This year Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, finished the academic year with 600 students enrolled in Spanish-language degree programs, a 30% year-over-year increase.
“I want you to know that Southwestern Seminary is doing more to become a bilingual, bicultural institution to help train leaders in English and español who will be able to connect all people to Jesus Christ,” said Adam W. Greenway, SWBTS president, in his report to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting on June 15.
The week before his report the seminary also announced the launch of a revamped alumni association that offers pathways for continuing education and new ways for alumni to stay connected to SWBTS.
“We have the largest alumni network of a Southern Baptist seminary, with over 41,000 living alumni,” Greenway said. “And we want you to know you are always welcome back home under the dome.”
‘The gold standard’
Over the past three years, SWBTS has renewed its commitment “to the primacy of the master of divinity within our academic ecosystem as the gold standard for training pastors for a lifetime of faithful ministry service,” Greenway said.
He noted he was pleased to report that SWBTS had a book available that he had promised at last year’s SBC annual meeting — a book about the authority and sufficiency of Scripture.
The book featured SWBTS faculty and was coedited by Greenway and David Dockery, distinguished professor of theology at SWBTS. Greenway said he hoped it would help to “explain and to apply the richness of our convictions about Scripture to every aspect of life and ministry.”
“Many of you have heard me say often that it is a new day on seminary hill,” he said. “There is a renewed dedication to the best of Christian scholarship and academic vigor in the classroom. There is a refreshed spirit of service pouring out from our campus by faculty and students alike. And there is a redoubled effort of life-on-life discipleship throughout our seminary community.”
These commitments aren’t new, Greenway said. They are the same commitments that have characterized SWBTS since it was chartered in 1908.
“We remain faithful to confessional fidelity, committed to the Great Commission and dedicated to denominational cooperation, and we remain unwavering in a high view of Scripture as God’s inerrant, infallible, authoritative and sufficient Word,” he said.
After the morning session, SWBTS alumni and friends gathered for a luncheon where Greenway honored Jeff Iorg, president of Gateway Seminary in Ontario, California, and Rear Admiral Phillip “Endel” Lee, a member of Cottage Hill Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, as distinguished alumni.
View photos from this business session of the Annual Meeting here.
To see more photos from the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention in Anaheim, click here.
For more stories from the 2022 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, visit thebaptistpaper.org/sbc2022.
