Never in one room have so many been gathered to which one man owed so much. I am honored by your presence; I have been humbled by kind words said to me and of me in recent days and on this day.

I am deeply honored by the participants in the inaugural events. Most especially, Drs. Tom Elliff and David Dockery, thank you. I am especially grateful for the keynote speaker, Dr. Al Mohler. One I have known as a friend, mentor, colleague, president, and who apart from my family, is more responsible than any other person on earth for me being here today.

I am gratified by the presence of my family: parents who have lovingly supported me my whole life, and two brothers who in adulthood remain among my closest friends. Beyond family, there are too many friends to name, but know Karen and I love you, appreciate you, and thank God for you.

To the Midwestern Seminary community, thank you for so warmly receiving us, honoring us, serving with us, and believing in me and in our future together in service of the church. I am daily honored to serve as your president.

Most of all, my dear wife, Karen, who lovingly—and tirelessly—supports me daily; and five children—Anne-Marie, Caroline, William, Alden and Elizabeth—who bring me more joy than one heart can hold. Thank you. God has blessed me beyond measure. I am an unworthy recipient of a relentlessly kind providence, and, as the psalmist said, “the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, and my cup overfloweth.”

Though my heart is full, today my words shall be concise. I want to focus our attention, briefly, this morning on the topic to which I have been focusing Midwestern Seminary’s attention since the day of my election, and to which I shall increasingly focus it every day going forward—the church of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Indeed, our vision is full, yet simple: we exist For the Church. Our stewardship is rooted in the biblical convictions that Christ died for his church, is the head of his church, promised to build his church, gifts followers to serve his church, is calling out pastors, teachers and evangelists to minister to his church, issued his Great Commission to expand his church, and shall one day return for his church.

Moreover, the urgency of Midwestern Seminary’s vision to exist For the Church is amplified by the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention consists of some 45,000 local churches that need pastors and ministers to shepherd congregations and to equip the members gathered therein, and because we are a Great Commission people deploying pastors, ministers, and missionaries globally to reach the world for Christ.

To our watching denomination I say, this day a man has been installed that loves the churches of this convention. He resolves to serve, in both letter and in spirit, in good faith with the churches of this convention and welcomes the oversight and accountability the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention exercise over this seminary; this seminary they own.

My vision, and the vision for Midwestern Seminary, is to serve the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. We happily welcome students from beyond this convention, and we will happily deploy graduates beyond it as well. We do not train students only for the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, but we unashamedly train students intentionally and especially for the churches of this denomination. We bear a moral stewardship to our Southern Baptist forebears and a contemporary stewardship of the same to focus and calibrate our instructional efforts and academic programs to train pastors, ministers, and missionaries especially for Southern Baptist churches. “Southern Baptist” is a label we wear proudly, colors we fly boldly, and a constituency we shall serve humbly.

In a very real sense, Midwestern Seminary’s identity and vision to exist For the Church was established in Matthew 16, underscored with urgency in Romans 10, mandated and expounded upon in Ephesians 4, denominationally conceptualized in the 1850s, institutionally realized in 1957 and, today, in our midst, is being renewed again and declared once more. We exist For the Church.

In leading this seminary, I am not holding emergency strategy sessions to determine who we should be. We are not enduring sleepless nights attempting to find our identity. Donors are not being polled, trustee whip-counts are not being taken, student focus groups are not being conducted, nor are marketing agencies being consulted to help us determine our market niche, our identity.

On the contrary, to be a seminary is to be a pre-committed entity. We look to the Scriptures for our purpose and as we do, we realize we must exist For the Church. Christ has promised to build his church, not his seminary, and Christ’s jurisdiction and headship over his church shall define this seminary’s rationale and will drive its mission.

Midwestern Seminary’s resolve to serve the church is formal, structural, and systemic, but it also is attitudinal. Our posture toward the churches we serve will be one of deference. We do not portend to know the needs of the churches we serve better than the churches know their own needs. Furthermore, our role is neither to prod nor drag churches, but to serve them. This seminary does not sit in judgment of the church; rather, the church sits in judgment of this seminary.

At the very heart of Midwestern Seminary’s call to serve the church is to abide under an Ephesians 4 mandate, wherein the apostle reminded the church at Ephesus, “He [Christ] gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.” In a sense, the specified and enduring offices of Ephesians 4—evangelists, pastors, and teachers—are tangible and perennial indicators of Christ’s promise in Matthew 16, to build his church.

Therefore, this seminary will make priority one to be strengthening the preaching and teaching capabilities of the ministers it trains. So goes the pulpit, so goes the church; and so goes these offices, so goes the equipping of the saints for the service of the church, the progress of the gospel, and the fulfilling of the Great Commission. Therefore, we unapologetically bend our resources and energies to train pastors, ministers, teachers, and evangelists, and we purpose to conceptualize and re-conceptualize how other, more auxiliary ministerial roles and responsibilities might be configured within an Ephesians 4 template.

Moreover, I understand the Southern Baptist Convention’s central and irreducible expectation for us is to train pastors and missionaries for the church. After all, in its most distilled form, this is precisely what our convention is—a confederation of churches, with pastors (and often no other vocational ministers), partnering to win the world for Christ by collectively funding and sending missionaries abroad. These are the two irreducible components of our denomination and the two irreducible positions for which the seminary must equip. We can do more; we shall do no less.

Looking to denominational demographics accentuates the need to train pastors and missionaries for the church. A dearth of pastors looms on the horizon and, in a sense, is already here. If churches do not call out pastors and seminaries do not train them, from whence will they come? After all, we minister under a Pauline injunction. “‘Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things.’” Our love for the lost, for the nations, for the gospel, and the spreading thereof through the fulfilling of the Great Commission heightens our urgency to train pastors, teachers, and evangelists.

Let us be clear—to be for the church does not mean we exist to train church theorists, church critics, or hypothetical church servants. The call to be for the church is not a call to graduate men and women who spend their lives assessing, evaluating, scrutinizing, and drafting stodgy position papers about the health—or lack of health—of the church. For a credentialed ecclesiastical critic doth not a servant of the church make.

No, we aspire for something different, something more, and something altogether better, and we have a model of virtue to which we shall look. Indeed, it is altogether fitting, right, and even poetic that we reassert our commitment to exist For the Church in this time and place. In the long and storied history of Christ’s church, never has this ambition to serve the church been more embodied than in the “Prince of Preachers” himself—Charles Haddon Spurgeon, of whom Midwestern Seminary is an heir and steward. Midwestern Seminary owns Spurgeon’s library. We possess his desk. We possess much of Spurgeon’s sermon notes, correspondence, copious notations, Spurgeon’s figurine and figurines of Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s paintings and paintings of Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s pictures and pictures of Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s ornamentations, accouterments, and replicated communion table, as well as Spurgeon’s pulpit replicated and a replica of Spurgeon’s replicated pulpit.

Most importantly of all, though, we possess not merely Spurgeon’s library and artifacts, but we declare today we also possess his convictions. We possess not only Spurgeon’s legacy, but his spirit as well, and we intend to demonstrate his determination to give our lives, as he gave his, For the Church. Therefore, as sons and daughters of Spurgeon, Midwestern Seminary is uniquely positioned, and has been granted by God a singular opportunity, to own and demonstrate Spurgeon’s legacy of ministering for the church.

In service For the Church, we aim to graduate students who stand for truth in the midst of our own downgrade controversies, who preach the Word amidst our own generation of those aspiring the tickling of their ears, who have an evangelical and evangelistic fervor, as Spurgeon, in our own malaise of gospel and Great Commission apathy, and who will tend the flock of God with relentless self-sacrifice, as did Spurgeon.

What if God saw fit—to not only entrust us with the Spurgeon library and legacy, as he has, but to raise up through Midwestern Seminary a generation of Spurgeonesque pastors, teachers, and evangelists who give their lives for the church. Would to God it be so.

For the Church—this is the vision that called me to this place. It is the vision that is being renewed and is reverberating across this campus. It is the vision that we, with appropriate institutional self-confidence, are projecting across this denomination and beyond. We are confident because Christ is building his church, and in as much as we are faithful to his church, he will be faithful to us.

Under the auspices of this vision, we intend to bear any burden, pay any price, endure any hardship, seize any opportunity, launch any initiative, and embark on any effort to strengthen our claim and fulfill our mission to be the seminary For the Church.

Therefore, I invite every member of this seminary community, accomplished faculty, devoted staff, and ministers-in-training to renew ourselves once again, to pledge, as it were, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor—For the Church.

To this denomination, and to brothers and sisters of like-faith beyond this denomination, I say join us, hope the best for us, believe the best about us, and expect the best from us. Pray for us, partner with us, support us, send us your men and women to train for ministry, stand with us in solidarity of spirit, shared conviction and gospel aspiration; and, without guile, I say, hold us accountable. Hold us accountable to our denominational, confessional, and missiological commitments so that we might rightly exist For the Church.

Therefore, to those within the sound of my voice, as we depart to minister For the Church, let us resolve with the one to whom this institution looks, Charles Spurgeon, who reflected, “As long as there is breath in our bodies, let us serve Christ; as long as we can think, as long as we can speak, as long as we can work, let us even serve him with our last gasp; and, if it be possible, let us try to set some work going that will glorify him when we are dead and gone. Let us scatter some seed that may spring up when we are sleeping beneath the hillock in the cemetery.”

As with Spurgeon, let us live and minister for Christ, for the gospel, and for the Great Commission. Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, let us now go forth to live and minister For the Church.

This week at jasonkallen.com I will be releasing a series of articles related to my inauguration as the fifth president of Midwestern Seminary. Today I am posting the script of my inaugural charge and investiture, which is a solemn pledge that I will make to the Midwestern Seminary Board of Trustees, who serve on behalf of the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, and in the presence of the gathered witnesses at my inauguration service. Each aspect of the charge relates to my role as president of Midwestern Seminary, the character of life that must accompany one serving in such a role, and the vision and mission of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to exist For the Church.

Inaugural Charge

1. Do you confess that you have repented of your sins, are trusting in Jesus Christ alone as your Savior, have been baptized in him by immersion, and are endeavoring to live for him as your Lord?

2. Do you resolve to live your life as a faithful gospel minister, above reproach, and in accordance with I Timothy 3:1–7?

3. Do you resolve to lead, serve, live & minister as president of Midwestern Seminary in a manner that honors the name of Christ and that helps fulfill his Great Commission?

4. Do you believe in accordance with and not contrary to the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, publicly affirm it without hesitation or mental reservation, and pledge to proclaim and defend it, especially within the academic program of Midwestern Seminary?

5. Do you pledge to keep faith with the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, in both the letter and spirit of their expectations?

6. Do you pledge to give sacrificially of yourself to build Midwestern Seminary as an institution that exists For the Church and to train pastors, teachers and evangelists accordingly?

7. Do you pledge to guard your life and your doctrine, be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, and to fulfill your ministry as president of Midwestern Seminary?

Dr. Allen, I charge you these things in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom; therefore do you, by the grace of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit & in the presence of these many witnesses solemnly submit to and pledge to keep this inaugural charge?

Investiture into the Office of the Presidency

Dr. Allen, having been elected by the Board of Trustees of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary & College Board of Trustees as the 5th president of the same, and having now received and affirmed your inaugural charge; as chairman, and on behalf of, the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Board of Trustees, and in representation of more than 45,000 churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, I now hereby invest and install you in the office of the president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary & College with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities appertaining thereto.

Presentation of Presidential Medallion

Though no longer a Kentucky Baptist, I spent more than a decade serving Southern Baptist churches within the commonwealth. Over the past decade, I have watched with great appreciation as the Kentucky Baptist Convention has modeled winsome collaborative work, initiated their own Great Commission Resurgence Task Force and implemented its recommendations, and renewed their emphasis on serving the church by strengthening the ministries of the churches within the convention. Most especially, I have admired the leadership coming from the executive director’s office, formerly by Dr. Bill Mackey and now by Dr. Paul Chitwood. In many ways, the KBC has proven to be a model state convention in their collective witness for Christ and collaborative ministry efforts.

In a step of Christian statesmanship, Chitwood recently announced forthcoming meetings between the KBC and Campbellsville University. These meetings were deemed necessary in light of a recent contract non-renewal by the Campbellsville University administration, and the ensuing concerns and accusations that decision promulgated. The stated purpose of the meetings is not to probe the personnel decision, but to assess the ongoing compatibility of the two entities.

I have watched with piqued interest the circumstances surrounding Campbellsville and the KBC. I deeply appreciate the work of the KBC and, as a Southern Baptist educator, I bear a broader interest and responsibility, as all Southern Baptists do. Furthermore, in some ways, the scenario playing out between Campbellsville and the KBC intersects with topics of great concern to me, which I am currently addressing at jasonkallen.com in my For the Church: Theological Education, the SBC & the Future of Midwestern Seminary series. Therefore, offered herewith is something of a letter to Kentucky Baptists, submitted by a friend of Kentucky Baptists.

Like most every other onlooker, I am not privy to the personnel circumstances at Campbellsville University, nor should I be. However, in fairness to Campbellsville, one should note that declining to renew a contract is not necessarily tantamount to dismissal. In fact, factors beyond the professor, including program sustainability, curricular revisions, and budgetary and missiological concerns, often prompt non-renewal. Yet, if the refusal to renew the contract proves indicative of broader doctrinal dissonance between Campbellsville and the churches of the KBC, at least five considerations must be kept in mind:

First, when representatives of the KBC meet with representatives of Campbellsville University, they do not come to the table as negotiating equals. The former has funded, governs, and holds accountable the latter by approving their trustees. The posture of both should be one of openness and respect, but the KBC is not the supplicant. Rather, Campbellsville should eschew any inclination toward recalcitrance or obfuscation toward the churches of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, and treat their representatives with openness, cordiality, and deference.

Second, when representatives of the KBC enter the room, their Baptist forebears enter with them. This generation of Kentucky Baptists owes it to each generation prior to honor their stewardship and sacrifice for Campbellsville University. May deliberations honor not only present Kentucky Baptists, but may they honor those who throughout the decades have given their blood, toil, tears, sweat—and, yes, money—to Campbellsville. In a very real sense, this generation of Kentucky Baptists bears a fiduciary and ethical responsibility to “guard that which has been entrusted to them.”

Third, representatives of the KBC represent not only preceding generations, but also their posterity. Typically, when a conflagration occurs between an institution and their governing denomination, attention immediately goes to valuations of bricks and mortar and the size of the endowment. These concerns are not irrelevant, but neither are they paramount. The stewardship is about worldview, about the Word of God, about the gospel, about doctrinal faithfulness, about the Great Commission, and about how these beliefs and values will be instilled in succeeding generations.

Fourth, when Baptist colleges reference the relatively small amount the Cooperative Program currently contributes to their budget (in the case of Campbellsville, approximately 2%), they state an irrelevant fact and make a potentially misleading insinuation. The issue is not merely present funding, but past funding and, more importantly, present operational accountability. This operational accountability is principle and perennial, not seasonal or conditional, based upon the institution’s current need of those funds.

Fifth, every institution that in one way or another serves or is accountable to the church, be it a seminary or a state college, should assume a posture of deference and welcomed accountability. Kentucky Baptists are not morally obligated to investigate and demonstrate the doctrinal faithfulness of Campbellsville University. Rather, Campbellsville, and any other church-governed entity, bears the moral responsibility to demonstrate, prima facie, they are operating in good faith with those churches. If cleavage has occurred between Campbellsville and the KBC, it is Campbellsville’s moral responsibility to adjust accordingly.

We need to prayerfully await the outcome of the forthcoming meetings and, in the meantime, hope and believe the best. As we watch, I believe that Southern Baptists beyond the commonwealth should have their eye on this situation as well. The stakes are high, and there are ramifications for all of us. In a very real sense, we all are Kentucky Baptists now.

Being a seminary president means you receive mail, and lots of it. Publications from every sector of life flood my office on a daily basis. I enjoy perusing many of these materials, especially those related to theological education. Usually, I am alternately amused and frightened by much of what I read, as each publication demonstrates how unbiblical much of contemporary theological education is in America today.

One such magazine especially caught my attention in recent months. The publication, entitled Mosaic, is the institutional magazine published by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Institutional magazines such as this are typically little more than puff pieces, meant to update the school’s constituency on campus happenings, positive institutional developments, and to present the school’s mission and achievements in a winsome manner.

Against this backdrop, one of Mosaic’s featured stories from its fall 2012 edition stopped me in my tracks. The article, “Extending the Gift of Welcome to All: LPTS Student Maurice ‘Bojangles’ Blanchard Discovers his ‘True Colors,’” highlighted Blanchard’s alternative lifestyle and ministry pursuit.

Blanchard is a practicing homosexual and alternative lifestyle advocate in the Louisville, Ky. area. He was recently ordained to ministry by his church, Highland Baptist, a church that long ago abandoned affiliation with the SBC, the Kentucky Baptist Convention and the local, Long Run Association. Blanchard leads “True Colors” at his church, a ministry created to attract members of the homosexual community.

My interest intensified when I read Blanchard’s testimony regarding his perceived call to ministry and his ensuing pursuit of theological education. Blanchard reflected on his interaction with the seminary administration and community, noting, “I didn’t go there [Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary] looking for them to say ‘You’re gay and I affirm you. I wanted to go there and hear, ‘You’re in ministry, and I affirm that,’ and I felt that from day one.”

Embedded within Blanchard’s statement is a ruinous logic. At first reading, one might find Blanchard’s dichotomy between personal lifestyle and call to ministry acceptable and even appealing, especially in the modern milieu of subjective, autonomous spirituality. A closer look, however, reminds us that the New Testament does not proffer this option. To be called to ministry, one must possess a lifestyle that passes scriptural muster, for God’s Holy Spirit does not contradict God’s Holy Word, and vice versa.

Indeed, I Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:6–9 make clear that God’s standard for ministry is high. The threshold is high because the office is high. The office is high because we serve a high God who guards the glory of His name and His church.

The point is not so much that we sit in judgment of Blanchard, or anyone else pursuing ministry. Rather, the point is that the Word of God judges us all. Sadly, one need not look to non-evangelical entities to find confusion pertaining to the call to ministry. Evangelical churches often exhibit ambiguity and contradiction surrounding the call to ministry and the character marks that are to accompany it.

I Timothy 3:1–7 offers a clear and nonnegotiable list of character qualifications for the gospel ministry. This list is prescriptive, not descriptive; it is regulative, not suggestive. To be sure, in ministry it is helpful to be winsome and eloquent; furthermore, it never hurts to possess a magnetic personality. Yet, before one should look for these secondary—and tertiary—desires, one must first meet the qualifications of I Timothy 3.

What is more, the qualifications for ministry enumerated in I Timothy 3:1–7 do not simply represent a one-time threshold to cross. Rather, it is a lifestyle to be maintained, a character to be cultivated, and an ongoing accountability to God’s Word and God’s people. One’s call to ministry is inextricably linked to one’s biblical character. The two cannot—and must not—be decoupled.

One need not be perfect to be a minister, but one does have to be above reproach. Clearly, the point is not perfection. If that were the case, then a qualified seminary student—or seminary president—could not be found. The point is that God’s call to ministry on a person’s life corresponds with the affirmation of the people of God and the approbation of God’s Word. A church that rejects the scriptural qualifications for ministry doth not a biblical ordination make.

My heart harbors no ill feeling toward Mr. Blanchard. Rather my heart carries grief for him, his church, and those to whom he ministers. He is a sinner, as am I. I am, however, deeply grieved by the moral and ministerial confusion he exhibits.

The tragedy in the story of Mr. Blanchard is not that it is one more incremental step toward the full normalization of homosexuality in our culture. The tragedy is that an erstwhile minister, who lives in rebellion against God’s moral and ministerial standards, bears false witness about the nature of the church, the transformative power of the gospel, and the biblical expectation of ministers. In so doing, he tarnishes the glory of Christ. Whether it is by means of an aberrant lifestyle or the display of more acceptable and domesticated sins, any attempt to separate a call to ministry from godly character is a division that cannot be made. What God hath joined together, who are we to separate?

Yet Blanchard’s story is more than an article to be lamented; it is a sober reminder for all pursuing ministry. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “Pay attention to your life and to your doctrine, as you do you will ensure salvation for yourself and those who hear you.”

A paradox, G.K. Chesterton quipped, is “a truth standing on its head, waving its legs to get our attention.” In the Bible, such paradoxes abound. Paradoxically, Jesus is both God and man; and, paradoxically, the Bible was given by both human inscription and divine inspiration. One such paradox, or seemingly contradictory truth, is rooted in the gospel itself – the gospel message is simple, yet profound.

The gospel is a simple message. Simple enough to be comprehended by a child, understood by the illiterate, and conveyed by those lacking formal education. In fact, at times in the New Testament the Apostle Paul, an educated man, seems to revel in the gospel’s relative simplicity. To the church at Corinth, he chided the Jews who desired authenticating signs and Greeks who searched for wisdom. On the contrary, to the Corinthian believers Paul purposed to “know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.”

At the same time, the gospel is also a profound message. Paul, the church’s great missionary-evangelist, was also the church’s most accomplished theologian. Paul penned some 13 New Testament letters, explaining and applying the gospel.  Moreover, the Pauline epistles both insist and assume believers to be students of Scripture, equipped and equipping others to defend the faith. In many ways, the New Testament as a whole is one large project in documenting, defining, and defending the gospel.

One need not look back to the first century church to find this gospel paradox. In the 21^st century, just like the first century, the gospel message – the simple gospel message – still saves. Yet the 21^st century also brings with it a season of unique evangelistic challenge. Prior generations of Christians often had the luxury of presenting the gospel in a cultural context of shared presuppositions – even among the lost – concerning the authority of Scripture, the truthfulness of the gospel, and the realities of heaven and hell. In past generations, the great enemy of the gospel was frequently perceived as apathy among unbelievers, and much of evangelism was oriented toward persuading the hearers to respond to the gospel message they knew and acknowledged but had not yet personally embraced. Evangelism focused more on exhortation to believe the gospel than an explanation of the gospel.

Such is not the case now.  Contemporary believers can no more assume modern man is predisposed to believe an ancient gospel message than we can assume a modern man would be predisposed to believe in ancient medicine.  Therefore, when it comes to explaining the gospel less may be more, except when less is not enough. God’s people must not settle for only a rudimentary knowledge of God’s saving message. Rather, we must have a robust and confident grasp of God’s Word and be ready to field the questions of modern man. In every sense of the expression, we must be New Testament believers, ready to give an answer for the hope that resides within us.

In Paul’s day and in ours, the gospel is indeed a paradox. In its own way, to paraphrase Chesterton, the gospel stands on its head, waves its legs and demands our attention. This is a paradox worth embracing, celebrating, and proclaiming.