The following article, compiled by Baptist Press, includes news releases of interest from Southern Baptist seminaries including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Southern, ERLC add 2 doctoral ethics degrees
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is partnering with the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) to offer doctor of ministry and doctor of educational ministry degrees in Christian ethics, beginning with the upcoming winter semester.
Applications are being accepted for the summer semester for the degree programs to help prepare ministers to lead their church to engage the culture with the gospel.
The new degrees, which are 32 and 46-hour programs respectively, add to the doctoral program that the ERLC and Southern established last spring.
ERLC President Russell Moore said he hopes the new degree programs “will be a service to the church in raising up a corps of future leaders trained to be a gospel-focused voice in their ministry contexts on the pressing issues of the day.” Moore formerly was dean of the SBTS school of theology and senior vice president for academic administration.
Classes will be held on the campus in Louisville, Ky., as well as the ERLC’s locations in Nashville and Washington D.C. ERLC leaders Moore and Barrett Duke, vice president of public policy and research, will join with SBTS’s ethics department as instructors.
“Pastors and Christian leaders are doing ethics every day as they carry out their ministry,” said Phillip Bethancourt, executive vice president of the ERLC who also holds a faculty position at the seminary. The new degrees will help “equip a new generation of ministers to train their people to apply the gospel to all of life.”
Southeastern Theological Fellowship honors scholars at ETS
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) recognized five evangelical scholars during the Southeastern Theological Fellowship dinner at the 67th annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta in November.
The scholars, from five different colleges, universities and seminaries, received awards for excellence in research and writing and for displaying characteristics of a Great Commission scholar particularly in classroom instruction and Christian scholarship.
SEBTS provost, Bruce Ashford, who served as master of ceremonies, said the seminary sponsors the dinner “to facilitate fellowship and scholarly collaboration across the evangelical community and to award selected persons for their contributions to evangelical scholarship.”
The first four honorees were Susan Booth, professor of evangelism and missions at Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary and College; Michael Shepherd, associate professor of biblical studies at Cedarville University; Douglas Moo, professor of New Testament at Wheaton University; and Gregg Allison, professor of Christian theology at SBTS.
Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School who received the fifth award, briefly spoke on the benefit of scholarship in building up the church, emphasizing the difference between knowledge and wisdom and voicing a desire for everyone to grow in both areas.
“It was a wonderful evening,” Ashford said, “in which we had evangelical Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists together at the banquet, not only dining together, but building friendships, sharpening one another, and even in some instances conceiving of writing projects upon which they wish to collaborate.”
More than 20 SEBTS faculty and students were among several dozen individuals from Southern Baptists’ six seminaries who presented papers at the meeting in the areas of theology, biblical studies and ethics.
Midwestern theology journal focuses on ‘Preachers & Preaching’
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS) released its Fall 2015 issue of the Midwestern Journal of Theology, titled “Preachers & Preaching, Part II,” on Nov. 30, following up on Spring 2015 issue’s theme.
MBTS President Jason Allen said the journal reflects one of the seminary’s goals in serving the local church – “to provide scholarly and practical resources to enhance the gospel ministries of pastors, missionaries and ministers of God’s Word.”
Writing on the topic of preaching were Michael McMullen, MBTS professor of church history and managing editor of the journal; Jason Duesing, MBTS provost and associate professor of historical theology; Owen Strachan, associate professor of Christian theology and director of Midwestern’s Center for Theological and Cultural Engagement; Scott Gibson, Haddon W. Robinson professor of preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary; and Gregory Wills, dean of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s school of theology and professor of church history.
Titles of their articles are: McMullen, “John Williams, 1767-1825” (on the 19th-century Welsh Baptist preacher); Duesing, “Preaching against the State” (on 16th-century Anabaptists); Strachan, “The Pastor as Prophet: Christic Exposition in the Age of Audio”; Gibson, “The Landscape of the Character of Preaching”; and Wills, “The Ecclesiology of Charles. H. Spurgeon.”
The journal, which also includes seven book reviews, can be viewed in its entirety for free at the seminary’s website, mbts.edu/journal; for subscription information for the journal’s print version, call (816) 414-3745 or email [email protected].
(EDITOR’S NOTE – Compiled by Art Toalston, senior editor of Baptist Press, the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. Original authors include T. Patrick Hudson, from MBTS; Maria Estes, from SEBTS; and Bonnie M.C. Burke, from SBTS.)