin that brings reproach on the name of Christ and harms the church of Christ. But most of those who forsake their call to ministry and find themselves no longer serving the church and the gospel do so not because they have embraced theological liberalism, and not because they have committed some scandalous sin; most do that because they simply wither away. They have failed to tend their own hearts, failed to tender afresh the call of God on their lives, failed to engage in the spiritual disciplines, failed to fill their souls and nourish their spirits, and their hearts grew cold because they failed to abide in Christ.

My charge to you this morning is of course an academic charge: that you do your very best in the semester ahead, class-by-class, day-by-day to glorify Christ with your mind and to honor him by working hard. And I pray that you make “A’s” in a lot of them. But my super-abundant prayer is this: if you leave this place and have to choose between an “A” in your head and an “A” in your heart, that any day of the week you choose an “A” in your heart. My prayer is that you leave here more mature in Christ, more committed to following Christ, more committed to serving his gospel from the overflow of your heart, and that you be careful stewards thereof. As we celebrate academic convocation and we mark a new semester, let us give our minds to the academic task of theological education; but let us here, in this time and place, renew our commitments to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts as well as all of our minds.

I want to call us this morning to John 15:1–11. I want to remind us this morning of the stewardship we have over our spirits, over our hearts, and that priority number one of a faithful gospel minister is to abide in Christ. Now you may recall where we are—in the middle of this Upper Room Discourse in the Gospel of John. And those of you who know your New Testament and this gospel well, know that there are seven great “I Am” statements in the Gospel of John. In John 6, Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life.” In John 10, he declared, “I am the good shepherd.” In John 10, he declared, “I am the door of the sheep.” In John 11, Jesus declared, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In John 12, he declared, “I am the light of the world.” In John 14, he declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And now the seventh and final “I Am” statement is John 15: “I am the true vine.” As Jesus utters these statements in the gospel, they are not veiled, subtle references to his deity. Every Jewish girl and every Jewish boy from childhood had been told of the great story of Moses facing the burning bush. And where the Lord spoke to Moses through that burning bush and commanded him to go to Pharaoh and command Pharaoh to let his people go. Moses asks, “Who do I tell Pharaoh that I have been sent by?” And the Lord told him, “You tell him that I Am who I Am sent you.” So Jesus adopts this title for himself in the Gospel of John throughout his earthly ministry, and every time he does so, his Jewish hearers get bug-eyed because they know exactly what he is doing. He is equating himself with the Father, taking the form, taking the title, of deity.

The theme in the passage before us in John 15 is clearly fruit-bearing and abiding in Christ to bear fruit. We see it in verses two, four, five, eight, and 11. All of this culminates in joy: joy for the believer, joy for the disciple. And so the summary of these verses is that as we abide in Christ, we bear much fruit, and as we bear much fruit in Christ our joy is completed. But I want us to think about this not merely as a devotional exercise, but as a ministerial evaluation. See these verses with me.

Notice first in verses 1–3 that the Father’s purpose is for you to bear fruit. This is not reserved for some other person in some other place. It is not reserved for you post-seminary degree when you think you will have more time. You will not. Trust me. It is not reserved for you in some other stage of life after your kids are grown or out of the house, or your baby is our of diapers, or some other position in life. No. Life gets busier. Ministry gets busier, and if you do not root yourself in abiding in Christ during this season, have no assurance that you will in some other season. Note the Father’s purpose is for you to bear fruit. Jesus says, “I am the true vine.” Not the nation of Israel, “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser.” The viticulturist, we might say. “And every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” Jesus states so very pointedly his and the Father’s role. There is a collective trinitarian concern and enterprise of seeing disciples of Christ grow and bear fruit—Jesus being the vine, the Father being the vinedresser who actively engages in pruning through the ministry, and the work of the Holy Spirit so that we might bear more fruit. Verse 2 tells us he “takes away,” which I take to mean that he lifts up. He prunes. He disciplines. A part of your season in seminary is to be pruned and is to be disciplined. Please hear me this morning: the point is not that you push to the sidelines of your life your academic commitments. No, the point is that as you give the best of your minds to them, there is enough self-discipline in Christ to push to the very center of your attention and to the center of your concerns that you first and foremost abide in Christ and bear fruit.

How does our Father do this? How does he prune us? Well, you know how. You know your New Testament. In Hebrews 12, we are reminded. The author of Hebrews tells us beginning in verse 5:

And have you forgotten the extortion which addressed to you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline. But if you are without discipline of which all have become partakers, when you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we have earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subjected to the Father of spirits and live? For they discipline us for a short time, as seems best to them. But he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share his holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

What am I saying? I am saying this: the Lord’s preeminent concern for you is not registered on your transcript. It is registered in your character, in your life and in the faithfulness thereof, and in the way you rightly reflect and bring honor and glory to his holiness and his ministry as evidenced through you. The Father’s purpose for you is to bear fruit.

Notice secondly, in verses 4–5 that the Son’s power enables you to bear fruit. Jesus says, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.” I love the personalization of this call in verse 4. Jesus is saying, “Abide in me and I in you.” When we are converted, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in our lives. We are in Christ, established in him formally, legally in a sense, and before him made right. But also I love the tenor of verse 4, the personability of this, “You abide in me, and I in you.” The metaphor he offers is that the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. Get that. Your ministry, your Christian life—the faithfulness of your ministry and the fruitfulness of your ministry—is tethered to your abiding in Christ.

I did not say the success of your ministry. I said the faithfulness of your ministry and the fruitfulness of your ministry because those are the two biblical metrics that ultimately matter. Are we faithful to the Lord and to his word? And are we fruitful in that effort as he so blesses? Jesus says we cannot be unless we abide in him. To abide means to grow in Christ, to practice the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible study, devotion, and to find our joy in Christ, our hope in Christ, and our growth in Christ. There is a certain built-in challenge to all of this, we confess, because as those who are in ministry in the year 2013 and the years going forward, you will have a to-do list longer than your day most any day of your life in ministry. You have sermons to prepare; you have counseling sessions to undertake; you have meetings to attend; you have fires to put out; you have things that must be done; you have urgencies imposed on you by others that you have no control over.

There is a sense in which it sounds as though I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth because we want to give ourselves and expend ourselves to the great call, to the needs of the church, to live and labor for the church, but the irony is that that very ministry can preclude us from abiding in Christ. The irony is that there is a troubling barrenness in a life of ministerial busyness. Jesus would speak of this so very clearly, and so very poetically in Luke 10, when we are told of this encounter between Mary and Martha:

Now as they were traveling along, he entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. She had a sister called Mary who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to his word. But Martha was distracted with all of her preparations, and she came up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all of the serving alone? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but only one thing is necessary. For Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

If we all were to drink a vile of truth serum, we all would confess to having moments—and perhaps even patterns—of being “Marthas.” The troubling reality is that virtually all of the measures in the contemporary church that evaluate ministerial effectiveness require one to be a Martha to attain it. As you undertake your ministry, now in seminary and as you seek to serve Christ throughout the duration of your life, you will have to combat that day after day after day because not only does the world and our flesh press in on us to be Marthas, but the requirements of the church and the call of the ministry seem to as well. If we are not careful, we could build an institution that cultivates and graduates class after class after class of ministerial Marthas preparing for class after class after class, preparing for Bible study after Bible study after Bible study, sermon after sermon, attending ministerial event after event, facilitating, fostering, cultivating, creating a whole generation of ministerial Marthas. I am a man of activity. I will certainly confess that. I love productivity. I love doing things where I can see progress. That is how I’m wired. So I know this temptation as well as any of us. The point is not to become irresponsible or negligent or to excuse laziness under the auspices of the Bible. No, the point is to press to the very front of our life’s to-do list and our life concerns to be first and foremost rooted and growing in Christ; to first and foremost engage in those disciplines that produce eternal fruit—that bring about growth in Christ and that whatever we do—we do not let our studies nor our ministries keep us from the one we are ostensibly serving—Jesus Christ.

Notice with me thirdly verses 6–11. Your passion should be to bear fruit, and we are given here several references as to why. First, notice that verse 6 evidences our eternal security: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.” Now, to be quite frank, verse 6 is something of an unclear verse, and many people have many interpretations. One of the basic rules you will learn in your hermeneutics courses here is that when you come to a knotty verse that is difficult to interpret, interpret the less clear verses in the Bible by the clearest verses. We know from other places like John 10, Romans 8, and 100 other places that one cannot lose his or her salvation. At the same time, though, we know that as we grow in Christ, and as we evidence the marks of conversion, as we see the fruit of the Spirit exude from us, we gain further confidence in our eternal security. We do not earn it, but we demonstrate it. So I say to you this morning, if you truck through life and through ministry as one would define it without seeing the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of Christ in your life, do not think because you have a seminary degree that you know for certain that you are going to heaven when your time on this earth is done.

Notice also in verse 7 that our passion should be to bear fruit because of a vibrant prayer life: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” Of course this is not some promissory note, but it is a realization that as our hearts are Christ’s and Christ’s heart is ours, then our minds are tuned to Scripture; our minds are tuned to Christ. As we think like Christ, we desire like Christ, and our ambitions are like Christ, then there is a harmony of our will and a harmony of our desires.

But notice verse 8. This is a big verse to me. I have thought about this much as we would think about our time together this morning as we abide in Christ and we bear fruit: “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” Each one of us in the room today is a steward of the glory of God. The president of this seminary is. Everything I do and do not do, say and do not say, preach and do not preach, and live and do not live reflects to a greater or lesser degree, and to a more or less helpful degree, the glory of God. But take no refuge in my bearing that burden because you bear it, too. Everything you do or do not do, teach or do not teach, instruct or do not instruct, learn or do not learn, live or do not live, bear by way of fruit, or do not bear, you are a steward of the glory of God, and you best glorify God in your life and in your ministry as you abide in him and reflect that fruitfulness. Do you realize that your ministry is first and foremost dependent upon your character? First Timothy 3:1–7 lists the qualification of the office of an elder or pastor. It is a rundown in character traits up to which your life should measure. It is not a one-time threshold to be passed. It is an ongoing accountability to be maintained with Scripture. Not only that, though. As you glorify God and as you bear the fruit of abiding in Christ, and as you draw near to him, you will have the personal capital and credibility to lead others spiritually. Your life will radiate the joy of Christ and the love of Christ, and so others will want to follow your spiritual leadership. Not only that, I dare say that the success of your ministry will be dependent upon, first and foremost, the character that you have cultivated through abiding in Christ.

Robert Murray McCheyne would famously say, “The greatest need of my people is my personal holiness.” As God has a minister who is holy and entirely set apart to him, it is an awful weapon in the eyes of Satan. Most urgently, the glory of God is at stake, as verse 8 reminds us. Your ministry, your time here, your life in Jesus is a little repository of the glory of God. The church is plagued by hypocrites who rob God of his glory and slip in the little things like forsaking John 15 and the call therein. Slippage in the little things often leads to calamitous falls. The glory of God is at stake. Moreover, as you abide in Christ, you will be able to avoid what the New Testament presents to us a Pharisaism. Jesus would rebuke the Pharisees as being whitewashed tombs, being appropriately clean on the outside, but dead and rotten and stenchy on the inside. The ministry is well populated with such people. Let us not add to their number in this place.

I would say, finally, as we think about the glory of Christ in these things, there is a stewardship that rests on you—not only in the lofty ways of the glory of Christ, and not only in the personal ways, as pastors and missionaries have invested in you and to you—but I would say currently, as you are here, you are seated in seats that others could be seated in. There are 16 million Southern Baptists around this country and around this world who have paid the bulk of your expenses to be here. Not only this day, but have been doing so for decades and have been building an infrastructure and a system and all that we have here. They have invested so that people like yourselves could learn and graduate as quickly as possible to go take the gospel to the nations and go and minister for the church. So in a very real way I bear, and you bear, a stewardship to all of these many millions of Southern Baptists from times past and times present who have made all of this possible. So honor them through your testimony being represented in Christ. Jesus says in verse 8, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”

Notice also though, as we abide in him and as our passion is to bear fruit, we also will enjoy the love of the Father and the Son. Notice verses 9 and 10: “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” The point is not one of legalism, that to the degree that we abide in him we are moving in and out of the domain of his love. No. I think Martyn Lloyd-Jones helps us to understand this. He would talk of the analogy of a father walking on the beach with his child, or walking down a road with his child. There is always proximity there. He is holding the child’s hand and expressing affection to the child, but there are particular seasons of sweetness where the father may lift up the child and carry him. The father may lift up the child and love on him as they walked. I think that is what we are getting at in verses 9 and 10. Not that one moves in some formal way in or out of the love of the Father. No, we are protected and loved by him for all of eternity if we are in him. But the sweetness and the rightness and the full sense of that love we know as we draw close to him. So much so, that in verse 11 Jesus tells us that as we abide, our joy may be made full: “These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full.” Be a happy minister. Let the joy of Christ overflow from your life. We are too privileged a people not to be. As we reflect upon what we have through Christ—what we gain through him, the double call upon our lives—we have been too richly blessed not to be a happy people. We need happy warriors who are happy combatants. As you serve the cause of Christ and fight the forces of darkness—as you do so with courage, with bravery, and with conviction and as you are willing speak prophetic words that are unwelcome to a culture declining into further darkness—be able to do it with the joy of Christ in your heart. As you abide in Christ, you absolutely can.

My great concern this morning is not so much that we graduate students who do not have it right theologically. Of course, that can always happen. Some people can pass through here and study for years but still leave crooked theologically. But by-and-large, we can control that because we have a confessional conviction. I know what our faculty signs and what they teach. So, my great concern is not that you would graduate from here not being rightly trained in sound doctrine. I am concerned that some of you will flame out in a scandalous way in ministry and bring reproach on the name of Christ, and on your church, and to some extent, this school. But my most pressing concern this morning, and the one that has been dogging me in recent weeks as I think of you and think of the school is this: that just as you are here, you will learn a little and do a little, and serve a little, and do a whole lot of little things, but you would leave here less like Christ than when you came; and that instead of flaming out in ministry, you would just sort of fizzle out of ministry, and you would wake up one day so far removed from what initially drew you to ministry that you do not hardly recognize yourself.

Many years ago when I was wresting with a call to ministry in college, I had several friends—about seven or eight of us—who were similarly wresting with and seeking that call. And all of us disembarked at the same time, going to different schools and different seminaries—some Southern Baptist, and some not Southern Baptist—and then some not going at all, thinking, “I’ll go next year” or “I’ll go the next year.” And even thinking back to that group of nine or ten guys, now some fifteen or so years removed, three or four of us—depending on how you define ministry—are still in ministry, but about half are not. None of those guys have left their wives. None of those guys have committed some scandalous act that brought obvious reproach on the name of Christ. They just sort of drifted away. What once was a burning passion to serve Christ became incrementally displaced by other concerns, other cares, other things, until they just woke up one day from being in ministry, to sort of being in ministry, to kind of not being in ministry, to now being so far from it that they do not even think of themselves in their self-identification as a minister. Let that not be true of us. Let us hold a standard high of ministry and hold a standard high of preparing for ministry. And as we train our minds and give them to the glory of Christ, let us know we lead this with our hearts—hearts warmed by Christ, moved by his word, filled by his Spirit, submitted to his Lordship, overflowing with joy because of his salvation and his call.

{Prayer}

James P. Boyce’s “Three Changes in Theological Institutions” remains one of the most consequential addresses in the history of theological education and the most seminal one for Southern Baptists. As previously referenced, Boyce argued for a new seminary, established in the South, that would provide a more abundant, well-learned, and doctrinally sound ministry. As “An Abundant Ministry” noted, Boyce maintained the new seminary could facilitate a more abundant ministry through open admittance and by an English-based curriculum.

At the same time, Boyce argued the seminary not only should open its admittance to train the masses, but that it should provide the highest level of scholarship and academic training possible. Boyce, the son of one of the South’s leading financiers, Ker Boyce, received an education envied by the masses, which culminated in his theological training at Princeton Seminary. He knew first hand the potential of a more learned ministry and the promise it held for Southern Baptists.

A formal education does not make a minister, nor does a lack of formal education disqualify one. Church history is a running catalogue of preachers mightily used by God who lacked formal training. Nonetheless, Boyce’s arguments for a well-learned ministry were soundly reasoned and resonate with current needs of the church.

The Necessity of a Well Learned Ministry

Boyce presented four primary motivations for the new seminary to furnish a well-learned ministry, the first being the challenges of liberal theology. Boyce argued the Baptist seminary should be free from the theological liberalism of European, and especially German, universities. Moreover, Boyce argued seminary graduates should be equipped to rebut higher criticism, noting, “We have been dependent in great part upon the criticism of Germany for all the more learned investigations in Biblical Criticism and Exegesis, and that in the study of the development of the doctrine of the Church, as well as of its outward progress, we have been compelled to depend upon works in which much of error has been mingled with truth, owing to the defective standpoint occupied by their authors.”[1]

Second, Boyce argued it was insufficient simply to rebut Germanic thinking, but Baptists should argue from a position of scholastic strength, especially when it came to defending their own Baptist heritage.  He maintained, “The history of religious literature, and of Christian scholarship, has been a history of Baptist wrongs. We have been overlooked, ridiculed and defamed . . . Historians who have professed to write the history of the Church, have either utterly ignored the presence of those of our faith, or classed them among fanatics and heretics.”[2]

Third, Boyce argued a well-learned ministry was necessary so Baptist distinctives could be defended and preserved. “The Baptists in the past have been entirely too indifferent to the position they occupy. They have depended too much upon the known strength of their principles, and the ease with which from Scripture they can defend them,” Boyce noted.[3] He further contended Baptists should bring the full measure of scholarship to bear in order to clarify and defend their principles, thus strengthening Baptist identity. “We owe a change to ourselves—as Christians, bound to show an adequate reason for the differences between us and others . . .”[4]

Fourth, Boyce argued for a well-learned ministry in order to fulfill the Great Commission: “The results of past Missionary efforts, appears to indicate that we, like the Apostles, must adopt the system of home laborers, if we would evangelize the world. We must get natives to proclaim the glad tidings of salvation. The men whom we send forth to Missionary stations, must then be qualified to instruct the native preachers in all elements of Theological Education.”[5]  According to Boyce, this especially encompassed linguistic training and an ability to refute the Koran and engage the followers of Mohammad. Boyce argued that when an institution of excellence arises “learning will abound among us. The world will be subdued to Christ. The principles dear to our hearts will universally prevail.”[6]

A Well-Learned Ministry for Today

The call to serve Christ is a call to give our best energies, including our intellectual efforts, in gospel service. The noetic consequences of the fall have tainted every mind, therefore it must be renewed daily by the Spirit and the Word. At the same time, a mind set apart to God’s glory can strengthen and serve the church in several ways.

First, the well-learned minister will not only avoid errant doctrine and faulty interpretive methodologies, but also rightly exegete the Scriptures, preach the Word, defend the faith, and strengthen the church. Therefore it behooves the churches, and the seminaries they own, to expect the highest level of theological education—not for the accolades of men or the applause of professional academic societies—but for the health of the church. The church needs a generation of ministers with minds sharpened to confront the culture with biblical truth, exposit the Scriptures with confidence and accuracy, and preserve and pass on the faith to posterity. It takes a well-learned minister to bring the “whole counsel of God” to bear on a local church.

Second, as in Boyce’s day, the Baptist tradition still needs our defense and advocacy. Not out of pride do we defend our own tradition, but in order to preserve rightly our legacy, honor our Baptist forebears, and advocate for what we believe to be clear biblical teaching, especially as it relates to believer’s baptism by immersion. Believer’s baptism may not be the most important Christian doctrine, but it’s not the least important either, and it merits our defense and advocacy.

Third, as in Boyce’s day, a well-learned ministry is needed to strengthen our own Southern Baptist identity. One of the most encouraging trends of the past decade has been the emergence of conferences and movements that have facilitated partnership and shared encouragement.  We should celebrate and happily join gatherings such as Together for the Gospel and The Gospel Coalition, yet in so doing let us not diminish our own Baptist identity or compromise our own Baptist distinctives. As Southern Baptists, we should have the denominational self-confidence to link arms with those of similar faith for mutual edification and to fulfill the Great Commission, but we should do so without minimizing our own Southern Baptist identity. This balance can be maintained, but we must be intentional about maintaining it.

Fourth, the call of the Great Commission necessitates we produce a well-learned ministry. Domestically, a well-learned ministry is needed to reach the skeptic, evangelize university campuses, and confront the new atheism. Internationally, with more than 3,000 unreached people groups, translation needs remain. Moreover, we must train up a generation of missionaries able to deconstruct other belief systems and equipped to reason from the Scriptures when they encounter the “men of Athens.”

Conclusion

Boyce compellingly argued a seminary can maintain a breadth of enrollment all the while simultaneously achieving the highest levels of scholarly accomplishment and academic preparation. This is a commitment worth renewing and achieving in the 21^st century.

The Southern Baptist Convention is not a denomination of elites, nor should we set out to be one. We are a I Corinthians 1 people, with “not many wise according to worldly standards, not many noble, nor many mighty.”[7] We are people of the gospel and of the Word, who willingly are counted by the world as fools for Christ’s sake.  Yet, that doesn’t mitigate our responsibility to “always be ready give a defense, an account for the hope that is within us.”[8] This was Boyce’s vision for theological education and it must be our vision to renew and strengthen.

For those acquainted with Southern Baptist history, the name James P. Boyce is synonymous with theological education. Boyce championed the founding of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and convincingly prescribed its academic program in his “Three Changes in Theological Institutions.” Boyce’s vision for theological education was most immediately implemented and historically captured through Southern Seminary, but his “Three Changes” continues to influence Southern Baptist theological education, and it merits renewed attention.

As previously outlined, Boyce’s “Three Changes in Theological Institutions” called for a more abundant ministry, a learned ministry, and a doctrinally sound ministry. First and foremost, Boyce argued that an inadequate supply of ministers hindered the church and undermined the Great Commission, leading him to begin “Three Changes” with an impassioned call for a more abundant ministry.

An Abundant Ministry in Boyce’s Day

While acknowledging the sovereignty of God in calling one to ministry and the local church’s responsibility to affirm that call, Boyce nonetheless argued that the principle cause for a shortage of ministers was the failure to train them.[1] According to Boyce, a new and rightly structured seminary could ameliorate the two primary factors that precipitated this shortage of ministers. First, in Boyce’s day the standard admissions requirements into theological institutions included a classical education, which disqualified many would-be students who enjoyed no such prior education.

Second, classical education encompassed proficiency in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. While this expected linguistic proficiency ensured the theological institution could base its curriculum on the original languages, it both formally and functionally precluded all potential students lacking such academic preparation. Interestingly, though seminaries and divinity schools held to the highest academic standards of admittance, Baptist churches routinely ordained men to ministry with little or no formal training, revealing a chasm between the expectations of the academy and the church.

These two factors led Boyce to conclude, “The consequences have been, that the number of those who have felt themselves called of God to the ministry, has been disproportioned to the wants of the churches; and of that number but a very small proportion have entered it with a proper preparation for even common usefulness.”[2]

Boyce’s Proposed Remedies

To supply a more abundant ministry, Boyce proposed two remedies. First, he argued a new seminary should accept applicants regardless of their previous level of academic training. Second, in order to facilitate this shift in acceptance and to train more ministers, Boyce contended the curriculum should be based on the English Bible, not Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—a revolutionary paradigm shift for theological education.

Though these students may not be able to take more advanced courses or attain advanced degrees, at least some measure of theological equipping would be theirs. Anticipating that critics would argue a move to full acceptance and to an English-based curriculum would obviate the need for theological education, Boyce rebutted, “In adopting this change, we are so far from saying that education is unnecessary, that we proclaim its absolute necessity.”[3]

An Abundant Ministry for Today

The need for a more abundant ministry still exists today. Demographics reveal an aging pastorate, with churches looking for a new generation of pastors to take the ministerial baton. Additionally, the International Mission Board has mobilized itself to take the gospel to the world’s remaining unreached people groups and the North American Mission Board aims to plant 15,000 churches over the next decade. There does not currently appear to be enough ministers in the pipeline to fill these needs.

Moreover, the seminary labors with the churches under a Romans 10 mandate to preach the gospel to all people so they may hear and believe. Therefore, we must ask, “How can the seminary serve the churches by providing a more abundant ministry today?”

First, the seminary must lend its support to the calling out of ministers. To be sure, the seminary is dependent upon the churches for the quantity and quality of students they receive; nonetheless, the seminary is more than a mere bystander. Often students arrive on campus with a generic sense of call, but with little prior shepherding as to what all that call means. They arrive with wax noses, so to speak, and the seminary must encourage them toward serving the church, especially toward the pastorate and ministries of preaching and teaching God’s Word, both domestically and internationally as missionaries.

Second, the seminary should strengthen its undergraduate program. As in Boyce’s day, many are called to ministry later in life with little or no post-high school academic preparation. The undergraduate program enables a seminary to accept virtually anyone desiring ministry training. Dual major offerings, with one degree in biblical or ministerial studies and the other degree in a secular field, are also key. In that many overseas missionaries serve from a business or professional platform and that the majority of stateside pastors are bi-vocational, offering dual majors is a significant ministry advance, and one to which a growing number of students are availing themselves.

Third, the seminary must strive to keep tuition as low as possible. Students often arrive with previously incurred indebtedness, and, more than likely, they will graduate to serve in ministry contexts where their capacity to pay back debt will be limited. Additionally, lower tuition enables students to pare back their employment responsibilities, thus permitting them to more quickly graduate and be deployed for ministerial service. Accomplishing lower tuition is largely out of the seminary’s direct control, as it is dependent on the Cooperative Program for revenue and is inescapably tethered to the escalating costs of higher education.

Fourth, when students cannot come to seminary, the seminary should do its best to go to them, especially through online education. To be sure, nothing can replace life-on-life ministry training in the context of a seminary community, but such is not accessible to all. Boyce’s vision for educating as many ministers as possible and as thoroughly as possible not only permits the use of online technologies, but demands it.

Conclusion

To attain a more abundant ministry, we need not only Boyce’s theory, but also his passion.  As we possess it, we will long for the church to be blessed and the gospel advanced through a more abundant ministry. As we see the fruits of our labors, perhaps we will exclaim as Boyce did, “Oh! Were there ever a time when we would expect that God would answer the prayers of his Churches and over flood the land and the world with a Ministry adequate to uphold his cause in every locality, it should seem to be now—when the multiplication a thousand fold of the laborers will still leave an abundant work for each; but now, alas! Now, when our Churches at home are not adequately supplied; when dark and destitute places are found in the most favored portions of our own land; when the Heathen are at our very doors, and the cry is help, help, and there is no help, because there are not laborers enough to meet the wants immediately around us.”[4]