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.

In 1963, Southern Baptists convened in Kansas City, Mo., and adopted the first-ever revision of the Baptist Faith & Message. Like the first BF&M—whose committee was chaired by E. Y. Mullins and adopted in 1925; and the most recent iteration, whose committee was chaired by Adrian Rogers and approved in 2000—each issuance of the BF&M occurred against the backdrop of denominational controversy.

The various debates prompting revision of the BF&M have all been remarkably similar; each pertained to the truthfulness and trustworthiness of Scripture. In 1925, it was evolutionary theory; in 1963, it was Ralph Elliott’s The Message of Genesis; and in 2000, it was “mopping up” after the Conservative Resurgence. Now, since 50 years have passed—and especially since Midwestern Seminary was ground zero for the Elliott Controversy—it is fitting to revisit these events and draw contemporary lessons, as we will do in our chapel service at the seminary on Wednesday, Sept. 11.

Ralph Elliott & The Message of Genesis

The presenting issue that caused Southern Baptists to revisit the BF&M was Ralph Elliott’s The Message of Genesis and the ensuing controversy it fomented. Elliott was the first man elected to the newly formed Midwestern Seminary’s faculty, and the first signatory to the seminary’s Articles of Faith. Though Elliott’s commentary, and the higher-critical interpretive method it demonstrated, reflected positions commonly held by other Southern Baptist seminary professors at that time, it revealed beliefs out of sync with the vast majority of Southern Baptists.[1]

To be sure, Elliott’s book was simply the match that ignited the flame. The tinder had been piling for some time, as Hershael Hobbs observed, “The book was not so much the cause as it was the occasion of the situation which developed following its publication. The climate had been forming over a period of years. But the dual fact that the book was written by a Southern Baptist seminary professor and published by the Convention’s Broadman Press formed the catalyst which precipitated the storm of protest.”[2]

A young Paul Pressler admonished then-Midwestern Seminary President Millard Berquist to dismiss Elliott and reminded him the seminary was owned by the SBC and the convention had the authority to elect—and replace—trustees. However, it was K. Owen White’s widely distributed article, “Death in the Pot,” that landed like a bombshell in Kansas City and sent shockwaves throughout the entire convention. White argued Elliott’s book was “liberalism, pure and simple,” and, if left unchecked, would bring denominational ruin.[3]

1963 Baptist Faith & Message

Berquist, along with other denominational leaders, labored to tamp out the conflagration. Nevertheless, when the messengers arrived in San Francisco for the 1962 annual convention, respected denominational leaders like Porter Routh, Albert McClelland and Herschel Hobbs thought a convention split possible.[4] To prevent schism, Routh proposed a BF&M study committee both to gauge and to codify Southern Baptist beliefs.[5]

Chaired by Hobbs, the SBC president, the BF&M review committee was comprised of the elected presidents of the various state conventions. Routh suggested that construct, and his rationale was straightforward—the best way to gauge Southern Baptist beliefs was by tasking the elected leaders of each state convention. Additionally, the committee distributed drafts of their work to pastors, seminary professors, and denominational employees to garner input and gather support. By the time the messengers convened in Kansas City, the committee unanimously presented their work and the convention responded with near unanimity as well.[6] The end product was a mildly amended BF&M, with the meaning of several of the revisions debated for decades, until finally redrafted in the BF&M, 2000.

A 50-Year Retrospective

By the time the convention met in Kansas City and adopted the revised BF&M, Midwestern Seminary had dismissed Elliott—not for heresy, but for insubordination—and the storm had essentially subsided. Yet, the larger issue of the nature of Scripture remained just under the surface, periodically rearing its head, until the epochal convulsion that began with the election of Adrian Rogers as convention president in 1979 and the ensuing Conservative Resurgence. While much is to be learned of the Elliott Controversy, at least three lessons tower above the rest.

First, history’s lessons must be remembered or they will be repeated. As George Santayana wrote in The Life of Reason, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”[7] Since the SBC’s founding in 1845, the denomination has known its share of controversy. Romanticizing past conflict comes with its own dangers, but forgetting history’s lessons comes with more.

The children of Israel, who often experienced national amnesia, can be our tutor. Their recurring pattern of blessing, then disobedience, and finally judgment, is a never-ending cycle in the Old Testament. Historical and theological amnesia, be it national or denominational, is a dangerous condition.

Second, Southern Baptists are a convictional people. If Southern Baptists were not convictional, we would not have spent so much time contesting doctrine and contending for Scripture since our founding in 1845. In the Elliott Controversy, Pressler, White, and other conservative protagonists argued in moral, convictional terms. To convictional Baptists, the Elliott Controversy was not religious sport. It was a casus belli, not only justifying confrontation—but necessitating it.

When Elliott published his The Message of Genesis, Southern Baptists might have been largely uninformed, but they were not naïve. And they certainly were not cowards. If Southern Baptists had a Just War Theory for denominational conflict, undermining Scripture would pass the test every time.

Third, it is still about the Bible. Whether it was the Toy Controversy of the 1880s, the Whitsitt Controversy of the 1890s, the Elliott Controversy of the 1960s, or the Conservative Resurgence of the 1980s, the common denominator in all of these has been, to a greater or lesser degree, the nature and authority of Scripture. This is a perennial challenge, beginning in the Garden of Eden with Satan’s question, “Hath God said?” and reappearing in every generation.

Since its earliest occurrences, liberal theology has attempted to accommodate ancient Scripture to modern man. Whether it was German theologians like Friedrich Schleiermacher and Julius Wellhausen, or Southern Baptist ones like C. H. Toy and Ralph Elliott, the effort has been to make the Bible compatible with modern science and more palatable to secular man. In fact, Berquist defended Elliott to local pastors by using this same argument. As he said to Kansas City pastor, J. T. Elliff, “J. T., we can’t hope to reach the keen minded young scientist of our day with our old stereotyped, conservative approach to the Bible.”[8]

This is the age-old effort of theological liberalism—to accommodate an ancient text to a modern man. In so doing, not only is modern man not won, but the Bible is lost.

Conclusion

This Wednesday will be an historic occasion as Midwestern Seminary revisits the drama of the Elliott Controversy and the BF&M, 1963 some 50 years later. Our motive is to learn from our past, embolden theological faithfulness in our generation, and leave a legacy of biblical fidelity and Great Commission fervor to the next.

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.

In the annals of Southern Baptist history, James P. Boyce’s position is secure. As seminal conceptualist, leading patron, theology professor, and founding president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Boyce not only built the seminary into one of the nation’s leading theological institutions, but he also forged a trajectory of ministerial training within the Southern Baptist Convention that carries forward into the 21^st century.

Though most commonly identified with Southern Seminary, Boyce must be understood not merely as the originator of Southern Baptists’ mother seminary, but as the primary architect of theological education within the Southern Baptist context. Before Boyce led Southern Seminary, he led Southern Baptists. Before he was Southern Seminary’s man, he was Southern Baptists’ man for theological education. Boyce, though dead, still speaks and his “Three Changes in Theological Institutions” merits revisiting and renewed application as Southern Baptists seek to train this generation of ministers.[1]

James P. Boyce the Man

In Boyce rested the evident signs of a kind and particular providence. His aristocratic pedigree, forceful personality, intuitive leadership abilities, keen intellect, entrepreneurial instincts, polished self-presentation, and profound sense of calling coupled with strong and clear theological convictions coalesced to produce a once-in-a-generation leader among Southern Baptists.

Boyce’s student and successor as Southern Seminary professor of systematic theology, F. H. Kerfoot reflected of his mentor, “By birth and by training a gentleman, by the grace of God a Christian, courtly and courteous in bearing, strong in convictions, chivalrous and dauntless in courage, wise and safe in counsel . . . The people trusted him and followed him where he led.”[2] Indeed, Southern Baptists did trust and follow Boyce by endorsing his vision for a centralized theological institution in the South and ultimately by electing him as convention president some nine times.

Three Changes in Theological Institutions

Baptist luminaries, including Basil Manly Sr., Basil Manly Jr., Jesse Mercer,W. B. Johnson and R. B. C. Howell, amongst others, advocated for a centralized theological institution in the South, but Boyce alone managed to gather the denomination’s attention and hold steady its imagination for a new seminary. Through sermons, presentations, and correspondence, Boyce distilled his thinking on ministerial preparation throughout the early- and mid-1850s, but no event was as significant—for Boyce or Southern Baptists—as his inaugural faculty address at Furman University on July 30, 1856. This was an address John A. Broadus would come to reference as “epoch-making in the history of theological education among Southern Baptists.”[3]

Boyce, a recently minted professor of Furman University, took the rostrum to deliver the customary address afforded a new member of the faculty. For more than two hours, Boyce summarized the best of Baptist thinking on theological education, then proposed “Three Changes in Theological Institutions,” in which he argued for an abundant ministry, a learned ministry, and an orthodox ministry.[4]

Boyce proposed his “Three Changes” with a sense of gravity, urging their implementation in near apocalyptic terms. Boyce perceived the present limitations to an abundant, learned, and doctrinally sound ministry as lamentable gospel hindrances, even evils, writing: “These changes are intended to meet evils which, in one case by the many, in the others by the few, have been already experienced, and they are suggested as furnishing ample remedies for the existing evils.”[5]

Boyce’s “Three Changes” were framed by his own experience and pedigree, but were driven by three self-evident needs of Baptists in the South—needs that have proven to be perennial—and merit revisiting by each generation of Southern Baptists.

Abiding Relevance

Why reconsider Boyce’s “Three Changes in Theological Institutions”?  The answer is far more than Southern Baptist nostalgia or denominational indebtedness to Boyce. Rather, Boyce’s “Three Changes” are relevant because they speak to current and pressing denominational needs.

Southern Baptist churches today, just as in Boyce’s day, need a more abundant ministry. Demographic trends point to a shortage of pastors and ministers for our churches. The Romans 10 mandate reminds us that the gospel must be proclaimed so that it can be believed; therefore, preachers must be sent. Consequently, it behooves the seminary to incorporate every means possible—including distance education and online delivery tools—to produce an abundant number of ministers. To be sure, only God can call the minister, and it is the local church’s role to affirm that call; but the seminary must stand ready, with every appropriate tool at its disposal, to train a sufficient number of pastors, ministers, and missionaries for our churches.

Second, like never before our churches need a learned ministry marked by pastors and ministers well-equipped to defend the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. The complexities of modern ministry necessitate we give our best energies to equipping pastors to exposit the Word of God and to reason from the Scriptures.  Encroaching secularism, cultural decay, vexing and even exotic ethical dilemmas, a pervasive doubting of biblical authority, and the new atheism all necessitate that a seminary settle for nothing less than producing learned ministers, well-grounded in the truth of Scripture and well-equipped to advocate sound doctrine.

Third, Boyce learned the necessity of confessional integrity during his time of study at Princeton, and for this generation of Southern Baptists our recent denominational history serves as an ever-present reminder for confessional integrity as well. Additionally, Boyce looked across the Atlantic to European universities and saw heterodoxy; he found the same in northern colleges and universities as well. He knew of higher education’s propensity to drift, so he argued a seminary must be tethered to a confessional statement.  This proclivity to drift theologically recurs in every generation, including ours. If we do not maintain confessional integrity, we neither deserve an abundant ministry nor will we produce a well-educated one. Confessional integrity is a timeless, non-negotiable trait of a faithful seminary.

Conclusion

The year 2013 marks the 125^th anniversary of James P. Boyce’s death, which occurred in Southern France on December 28, 1888.  Shortly thereafter, his body was returned to Louisville where he was buried in Cave Hill Cemetery. To mark his place of rest and to signify the consequence of his life and influence, a towering monument now stands and bears the inscription: “James P. Boyce, to whom, under God, the Seminary owes its existence.”

Under God, this is undeniably true—Southern Seminary owes its existence to Boyce—yet much more is truer still. Boyce founded Southern Seminary, but he also pioneered Southern Baptist theological education as a whole; and his “Three Changes in Theological Institutions” serves as a persistent template for Southern Baptist theological education.

In three subsequent essays, I will revisit each of Boyce’s proposed changes, argue for their abiding relevance, and point to present application for ministry preparation.  As I do, know that Boyce, though dead, still speaks through his “Three Changes in Theological Institutions,” and we will do well to listen.

Why young adults leave the church is one of the most vexing questions facing the church today. A 2007 LifeWay Christian Resources survey indicated that 70 percent of 18–22 year-olds stop attending church for at least one year.[1] Furthermore, Barna surveys have repeatedly shown that a majority of 20 year-olds leave church, often never to return.[2]

Citing a newly-released study by the Brookings Institution, Rachel Held Evans recently suggested, in essence, that millennials are leaving evangelical churches in search of more progressive fellowships because of dissonance with the more conservative doctrinal stances and cultural convictions of their erstwhile congregations.  Yet, it seems to reason that if compromising biblical convictions attracted millennials, then mainline denominations would be teeming with young adults. On the contrary, mainline churches are proof-positive that liberal theology does not magnetically draw young adults to church.

Causation for young adults exiting the church has been studied for decades, yet little has been accomplished by way of reversing it. As a gospel preacher, seminary president, and father of five young children, to me this is more than a theoretical concern. At risk of being overly simplistic, I want to suggest three factors that are often overlooked in this discussion.

Many Young Adults Leave the Church because They Never Joined it Spiritually

Many young adults leave the church because they were never truly converted to Christ in the first place. John the Apostle warned us “They went out from us because they were never of us; for if they had been of us, they would have no doubt continued with us.”[3] And in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus soberly warns, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my father in heaven.”[4]

In fact, this is a troubling, but recurring, theme throughout the New Testament. Jesus frequently warned of pseudo converts, most memorably in his parables of the four soils, the wheat and the tares, and the sheep and the goats. This grievous occurrence is why Paul exhorted the Corinthian church to “examine yourselves to determine whether you be in the faith.”[5]

This predicament is as old as the church itself, and it is no respecter of age. Young adults have not cornered the market on unregenerate church membership, but with so many other pressures and opportunities associated with their life stage, their exit ramp is more predictable and more pronounced. In other words, young adults are just one bloated demographic slice of an ever-present challenge within the church today: unregenerate church membership.

Many Young Adults Leave the Church because They Never Experienced it Corporately

To their own detriment, too many churches function like a confederation of para-church ministries meeting under the same roof. For instance, many young adults traveled from children’s church, to children’s ministry, to the youth group, and then to college ministry. Amazingly, many young adults spend 20-plus years in a local church with the congregation as a whole always being an ancillary group, and with their predominant religious attention focused from one of the church’s subgroups to the next.

Age-graded and targeted ministries can be healthy in as much as they undergird the life of the church and facilitate strategic discipleship and family ministry. But when they displace the central and formative place of congregational worship and corporate gatherings as a whole, they prove detrimental to both the individual and the local church. In fact, the beauty of the New Testament church is its homogeneous diversity: Jew and Gentile, young and old, rich and poor, all united by the gospel and gathered around the common ministry of the Word, the Lord’s table, prayer, and fellowship, together as the body of Christ.

There is a sweetness in God’s people, and we rob our children of experiences of God’s grace when we neglect to incorporate them into the corporate body. It is for this reason I want my children to know the saintly widow seated behind them and the contemporary adult couple seated in front of them as well as they know the children in their own classes.

When they are disconnected from the congregation, it should not surprise us that young adults, who have never known the church as a whole, are disinclined to embrace it when their age-graded group has run its course.  Do you want your children to participate in the church when they become adults? Then cultivate their participation as they travel life towards adulthood.

Many Young Adults Leave the Church because They Never Came to Love it Personally

Though the church is not perfect, it ought to be cherished, warts and all, by every member of the congregation, including our children. As parents, we cultivate this by esteeming the church—and the individuals who comprise it—before our children. As a parent, my wife and I have long since covenanted together to guard our tongues, especially before our children, about the ministers and members of the churches we have joined.

Granted, no church is perfect, and if you ever find the perfect church, don’t join it, or you’ll likely ruin it. At the same time, a spirit of criticism and sarcasm about the pastor and other members of the congregation mark the homes of too many church members. In so doing, children are hearing reason after reason why they should doubt the Word of God, not value fellowship of the saints, and be indifferent toward gathering with God’s people. When this occurs, why should young adults commit their lives, time, and resources to a pastor and group of people they have overheard their parents repeatedly denigrate?

Conclusion

Why do young adults leave the church? This is a pressing concern, but an often-misplaced question. Instead of focusing so much on why young adults leave the church, let’s focus more on how they enter the church and how they engage it along the way. And, when you show me young adults who are truly converted, have ministered and worshiped with the church as a whole, and have grown to love the people of God, I’ll show you young adults who are a lot less likely to depart the church anytime soon.