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FALL 2007 THE TIE VOLUME 75, NUMBER 3
SOUTHERN
SEMINARY
The Church
without
Compromise

PRESIDENT’S JOURNAL
Compromise and Confusion
in the Churches
The absence of doctrinal precision and biblical
preaching marks the current evangelical age. Doctrine
is considered outdated by some and divisive
by others. The confessional heritage of the church
is neglected and, in some cases, seems even to
be an embarrassment to updated evangelicals.
Expository preaching — once the hallmark and
distinction of the evangelical pulpit — has been
replaced in many churches by motivational messages,
therapeutic massaging of the self, and formulas
for health, prosperity, personal integration
and celestial harmony.
Almost a century ago, J.C. Ryle, the great evangelical bishop,
warned of such diversions from truth: “I am afraid of an inward
disease which appears to be growing and spreading in all the
Churches of Christ throughout the world. That disease is a disposition
on the part of ministers to abstain from all sharply-cut
doctrine, and a distaste on the part of professing Christians for
all distinct statements of dogmatic truth.”
A century later, Ryle’s diagnosis is seen as prophetic, and
the disease is assuredly terminal. The various strains of the
truth-relativizing virus are indicated by different symptoms and
diverse signs, but the end is the same. Among the strains now
threatening the evangelical churches is the temptation to find
a halfway house between modernity and biblical truth. This is a
road that leads to disaster and away from the faith once for all
delivered to the saints.
What is our proper response to all this? Again, the words
of Ryle speak to our age: “Let no scorn of the world, let no
ridicule of smart writers, let no sneers of liberal critics, let no
secret desire to please and conciliate the public, tempt us for
one moment to leave the old paths, and drop the old practice
of enunciating doctrine — clear, distinct, well-defined and
sharply-cut doctrine — in all utterances and teachings.”
We confess that knowledge is possible, but knowledge of
spiritual things is revealed. Without the Word of God we would
know nothing of redemption, of Christ, of God’s sovereign provision
for us. We would have no true knowledge of ourselves,
of our sin, of our hopelessness but for the mercy of Christ. As
Professor R. B. Kuiper reminded his students, the most direct,
the simplest, and most honest answer to the question, “How
do you know?” is this: “The Bible tells us so.”
As Jesus reminded Peter, “Flesh and blood did not reveal
this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 16:17). So it
is with us: Our true knowledge was not revealed to us by flesh
and blood, and certainly was not discovered on our own by the
power of our own rationality and insight; it is revealed to us in
the Word of God.
For this reason, our defense of biblical inerrancy is never a
diversion or distraction from our proper task. Every aspect of
the theological task and every doctrinal issue is affected by the
answer to this fundamental question: Is the Bible the authentic,
authoritative, inspired and inerrant Word of God in written
form, and thus God’s faithful witness to Himself? For the
believing church, the answer must be yes. With the framers
of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, we affirm that
“The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total
divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made
relative to a view of truth contrary
to the Bible’s own; and such lapses
bring serious loss to both the individual
and the Church. We confess and
affirm the truthfulness of Scripture
in every respect, and we stand under
the authority of the Word of God,
never over the Word. In other words,
we come to the Scriptures, not with
a postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion,
but with a faithful hermeneutic
of submission.”
As our Lord stated concerning
the Scriptures, “Thy Word is Truth”
(John 17:17). And, as Paul wrote to
Timothy, “All Scripture is inspired by
God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, for training
in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). Made
clear in this text is the inescapable
truth that our task is to teach and to
preach this Word; to reprove, to correct
and to train in righteousness.
Should our churches return in faithfulness
to this fundamental charge,
the secular worldview would lose its
grip on the believing church.
R. Albert Mohler Jr.
President, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
page 36
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

2
CONTENTS
18
10
16
FEATURE
2 Forum:
Is the doctrine of the church really that important?
6 Membership matters
Chuck Lawless
10 Are we all wet or does Baptism matter?
Greg Wills
12 The importance of church discipline
Barry Joslin
16
18
20
21
DEPARTMENTS
Student focus: Carl Garvin
Violent attack bears Gospel fruit for Garvins
Faculty focus: Michael Haykin
Fear of death led Haykin out of Marxism and onto the life-giving
path of Christianity
Alumni focus: Travis Fleming
Southern graduate takes Gospel to New Orleans
Alumni focus: Clay Layfield
Ministering the Word through music
22 SOUTHERN SEMINARY NEWS
32 ALUMNI NEWS
News from
the lives of Southern Seminary alumni
The Southern Seminary Magazine (The TIE) (ISSN
00407232) is published four times a year by The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2825 Lexington
Road, Louisville, KY 40280, 1-800-626-5525.
Executive Editor: Lawrence A. Smith
Editors: David Roach, Peter Beck
Associate Editor: Jeff Robinson
Design Editor: Jared Hallal
Associate Design Editor: John Rogers
Contributing Writers: Chuck Lawless, Greg Wills,
Barry Joslin
Photography: John Gill
Proofreaders: Allison Parker, Callie Nolen
Fall 2007. Vol. 75, No. 3. Copyright © 2007 The
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Periodical
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Under the lordship of Jesus Christ, the mission of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
is to be totally committed to the Bible as the Word of God, to the Great Commission as our mandate, and to be a servant of
the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention by training, educating, and preparing ministers of the gospel for more faithful service.

Forum:
Is the doctrine of
the church really
that important?
page 2
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

The Southern Seminary Magazine recently
asked four Southern Seminary professors their
opinions on key issues surrounding the doctrine
of the church. Participating in this forum
are Russell D. Moore, senior vice president
for academic administration and dean of the
School of Theology; Donald Whitney; senior
associate dean of the School of Theology and
associate professor of biblical spirituality; Gregory
A. Wills, associate dean for the School of
Theology’s division of theology and tradition
and professor of church history; and Jim Orrick,
professor of literature and culture.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 3

Q: Assuming Dr. Mohler’s “theological triage” paradigm,
which separates central Christian doctrines from tertiary
issues, where does the doctrine of the church rank?
Moore: In his theological triage paradigm, first-level issues
are issues without which we cannot recognize one another as
Christians. In that sense, I think there are some very significant
divisions on the doctrine of the church in which we could
still recognize one another as Christians. For example, a godly
Methodist pastor, who preaches the Gospel and believes in the
new birth, I would be able to receive as a brother in Christ. I
probably could do door-to-door witnessing with him, but I
wouldn’t be able to plant a church with him because we would
have to decide whom to baptize and how. In that sense, many
of the issues that we typically think of in terms of the doctrine
of the church would fall into what Dr. Mohler would consider
second-level issues. But that does not mean for him or for me
that those issues are unimportant.
Wills: Some aspects of ecclesiology are primary matters, others
are secondary, still others are tertiary. All three levels deal
with matters of scriptural revelation, not mere matters of taste
or opinion.
I would propose something like this:
First-order matters of ecclesiology
would include such things as: the church
was established by Christ and is therefore
a divinely ordained institution; the church
should comprise regenerate members; the
church should practice the ordinances
of baptism and the Lord’s Supper; baptism
does not regenerate or remit sin; the
church should expel impenitent sinners.
Second-order matters of ecclesiology
would include such matters as: the form
of church government; the ordinances as
“means of grace” for sanctification; baptism
being immersion of professing believers.
These are matters of revelation, and Jesus
has given the churches stewardship over
them as precious truths and holy ordinances. To stray from
them is grave error. As a result, these are matters that tend to
divide orthodox evangelicals into denominational families.
Third-tier matters of ecclesiology include such things as: frequency
of communion; use of musical instruments; or plurality
of elders. The Scripture speaks to such matters but not with
that definiteness that would preclude toleration of disagreement
or difference in the fellowship.
Orrick: I believe ecclesiology to be a first-order issue because
local churches are the vehicles for the preservation and execution
of the Christian religion. As useful as Bible colleges and
seminaries are, the Lord Jesus established, not a seminary, but
a church, and it is the church that is the pillar and ground of
the truth. Here at Southern Seminary and Boyce College we
know that it is our business to serve the Lord through serving
His churches. If the doctrines of the Trinity, justification by faith
and Christology are “big fish” doctrines (and they are), these
big fish swim in a local church pond.
Orrick:
“The primary
concern is that we
obey Christ and
maintain the purity
of His body.”
Q: How do we counter rampant individualism in our
churches with the Bible’s insistence
that every member has a role to play in
the body?
Whitney: All reformation begins with
teaching. Christians are highly unlikely to
do what they’ve never been taught to do.
So the starting place in countering individualism
is with the faithful exposition
of Scripture. Next comes the role of leadership
in leading overloaded individual
Christians to become committed members
of the church body, the church family.
This requires a lot of thought and discussion
among leaders about how to do this
in their specific ministry context. Hebrews
10:24 comes to mind here: “And let us consider
how to stimulate one another to love
and good deeds.” It was, in part, to deal with this issue that I
wrote “Spiritual Disciplines Within the Church” about the interpersonal
spiritual disciplines we are to practice with our fellow
church members.
Moore: We must emphasize the necessity of the church. Jesus
did not die to bring individual believers into heaven with the
church as a discipleship program that’s good for them. Jesus
died to bring us into the church, where we will always be the
body of Christ. Those who hate the church in the New Testament
are those who are lost. We have to recover the sense of
the church as essential to what it means to follow Christ.
We also need to cultivate true community that transcends
the tribal badge markers of contemporary American culture. In
Ephesians 3 the apostle Paul sees the unity of Jews and Gentiles
in Christ as a sign to the principalities and powers in the
heavenly places that Jesus is Lord. In our context, we shouldn’t
have congregations that exist on the basis of church members’
race, socioeconomic class or personal preferences in music.
page 4
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

Moore:
“Your doctrine of the
church is fundamental
to what you believe
about God.”
Wills: Not all aspects of individualism are incorrect. We must
for example respond to the Gospel individually. But unscriptural
forms of individualism have grown in the past few generations.
Sinful forms of individualism tend to privilege personal
“fulfillment” and individual preference at the expense of the
good of the family or the church.
The best place to begin is to teach on the nature of the
church and the role of each member in it. Every member has a
role to play in the body, but we sometimes approach individual
gifts as sources of self-actualization and self-esteem, rather as
divinely appointed duties for the church as a body.
Q: In doing church discipline should we distinguish
between private offenses, as so many in our culture demand,
and public offenses? Where is the line?
Orrick: As a general rule, I think the discipline needs to be as public
as the offence. That being said, some private offences are public
knowledge, or will become public knowledge, and therefore
must be dealt with publicly. Furthermore, some private offences
are of such an egregious nature that they must be made public
and dealt with publicly. This is especially true when the integrity
of the Gospel or the purity of the church is at stake. While reclamation
of the disciplined person ought always to be in view in
the exercise of church discipline, I do not believe that his reclamation
is the primary concern of church discipline. Rather, the primary
concern is that we obey Christ and maintain the purity of
His body. Christ’s church is more important than any individual. I
believe that keeping this great purpose in mind will help to guide
us in dealing with those sins and situations that are not specifically
addressed in Scripture.
Whitney: While there are specific sins mentioned in the New
Testament which call for church discipline, the Bible doesn’t
give us an exhaustive list. Ultimately, any sin — public or private
— is a disciplinable offense if there is persistent unrepentance.
For even in those matters that a church would consider
relatively minor offenses, persistent unrepentance — after
repeated, loving appeals — eventually turns a minor offense
into a major one. For after awhile the real offense is no lon-
ger the original offense, but the individual’s rejection of the
church’s authority in the matter.
Wills:
The real question with the regard to church discipline
is not
whether the sin is known publicly. Adultery for example
is just
as heinous before it becomes public knowledge as after.
The question is what sins should the church take particular
notice
of through church discipline procedures. This is not an
easy question to answer, and in many cases we will not have
absolute certainty regarding our duty. But surely the church
must notice such sins as the Scriptures declare to be incompat-
ible with our profession of faith in Christ and with fellowship in
the church, as in 1 Cor 5:11; 6:9-10; Gal 5:19-21; and Eph. 5:3-5.
Q: Is
ecclesiology a doctrinal area that must be integrated
within our overall framework of theology or is it an
entirely separate issue? How do we counter the popular
argument that insists, “God is not interested in how you
worship (or govern your church). He is merely interested
that you worship?”
Moore: If that statement were true, we could dance around
golden calves. God is intensely interested in both how and
whom we worship. Your doctrine of the church is fundamental
to what you believe about God. If you don’t have a robust doctrine
of the church, it’s very difficult to understand the Trinity
because the church is modeled after the Trinity. If you don’t
have a strong view of the church, it’s very difficult to understand
the doctrine of Christ when Jesus says that He is united
to His church as a head to a body. Those who say, ‘I love Jesus.
I’m not interested in the church,’ are very similar to a husband
who would say to his wife, ‘I love you. It’s your body I can’t
stand.’ That’s not an option for Christians. For me, every doctrine
has to be understood through the grid of the church.
Orrick: Ecclesiology must be integrated within our overall framework
of theology because ecclesiology drastically affects our
understanding and practice of theology. The Lord has seen fit to
communicate His truth through the holy Scriptures, but it is the
church that has been charged with the task of proclaiming the
truth of Scripture to believers and to the world. The medium
through which something is communicated affects the message
of what is communicated. C.S. Lewis observed, “Every ideal of
style dictates not only how we should say things but what sort
of things we may say.” The second commandment (“no graven
images”) does not address the issue of whom we are to worship
— that is covered in the first commandment. The second commandment
addresses the issue of how we are to worship the one
true God. Why? Because how we worship affects our understanding
of the one whom we worship. The same thing may be asserted
with respect to church government.
Whitney: Ecclesiology should matter to us because the biblical
passages which speak of it show us that ecclesiology matters to
God.
In John 4:24 Jesus said that those who worship the Father
“must worship in spirit and truth.” Both aspects are equally
important. Acceptable worship is not only from the heart, but
it must also be offered according to the truth of Scripture.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 5

Membership
matters
page 6
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

By Chuck Lawless
As a non-believer in my early teens, I knew
nothing about church. My family did not attend
church, nor did I have any desire to do
so. When God graciously saved me, though,
He placed in my life a believer who quickly
encouraged me to join the church. I did not
yet understand the importance of the local
church, but I did know that I wanted to do
whatever God expected of me. If He required
me to join a church, I was ready to be obedient.
Only later did I realize just how important
membership in a local church is.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 7

What does the Bible say about membership?
To argue that the Bible clearly teaches local church membership
would be difficult indeed. No text indicates that believers
officially “joined” a congregation. On the other hand,
numerous texts imply that local churches at least knew who
was a part of their congregation. For example:
• Matt 18:15-17; 1 Cor 5:1, 9-13 – these and other passages
concerning church discipline indicate that the
church held members accountable and could exclude
them; if so, they must have known officially who had
been included.
• Acts 6:1-6 – a particular group of followers chose
from among themselves those who would minister to
neglected widows.
• 1 Tim 3:5; Heb 13:17; 1 Peter 5:2 – the pastoral oversight
noted in these passages assumes that shepherds
knew who belonged in their flock.
• 1 Tim 5:3 – the church apparently kept a list of widows
under their care.
• Heb 10:19-25 – those who were in the church were to
encourage each other to be faithful; thus, they must
have known who others in the church were.
At a time when church “shoppers” often attend a church for
a long time without joining, we must re-emphasize these texts. 1
Even if the Bible does not expressly mandate church membership,
the weighty evidence in that direction suggests that we
must not take membership lightly.
Why does membership matter?
Given that the values of church membership are too numerous
to be covered in this brief article, I will address five. First,
church membership is our public commitment to serve with
a specific group of believers. God places members in His body
as He wishes (1 Cor 12:18), mandating that we fulfill our calling
and responsibilities within that local body. We thus agree
through membership to use our God-given gifts alongside others
who have joined the same body. This body is so connected
that what happens to one member affects all other members
(1 Cor 12:26). By joining a local church, we affirm that we
intend to relate to other believers with this level of intimacy
and responsibility.
Second, church membership is our vow to be part of God’s
family in a local area. The picture of the church as a family
is implied in several places in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor
6:18; Eph 3:14; 1 Tim 5:1-2). As a family of God, believers are to
love, support, challenge and encourage one another. This family
is to be consistent and stable, even as our families of origin
are often falling apart. Brothers and sisters in Christ are sometimes
closer to us than those related to us by blood. In fact,
our love for one another in God’s family identifies us as followers
of Christ (John 13:34-35). Through church membership, we
officially commit ourselves to this family.
Third, church membership is our agreement to be accountable
for our Christian growth. Hebrews 10:19-25, noted above,
mandates that believers spur each other on toward love and
good deeds. Disciplinary passages in the New Testament
(e.g., Matt 18:15-17) show that the church must hold members
accountable to this righteous living. Indeed, it is through loving
confrontation from other believers that we may be restored
when “caught in wrongdoing” (Gal 6:1). Uniting with a church
is an official step to give permission for other church members
to confront us when needed — so that we might more fully
experience the joy of obedience.
Fourth, church membership is our pledge to get directly
involved in God’s work. Many church attenders have made a
habit of simply sitting in a church service, listening to a sermon
and then quickly departing for lunch. These attenders
are, in the words of Mark Dever, more “pampered consumers”
than faithful church members. 2 When we join a church,
however, we no longer have permission to sit, listen and
leave. The church helps us to identify our gifts and then
calls us to serve, and we must then serve. Church membership
allows nothing less.
Fifth, church membership is our official commitment to
the work of the Great Commission. Five times in the New
Testament, Jesus called His followers to the difficult work
of taking the Good News to the world (Matt 28:18-20; Mark
16:15; Luke 24:46-47; John 20:21; Acts 1:8). Evangelism and
missions are not easy tasks, but we need not tackle these
challenges alone. Church members pray for us as we develop
relationships with non-believers and seek opportunities to
share the Gospel with them. Others travel great distances
to support missionaries who are planting seeds on difficult
soil. Joining a church is thus one way to say, “I am committed
to the Great Commission, and I will work with this local
church to reach others for Christ.” We are undeservedly
privileged to be used by God so that others might join the
body of Christ.
The rest of the story
I did join that Ohio Southern Baptist church when God
saved me over three decades ago. Looking back, I hardly
appreciated all that church did for me as a young believer. A
faithful bus driver picked me up every Sunday. Sunday School
teachers introduced me to the Word of God. Concerned
church members contacted me when I did not attend worship
for two consecutive weeks. An assistant pastor challenged me
to consider if God was calling me to ministry. My pastor invited
me to preach as I sought confirmation of my call. This church
genuinely became my Christian family.
Regrettably, the church did not have a systematic discipleship
plan in place, yet they gave me a strong belief in the
authority of the Word of God, an intense passion for evangelism
and a deep love for the Southern Baptist Convention. How
grateful I am today for that believer who told me that joining a
church was a non-negotiable step in my spiritual journey.
Endnotes
1
Our Graham School study on membership classes affirmed this tendency to postpone
joining a church. See my book, Membership Matters (Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
2005), 93-96.
2
Mark Dever, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 157.
Chuck Lawless is dean of the Billy Graham School
of
Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth at
Southern Seminary.
page 8
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 07
page 9

Are we all wet
or does
Baptism matter?
By Greg Wills
Interest in baptism has grown in recent times
as dispute and disagreement over the issue has
mounted. A number of questions have arisen
as it relates to this doctrine. In this article, I
will address three in particular.
Is immersion essential to baptism?
There are a number of Baptist pastors and churches
that will accept sprinkling as an acceptable mode, as
a valid form of baptism. Some conservative and, more
commonly, moderate Baptist churches have taken this
approach.
May we admit persons to church membership
and to the Lord’s Supper who have not
been immersed or who have not been baptized
according to our understanding of baptism?
This is a relatively new approach. Noted pastor and
author John Piper recently has argued this, and I think
that is one of the reasons people are talking and thinking
about it.
Does the administrator matter?
This relates to the traditional question of Baptists, of what
we have usually called alien immersions. This is the issue of
whether a person immersed upon a profession of faith by a
non-Baptist pastor has experienced a valid baptism.
Before I address these questions, let me say that these
issues are not as central to the Christian faith as regeneration.
If we get baptism wrong it is going to do less damage
to our churches and to the Gospel than if we get core
issues such as justification by faith, the full inspiration and
authority of Scripture or the doctrines of the person and
work of Christ wrong.
However, the issue of baptism is still important. Getting
baptism right is not essential to salvation. But that does
not mean that baptism and matters related to it are not
essential to obedience, to faithful stewardship of the ordinances
that Christ has committed to His churches and to
the right ordering of Christ’s church. Because a matter is
secondary to Gospel doctrine doesn’t mean it is a matter
of indifference.
Is immersion essential to baptism?
The fundamental question here is what has Christ commanded?
Does Christ require the mode of baptism to be
immersion or is the mode a matter of indifference? The
common attitude of Protestant paedobaptists is that the
mode is a matter of indifference. Immersion is good, sprinkling
is good, pouring is good, they believe. Traditionally,
Baptists have held that the only valid mode of baptism is
immersion.
page 10
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

When we say mode of baptism, we are introducing
redundancy. We, as Baptists, actually don’t believe in
baptism by immersion. We believe in baptism, which is
immersion. Let me explain: the word baptizein in Greek
means to immerse. When we begin talking about the
mode of baptism, we prejudice the matter severely against
Christ having revealed a specific form, the very form of
the phrase there. Our word “baptize” in English is a lone
Greek word, an anglicized transliteration of the Greek
baptizein.
We could speak of mode of baptism if we were commanded
to wash persons with water. If the command
were to wash, louein, then we might ask, how much water
should we use to fulfill the command? Shall we wash by
immersion? By pouring? By sprinkling? It would be legitimate
to ask about mode of baptism in this case. But we
are not commanded to wash. We are not commanded to
wet, we are not commanded to soak and we are not commanded
to purify; we are commanded to immerse.
Are only baptized persons qualified
for church membership and
admission to the Lord’s Supper?
My answer to this question is
“yes.” The only person whom we
ought to admit to the Lord’s table
is one who is truly baptized, one
who has obeyed the biblical command
of baptism.
The question before us is, What
about those who profess faith? Are
we to invite all persons who profess
faith to the table and to church
membership or only those who profess
faith and have been biblically
baptized, that is, immersion upon a
profession of faith? Why should we
deny unbaptized persons church membership and communion?
Well, the basic answer, as I see it, is that they are
in disobedience. They have not yet obeyed the first command
of Christian discipleship, which is to be baptized.
Disobedience that is unknowing and unintentional
is not as bad as disobedience that is high-handed and
intentional. The Lord Jesus makes this distinction. The
fact that disobedience is unintentional and sincere does
not turn disobedience into obedience. Only the strangest
and most perverted logic can take sincere disobedience
and say that because it is sincere, it is obedience. I
am glad that people who have been sprinkled or poured
are sincerely trying to obey God’s command to be baptized.
But I must warn them that they are yet in disobedience.
Unbaptized does not mean unbelieving, but a
person’s belief that he is baptized does not change the
character of the divine command.
The commission of
Christ given to the
apostles determines
what constitutes
baptism.
name of Christ, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit is a true baptism. We must recognize that a Mormon
immersion is not a baptism. Not Christian baptism,
anyway, for the Mormon church is not a Christian church.
Eastern Orthodox immersions and Roman Catholic immersions
are also not true baptisms because they are not Gospel
churches. The Christian church, Churches of Christ
and Disciples of Christ traditionally have believed that
baptism actually accomplishes the remission of sins. That
is not Christian baptism. That is an overthrow of the Bible
teaching of justification by faith. Baptists have traditionally
not recognized their immersions as true baptisms.
What makes a baptism true or false? The form must be
correct for it to be a true baptism. We’ve already dealt with
that. But is that enough? What about the meaning? Clearly,
the meaning is key. Roman Catholics teach baptismal
regeneration. When the immersion of a professing believer
in a Roman Catholic church takes place, that baptism is
held to be a regenerating baptism. That is the proclamation
and doctrine of that church. That is not a biblical baptism.
So, the meaning of baptism
must also be right for a baptism to
be valid.
I would also argue that the commissioning
agent of the administrator
determines the meaning of a
baptism. Baptism was established
by Christ, in the commissioning
of His apostles. That’s where baptism
begins. It didn’t begin in the
synagogue. It begins in Christ who
established His church.
Acts 19:1-7 is a key passage in
helping us better understand this.
Here you have the 12 disciples from
Ephesus who come to Paul and he
sees that they have not been filled
with the Holy Spirit, that they have not yet been united to
Christ through the Spirit. He asks them about their baptism:
“Into what were you baptized?” It is pretty interesting
the way he phrases it: “Into what were you baptized?” That
implies that baptism gets its meaning from somewhere.
And they respond: “The baptism of John.” And Paul says,
“The baptism of John was.” He knows what John’s baptism
is. It has a definite content, a definite substance, a definite
meaning. John was commissioned by God to baptize for a
specific purpose.
The commission of Christ given to the apostles determines
what constitutes baptism. If we act in that commission
consistently, in Gospel doctrine, ordinances and
confession, and with a faithful Gospel administrator, then
we have true baptism.
Does the administrator matter?
Again, this is the question that deals with the question
of alien immersions. Do we recognize the immersions performed
by pastors of other denominations?
Let’s recognize that not every immersion done in the
Greg Wills is professor of church history at
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
and director of the Center for the Study of the
Southern Baptist Convention.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 11

page 12
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

The importance of
church discipline
By Barry Joslin
I grew up in a small Louisiana town that was at
one time known for, among other things, having
more churches per capita than any other in the
country. I grew up in the local First Baptist Church
where my father led worship and mother taught
children’s Sunday School. Like many others, I was
much older before I ever heard the words “church”
and “discipline” brought together. On the rare
occasion when “church discipline” did come up,
it was always tied to a very unsettling situation,
one whose details were shrouded in secrecy.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 13

Perhaps this is a familiar scenario. It seems that few
churches teach on the issue of church discipline, and fewer
still practice it. On the one hand, this is understandable
since most think of “church discipline” as putting someone
out of the local church. To be sure, the practice of biblical
church discipline has become somewhat of a rarity in
contemporary evangelical churches, yet this is most unfortunate
since this demonstrates a certain negligence of a
church’s purity and Gospel witness. As I teach the doctrine
of the church, I ask my students to define church discipline
and to provide an example when they have seen it carried
out, either rightly or wrongly, in their home churches. Sadly,
over time I have grown accustomed to their blank stares
and silence. The absence of this biblical practice is to the
church’s detriment.
As Baptist theologian J. L. Dagg once contended, “When
(the practice of church) discipline leaves a church, Christ goes
with it.” To be sure, the practice was once common in our Baptist
churches. Baptist historian Greg Wills notes, “Through
discipline, Baptists sought to repristinate the apostolic church
and to stake their claim to primitive Christianity. Through
discipline, they would, moreover, sweep the nation, for they
believed that God rewarded faithful pruning by raining down
revival.” 1 After the Civil War, discipline began to fade from practice,
when the pursuit of church purity began to be replaced by
the quest for efficiency. Baptist churches had lost their resolve
in these matters. 2
What is church discipline and why is
it necessary? Is it necessary? Is it merely
putting an unrepentant member out of
a church? Church discipline has both
positive and negative aspects, and the
purpose of this essay is to sketch a few
answers to the questions of its nature,
biblical warrant and the church’s need.
The presupposition of church discipline: a committed
church membership
As Mark Dever argues in his helpful book 9 Marks of a
Healthy Church, the reason why we see so little church discipline,
with the resultant effect on the church’s purity, is
because we have lost what it means to be a member of the
local church. Membership matters, and one will not see the
biblical practice of church discipline where there is a low view
of commitment to a local body. This is why church membership
is the presupposition of church discipline. If membership
carries no obligations either for the church or the member,
then church discipline becomes a moot point and impossible
to practice. Recall that in 1 Corinthians 5, in order for Paul to
tell the church to exclude the immoral man, he at first had to
be included in that local body in some kind of fashion. 3
As Baptists, we acknowledge that being part of a local body
of believers does matter. Being a member of a local church
should mean commitment to a local church, coming together
regularly for worship, as well as the taking of communion and
giving to the ministries of the church. The local church is the
locale where believers exercise their spiritual gifts for the glory
of God and edification of Christ’s body. Membership means
taking responsibility. “The practice of church membership
among Christians occurs when Christians grasp hold of each
other in responsibility and love.” 4 We in fact are one another’s
Church
membership
matters.
keepers in a very real sense and the only way that this kind of
“keeping” occurs is in the context of the community of faith.
One must be part of this community (a local church) in order
for accountability to take place.
This kind of accountability among believers is not strongarmed,
micro-management, rather, it is one of the many practical
ways that believers love one another. Jesus’ words are
recorded in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to
you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that
you also love one another. By this all men will know that you
are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Loving one
another and humble accountability between committed believers
demonstrates the power of the Gospel to a watching world.
What does the world see? It sees a group of people committed
to one another under the lordship of Jesus Christ who love
one another enough to take a vested interest in one another’s
ongoing commitment to Christ.
The local church is the manifestation of this group of people
living under the lordship of Christ in loving accountability
to biblical truth. For instance, the writer of Hebrews says,
Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance
of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from
an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure
water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope
without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;
and let us consider how to stimulate
one another to love and good deeds,
not forsaking our own assembling
together, as is the habit of some, but
encouraging one another; and all the
more as you see the day drawing near
(Heb 10:22-25).
Notice that, among other important
things, the writer of Hebrews emphasizes
the role of the Christian community in the context of
one another’s lives. They not only draw near together, but they
hold fast their Christian confession together, and they are to
give purposeful thought and attention as to how they might
stir up each other to live Christ-honoring lives. This is to occur
in the context of the local church. In addition, the little phrase
“as you see the day drawing near” contains an implicit warning:
Christ is coming and we all must be found faithful at His
return (Heb 3:12; 4:1-2, 6, 11; 9:27-28; 10:36-39). From this text
we see that we are to “draw near,” “hold fast” and “consider”
within the context of a local body of believers who anticipate
the Lord’s return.
Further, the writer of Hebrews exhorts his readers, “But
encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still
called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the
deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13). The encouragement spoken
of here rightly occurs in a body of believers who place great
value on being committed and responsible to the Gospel
and to one another. This has immediate implications for our
Southern Baptist churches, where the average membership
is 233, yet only an average of 70 attend on any given Sunday. 5
Further, a recent Christianity Today editorial states that
convention records indicate that of our 16 million reported
members, fewer than 6 million people attend Southern Baptist
churches each week. This should not be the case. Before
page 14
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

iblical church discipline can be implemented, we all must
first commit ourselves to an understanding of church commitment
that is responsible, accountable and meaningful.
Church membership matters. This is the presupposition of
biblical church discipline.
The biblical basis for church discipline
To be sure, there is not enough space here to do a full treatment
of the Bible’s teaching on church discipline, but the practice
can be found in several key texts such as Matt 18:15-20; 1
Cor 5:1-13; 2 Cor 6-11; Heb 12:4-14; Gal 6:1; 2 Thess 3:6-15; 1
Tim 1:20, 5:19-20; and Titus 3:9-11. Matthew 18:15-20 is perhaps
the chief of these, as it sets forth the paradigm for how church
discipline should be carried out, step by step. Matthew records
Jesus’ words:
If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private;
if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does
not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the
mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.
If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he
refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile
and a tax collector (Matt 18:15-18).
As we read of the earliest churches (particularly in Paul’s letters)
we see that the early church followed the pattern outlined
by Christ. Paul’s Corinthian correspondence
contains perhaps
the most well-known example of
early church discipline in 1 Cor
5:1-13. In this passage, a member
of the church was having a sexual
relationship with his father’s
wife. Paul admonishes the Corinthians
for their failure to maintain
the purity of the church and
calls for church discipline. Sin that is not confronted will ruin a
church’s witness because it is no longer pure. This is Paul’s concern
when he compares sin to leaven. This man’s sin was not
merely confined to himself; when the church in Corinth failed
to follow the rule of Christ on this matter it called into question
the purity of the entire Corinthian church. They should
have grieved over this man’s sin, yet instead they boasted (v.
6). Out of a love for Christ and deep concern for the purity of
the church, they should have confronted the man with an eye
to repentance and restoration, and been prepared to put him
out of the church, if he refused to turn from his sin.
The divinely-authorized punishment called for is to be
inflicted by the church (Matt 18:17). Paul writes, “Sufficient
for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the
majority” (2 Cor 5:6). As Jesus said, if a brother refuses to listen
to the church and repent, he is to be put out of the church
and treated as an unbeliever. We see that something along this
line occurred in Corinth.
But we should also note that church discipline is not always
negative, that is, a confrontation of sinful behavior. Even
though there is positive church discipline that is preventative,
“the remedial side of discipline, like the proverbial squeaky
wheel, gets all the grease.” 6 We have a tendency to focus on
the sensational acts in which grievous sin is committed and
excommunication may occur. Yet we should more closely focus
Faithful preaching of the
Scriptures is one kind of
preventative discipline.
on preventative church discipline. Faithful preaching of the
Scriptures is one kind of preventative discipline.
Jay Adams, in his helpful book Handbook of Church Discipline,
rightly states that the best thing that can be done in
a church is for both leaders and laity to “promote good order
and true belief.” 7 This is both the formal and informal responsibility
of a church and its members. The teaching of truth
promotes godliness and purity. The emphasis for all local
churches, therefore, ought not be on “rooting out troublemakers,”
but on preventative discipline that takes the form of biblical
preaching, godly order and true belief. As stated above, all
of this is to occur within a church whose membership soberly
assesses the eternal investments each make in one another’s
lives out of love for Christ and one another. As Dever rightly
warns, if we can’t, as a church, “say how a Christian should not
live, how can we say how a Christian should live?” 8
Conclusion
At least five valuable effects arise from the faithful exercise
of church discipline. First, church discipline (in the corrective
sense) is for the good of the one being disciplined. Second, it
is good for other Christians to see the dangers of sin. Third, it
promotes the health of the church as a whole. Fourth, it shows
concern for the corporate witness of the church, which can
either make or break a church’s evangelistic purpose. Fifth, it
shows a love for the glory of God since the church’s purity and
holiness should reflect God’s own
holiness.
Church discipline should not be
an afterthought in the life of a local
church. Would that all of us would
think rightly about what it means to
be in fellowship with other believers
in a local church, since being
woven into the fabric of a local
church matters. Would that God
help us all understand the biblical basis for church discipline in
both its corrective and preventative forms. If all believers were
committed to local church membership and biblical church
discipline, the church would be closer to possessing the unity
and purity God commands.
Endnotes
1
Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline
in the Baptist South 1785-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8.
2
Ibid., 9.
3
Mark Dever, What is a Healthy Church? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 94.
4
Ibid., 95.
5
Ibid., 96.
6
Jay Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 22.
7
Ibid., 25.
8
Mark Dever, 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, 170.
Barry Joslin is assistant professor of Christian
theology at Boyce College.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 15

STUDENT FOCUS
Violent attack bears
Gospel fruit for Garvins
By David Roach
When Carl Garvin enrolled at
The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, he knew he wanted
to spend the rest of his life on
the mission field.
But he had no idea that he would
nearly lose his life at the hands of brutal
robbers armed with machetes and guns.
Garvin, a 60-year-old student in Southern
Seminary’s master of arts in theological
studies – intercultural leadership program,
was appointed in 2005 as an International
Mission Board missionary to Moshi, Tanzania,
along with his wife, Kay.
Before becoming a missionary, Carl was
a nurse, a soldier and a pastor for more
than 20 years. Kay served as a schoolteacher
for 18 years. Extensive service on
short-term mission trips eventually led to
the Louisiana natives feeling a call to fulltime
missionary service in Tanzania.
This past February in Tanzania the
Garvins took a break from their normal
routine of leading Bible studies and
teaching English as a second language to
travel two hours south with some American
volunteers to a small town called
Nyumba ya Mungu, where they planned
to assist a local pastor with Bible school
classes and church work.
After dinner on their first evening in
the town, however, their plans were tragically
interrupted. Carl and Kay returned
to their room in a primitive hotel to
make coffee for the pastor who was host-
page 16
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

STUDENT FOCUS
ing them. After less than three minutes
in the room, they heard screams and
dishes falling.
Thinking someone had fallen down,
Kay looked out the door only to be
greeted by a man holding an uplifted
machete. After Kay closed the door, Carl
threw his back against it in an attempt to
keep the machete-wielding attacker out.
“No sooner had I done this, the man
started hitting it (the door) with great
force – apparently with his shoulders,”
Carl Garvin said. “The
door would bulge open
just enough for him to
get his arm and machete
through, allowing him
to blindly swing at me.”
That’s when gunshots
began to ring out
and additional shoulders
began banging on
the door from outside.
Garvin eventually managed
to wedge himself
between the bed and
the door, holding it closed with his feet.
Yet within five minutes the door broke
into three pieces and two men – one
with a machete and another with a gun –
stormed into the room.
“The man with the machete took a
hard swing at my head,” Garvin said. “I
put up my left arm in defense. I felt the
blow but not the pain. The wall and floor
started turning red.
“I said, ‘Bwana (sir), you don’t have to
do this. What do you want?’ He shouted,
‘Pesa’ (money).”
Kay handed the man her purse,
but he kept swinging wildly with the
machete. When Carl blocked a hard blow
aimed at his head, the machete slipped
out of his attacker’s hand and onto the
floor. Kay picked it up and attempted to
defend herself and her husband. But the
gunman turned toward her and shot her
in the chest, sending her lurching back
against the wall. He then turned toward
Carl and pointed the gun in his face,
which was becoming increasingly soaked
with blood with every passing second.
“I resigned to the fact that I was going
to be shot,” Carl said.
Then suddenly the two attackers took
the Garvins’ backpacks and other personal
items and left.
Crawling over to his wife, Carl examined
her wound.
“I am a nurse and a Vietnam veteran,”
he said. “I have seen gunshot wounds
before. I knew this was in a critical place.
… I expected her to bleed to death
within about 30 seconds. I truly expected
to see my wife of 37 years turn pale and
breathless in seconds.”
Carl began to treat both of their
wounds when their host pastor and the
three American volunteers who had
been with them charged into the room.
Within minutes they found a man who
could drive them the two hours to Moshi,
where the nearest medical treatment was
“…Your glory has
and will shine forth
through it all.”
available. During the drive, God miraculously
provided cell phone service in an
area where a cell phone signal is typically
impossible to receive, Carl said, adding
that they were able to arrange for medical
help to meet them in Moshi.
During the trip, Kay teetered on the
verge of consciousness and feared she
was near death.
“I started singing ‘God is so good’ and
the volunteers joined me,” she said. “We
continued singing two or three other
hymns. This helped pass the time. Most
of my prayers were short sentences like,
‘Thank you, God, for Your protection.’”
After initial medical treatment in
Moshi, the Garvins were airlifted to Nairobi
for surgery. Doctors discovered that
the bullet missed Kay’s aorta by half an
inch, punctured her left lung and lodged
in her back. However, within a day she
was walking around.
The machete blows had cut through
the bone in Carl’s left arm, and blows to
the door while he was holding it closed
with his feet tore ligaments in his right
knee. But surgery repaired both injuries.
As soon as they recovered, the
Garvins headed back to their position as
missionaries in Tanzania.
Some have asked them where God
was during their experience.
Carl tells such
questioners that God
was present all along
and even guided the
bullet by his providential
care.
“Satan wanted the
victory through all this,
but God stood as Jehovah
Nissi,” he said.
Back at their work,
Carl and Kay continued
a Bible study for men of
the Massai people group
that they had begun
before the attack. Today
the Bible study has
grown to 30 people, and
Carl baptized eight new
believers recently.
“Satan would have
liked the Bible group
to stop meeting, but it
has only grown since we
returned,” Carl said.
A Muslim doctor who
treated the Garvins in
Moshi began referring
to them as his “miracle
couple” and told them, “You came back
because God still has a work for you to
do here.”
For the indefinite future the Garvins
plan to remain on the mission field,
and Carl plans to remain a student at
Southern. They say that only eternity
will reveal all the victories God brought
through their trial.
On a piece of paper in his Bible, Carl
wrote a prayer summarizing his thoughts
on the attack.
“Lord,” he wrote, “You do not have to
show me why Kay and I were attacked.
You do not have to show me why we
returned. I do know you were with us
and You saved our lives, and I know
that Your glory has and will shine forth
through it all.”
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 17

FACULTY FOCUS
Fear of death
led Haykin out of
Marxism and onto
the life-giving path
of Christianity
By Jeff Robinson
It is no small irony that God
used a deep-seated fear of death
as a means to bring Michael A.G.
Haykin to Himself.
Born in Birmingham, England in
1953, Haykin embraced Marxism by age
14. While most of his teenage peers were
discovering alcoholic beverages, team
sports or the opposite sex, Haykin was
imbibing books by Karl Marx and other
revolutionary figures such as Vladimir
Lenin, Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung.
These men promoted a worldview
built upon extreme violence. Guevara,
for example, explained how to wage
guerilla warfare and served as a revolutionary’s
handbook for making anti-tank
traps and assembling Molotov cocktails.
“I and a few friends drank all of this
in, and we seriously — and quite naively,
I now see — prepared ourselves for the
revolution we thought was coming to
North America,” Haykin said.
“I can even remember preparing
myself for the possibility that I would
have to kill people who were close to
me, i.e. members of my own family, for
the sake of the revolution.”
Western culture in the 1960s seethed
with anger, especially among Haykin’s
peers, but it was not that atmosphere
page 18
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

alone that drove him to embrace a twofisted
worldview committed to imposing
intimidation and violence on innocent
people.
The culprits, Haykin said, were Roman
Catholicism and Christian hypocrisy. His
parents were Roman Catholic and he
grew up attending mass, but was wholly
unconvinced by the behavior he witnessed
among his Roman Catholic peers.
“The change in my worldview began
as I observed the hypocrisy that is
deeply entrenched in the Roman Catholic
church,” Haykin said. “As I went to
high school, I noticed that many of my
classmates whom I knew led lives centered
on drinking and partying, would
turn up at church on Sunday and receive
communion.
“I soon came to the conclusion that
Christianity was a hypocritical sham. I
began to stop attending mass. But man
is by nature a worshipping creature. I
rejected the false worship embedded
in Roman Catholicism only to fall into
an even more heinous idolatry, that of
Marxism.”
Haykin, who earlier this year was
appointed professor of biblical spirituality
and church history at The Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, remained
a Marxist into his late teen years, but
Marxism left him unable to shake one
giant personal demon: the fear of death.
“Sometimes my fears would so overwhelm
me that I would call my father in
the middle of the night and ask him to
drive from Ancaster to London (Ontario,
where he was attending the university) to
come and take me home,” Haykin said. “In
the face of such fears, Marxism was helpless,
and could give me no comfort.”
Gradually, Marxism lost its hold over
him. After enrolling at the University
of Western Ontario in London in 1971,
Haykin began to probe into various
forms of eastern mysticism: Taoism, Zen
Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation.
However, none of them lessened
his angst over the prospect of death, and
he soon cast them aside.
Two major events during Haykin’s time
as a student at the University of Western
Ontario served as a slight spiritual awakening.
The first stemmed from his growing
interest in philosophy and an academic
assignment related to his studies.
“One day in the fall of 1971, I sat down
to write out a philosophical proof for the
existence of God, but before I could put
pen to paper, I knew beyond a shadow of
a doubt that there was a God,” he said.
“One moment I was agnostic about
God’s existence; the next, I knew there
was a God. But believing that God exists
does not necessarily entail a change of
lifestyle and it certainly does not mean
salvation, as I was to find out.”
The second major event soon followed
and arose out of a friendship he developed
with Doug, a former football teammate
from high school. Doug had become
friendly with a group of Christians, and
the believers would often be present while
Haykin ate lunch with his friend.
“I recall their conversation about Christ
and the Holy Spirit,” he said. “I began to try
to pray to God, but how can you truly persevere
in prayer, if you don’t know Christ,
and if His Spirit doesn’t live in you? As John
“He graciously opened my
eyes to know Christ and to
know that in Christ there
is salvation not only from
sin, but also from sin’s
wages, eternal death.”
Bunyan put it so well, ‘When the Spirit gets
into the heart, then there is prayer indeed
and not until then.’”
Haykin quickly forgot these two experiences
after moving to the University of
Toronto in 1972. As he pursued a bachelor’s
degree in philosophy there, Haykin
largely ignored the implications of the
fact that there was a God and led a lifestyle
he describes as “somewhat riotous
and immoral.” Still, God would use those
experiences in his conversion.
The turning point came in the summer
of 1973 when Haykin went to work
in a pizza parlor where he met Alison, the
woman whom he would eventually marry.
Alison was a Christian and Haykin began
to attend her Baptist church, animated
mostly by a desire to be seen as a respectable,
church-going member of society.
Whatever Haykin’s motivations, he
now knows that God was drawing the
former Marxist to himself.
God began to drive home the truth
of Hebrews 2:14-15 which speaks of how
Christ’s redeeming work at Calvary has
FACULTY FOCUS
destroyed the fear of death in believers.
The fear of death, which had lain submerged
for some time, had resurfaced,
compounded by Haykin’s reading of
German philosopher Martin Heidegger
who posited that existence is only possible
in the contemplation of one’s death.
But this time, the life-giving answer to
Haykin’s existential angst was close at
hand. Soon, Haykin was safe in the arms
of God through the Gospel.
“For three nights in a row, I awoke in
a cold sweat, my heart pounding, fearful
that I was about to die,” he said. “The
third night, to my own amazement, I
found myself on my knees, praying, crying
out to God for salvation, and He graciously
opened my eyes to know Christ
and to know that in Christ there is salvation
not only from sin, but also from sin’s
wages, eternal death.
“And when I went home that weekend
on the Greyhound bus I knew beyond
a shadow of a doubt that I was no longer
alone — God had graciously come
into my heart, the citadel of my life, and
taken possession of it by his Holy Spirit,
the Spirit of Jesus.”
Michael married Alison in 1976 and
later surrendered to a call to ministry,
which, for Haykin, as a lifelong lover of
history, meant a life devoted to Christian
scholarship. Since earning a doctorate’s
degree in patristics from the University
of Toronto in 1982, Haykin has taught
church history at Heritage Theological
Seminary in Cambridge, Ontario, and
at Central Baptist Seminary in Toronto.
The Haykins have two children, Victoria
and Nigel.
Though more than three decades
have passed since his conversion out of
worldview chaos, Haykin continues to
marvel at God’s mercy in rescuing a former
Marxist from the fear of death. For
Haykin, reading Hebrews 2:14-15 is no
longer an occasion for apprehension, but
for doxology.
“I, who had once been a Marxist, and
so committed to bringing fear and violence
into the lives of innocent people,
was myself brought by God face to face
with fear—the fear of my own death
— and so shown the inadequacy of the
Marxist view of life: it has no answer to
the problem of death,” he said.
“But Christianity does: God has raised
Jesus from the dead, and so provided a
way of deliverance for those, including
myself, who through fear of death were
subject to lifelong bondage.”
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 19

ALUMNI FOCUS
Southern
graduate takes
Gospel to
New Orleans
By Garrett E. Wishall
Some boys grow up dreaming
of one day playing professional
sports. Others set their sights
on police work or being a fireman.
Still others stare up at the
stars, longing to walk on the
moon. By age 11, Travis Fleming
had other plans.
Converted to Christianity at age 4,
Fleming said he began to sense God leading
him into full-time ministry at age 11.
“Growing up, I particularly had a passion
for being in the pulpit and preaching,”
said Fleming, a South Carolina
native. “I remember standing up a box in
my basement as a podium for myself and
preaching to my congregation, which at
the time was my brothers and sister.”
While Fleming became a Christian
early in life and quickly sensed God’s
call to ministry, his life was not without
bumps and bruises.
“My senior year of high school and
freshman year of college, I tried to do
my own thing for a while,” Fleming said.
“I wasn’t too crazy about the ministry
route, and I started making plans to be a
history teacher. In my sophomore year of
college, God began to draw me back [to
ministry] and I ended up going to North
Greenville College.”
At North Greenville, Fleming met
George Martin, who now serves as the
associate dean of the Billy Graham
School at Southern Seminary. Challenged
by Martin’s God-centered theology,
Fleming said he began to develop
a greater appreciation for God’s sovereignty
over salvation.
Fleming graduated from North
Greenville in 1996 with a bachelor of
arts in religion. Martin had left North
Greenville to go to Southern the same
semester Fleming graduated. Before
Martin left, he told Fleming to give
Southern a look if he decided to enroll
in seminary.
“We are missionaries
in this culture.”
Fleming attended Southern’s fall
1996 preview conference and was
impressed with the seminary’s faculty
and campus. Fleming said he knew
Southern would challenge him spiritually
and academically, and the next fall
he began taking classes. In December
2000, Fleming graduated with his master
of divinity and in fall 2001, began
his Ph.D. studies in evangelism in the
Billy Graham School.
Throughout his M.Div. studies, Fleming
had supported himself by working
with a painting company that he and
another seminary student started. As he
began work on his Ph.D., Fleming began
searching for a ministry position. In January
2002, Concord Baptist Church in Dry
Ridge, Ky., called him to be their senior
pastor and Fleming filled that role for a
few years.
In the spring of 2006, Fleming was
serving as an intern at Crossing Church
in Louisville, when James Welch, Crossing’s
teaching pastor, approached him
with a question. Welch asked Fleming if
he was interested in planting a church in
New Orleans with him.
“I wanted to help New Orleans
rebuild, especially with my construction
background, but I never thought about
going there to do full-time ministry,”
Fleming said. “I began to think about it,
and I thought, ‘man, where could I find
a better place to go do ministry right
now?’”
Fleming accepted Welch’s offer and
on September 10, 2006, entered the city
that Hurricane Katrina had ravaged a
year before. The church they planted,
named Sojourn Church, is located in the
Orleans parish in Uptown New Orleans.
Fleming said little evangelical work is
going on in that section of New Orleans,
which is strongly postmodern.
“We are missionaries in this culture,”
he said. “It is a culture that can be antagonistic
toward the Gospel. We set out
from day one to live in the culture and
engage the culture with the Gospel,
believing all along that Christ is the one
who can change people.”
As he continues to minister in New
Orleans, Fleming said he is grateful for
the training he received at Southern.
“Southern taught me how to preach
from the pulpit,” he said. “They taught
me how certain evangelistic methodologies
might work in some areas, but not
in others, such as suburban Atlanta, versus
the neighborhoods of New Orleans.
They also taught me how to contextualize
the Gospel, based on the cultural setting
you are in.”
page 20
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

ALUMNI FOCUS
Ministering
the Word
through music:
Clay Layfield
By Garrett E. Wishall
Three years into marriage, Clay
Layfield found himself in a position
that required great faith.
Wed to Amy Fields in March 1995,
Layfield was blessed with a good job and
young child. However, Clay was not content,
as he sensed the Lord leading him
into full-time ministry. So, he resigned his
position – turning down a good to stay in
his job – and the Layfields prepared to
move to Louisville, Ky., where Clay would
attend Southern Seminary.
Two weeks later, the couple learned
that Amy was again pregnant.
“I will never forget loading up the
moving truck with a two-year-old child,
a wife who was pregnant, and moving
to a place where I had no job,” Layfield
said. “The Lord had used that third year
of marriage to show me that I needed to
go to seminary. We knew that God was in
our coming to Southern. Though there
was a lot of uncertainty, especially financially,
we knew that we were in the right
place.”
Growing up
Layfield said his mother made sure,
even at an early age, that he attended
church every Sunday and Wednesday,
and around age 10 he became a Christian
at Vacation Bible School.
“I continued to be active in the church
following my conversion,” said Layfield,
who was born in Macon, Ga. “When I was
in seventh grade, my dad left the home
and my parents divorced. The music
minister at my church spent a lot of time
investing in me, as well as did other men
in our church.”
Sensing God leading him into music
ministry, Layfield majored in music education
with an emphasis in percussion
at Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon,
Ga.
Layfield met Amy at Brewton-Parker
and they dated throughout college. During
that time, Layfield said the Lord led
them to a church in Hagan, Ga., where
he learned the value of expositional
preaching.
“We need
to be singing
good theology.”
“My eyes were opened to what it is
like to sit under an expositional preaching
ministry [at that church],” he said. “I
really began to go deeper in my understanding
of theology and developed a
craving for theology. I began to see the
importance of reading, and being a student
of, the Word.”
Preparing for ministry
Layfield began taking classes at Southern
in fall 1998. With his wife staying
home with their one child, soon to be
two, Layfield knew money would be
tight. However, throughout seminary the
Lord met their financial needs.
“We never went hungry, or without
clothes and we never missed a payment
on anything,” he said. “Every time we
would think we didn’t have the money
for something, God would provide it.
There would be times when we would
go to the mailbox and there would be
a hundred dollars that we could use for
groceries or rent. That happened multiple
times and sometimes we didn’t know
where the money came from.”
Layfield said he chose to attend Southern
because of the school’s emphasis on
sound theology. He views his calling as
being, “a minister who happens to be a
musician.” The teaching of Chip Stam,
associate professor of church music and
worship at Southern, was particularly formative
for Layfield.
“Chip Stam came to Southern in the
middle of my time there,” Layfield said.
“His love for leading God’s people in
God-centered worship had a profound
effect on me. I do a lot of the things that
he taught and showed us to do. I would
not be who I am today if Chip Stam had
not come to Southern Seminary.”
Layfield graduated in December 2002.
In November 2005, Layfield became the
minister of music and senior adults at
First Baptist Church in Eastman, Ga.,
where he currently serves.
Layfield said as he continues in music
ministry, the one thing he most wants to
emphasize is that every member of the
congregation should actively worship
God in song.
“Our aim must be for every member
of the congregation, regardless of their
vocal ability, to be engaged and profoundly
moved as the wisdom and love
of God are proclaimed through the cross
of Christ,” he said. “We should strive to
have our worship services as much like
heaven as possible: Redeemed people
singing praise to the Redeemer as we
give thanks for our redemption.”
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 21

IMMORTAL
COMBAT
I S I T F I N I S H E D ?
Give Me An Answer Conference
SPEAKERS
WORSHIP
Register at:
page 22
Dr. Albert Mohler. President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
and cultural commentator (www.albertmohler.com,
and host of The Albert Mohler Radio Program)
Dr. Russell Moore.
Dean of The School of Theology
and author of The Kingdom of Christ
Dr. Chuck Lawless. Dean of The Billy Graham School
of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth and author of Spiritual
Warfare
Shane and Shane. God-centered and relevant, this well-known
contemporary Christian duo has brought a fresh sound to timeless,
unchangeable truths.
***Also on Tour—Starfi eld and David Nasser
Aletheia.
Theologically sound and musically gifted,
this vocal ensemble from Boyce College performs
and leads worship in venues around the country.
www.GiveMeAnAnswer.net
GIVE ME AN ANSWER
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2008
2:00 .........................................Registration
4:45-5:45 ......................................... Dinner
6:00-6:15 .....................................Welcome
6:15-7:15............................ Shane & Shane
7:15-8:15 ........................General Session I
8:45-10:45 .....................................Concert
8:30-10:30 .............................. The Village*
* Come speak with missions organizations, play
games, swim in the Recreation Center, buy some
books or apparel in LifeWay or Fifth and Broadway, or
meet new friends over a cup of coffee at Founder’s
Cafe
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2008
7:30-8:30 .....................................Breakfast
8:45-9:45 .......................General Session II
10:00-11:00 ....................Elective Session I
11:15-12:15 ....................Elective Session II
12:30-1:30 ........................................Lunch
1:30-2:30 ......................Elective Session III
2:45-3:45 ......................General Session III
3:50 .....................................Q & A Session
ELECTIVE SESSIONS
How Does the Holy Spirit Work Among Non-Christian Peoples?
What Role Does the Supernatural Play in Missions?
What Weapons Does a Christian Have in Spiritual Warfare?
What Does the Qur’an Say About Jesus?
Unisex Universe: Do Gender Roles Cross Cultural Barriers?
How Do Global Epidemics, War and Natural Disasters Affect Missions?
Coffee Shop Evangelism: How Do I Begin Spiritual Conversations?
Is There an Agenda Against Jesus on the College Campus?
What are the Subtle and Unsubtle Schemes of Satan? and More!
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

SOUTHERN
NEWS AND NOTES
Mohler issues a call
for confessional fidelity
By Jeff Robinson
The Christian faith includes essential doctrinal
content that the church must believe, teach
and confess, R. Albert Mohler Jr. told students
and faculty members during the
annual fall convocation Aug. 21 at
Southern Seminary.
Preaching from Hebrews
11:1-6 and Acts 16:30-31, Southern
Seminary’s president said a
clear articulation of central Christian
doctrines in a confession
of faith is more important than
ever for evangelical churches and
seminaries because they minister
in a postmodern culture that
denies the existence of objective
truth.
“We must understand that
Christianity is not a mood,”
Mohler said. “It is not an emotion.
It is not a feeling. It is not
an amorphous set of beliefs. It
is established by the truth of
God’s Word, by the saving reality
of God’s deeds in Jesus Christ,
around certain definite doctrines
without which it is not possible
to exercise the kind of faith that
saves.”
“The faith” of which Scripture
speaks includes an irreducible
body of truths such as the character
and attributes of God and the person
and work of Christ, Mohler said, noting that
creeds and confessions are important summary
statements of these truths that have a
long and venerable history.
“One of the problems of our contemporary
age is that when people hear the word ‘faith,’
they tend to think of faith in faith,” he said.
“They tend to think of faith as some sort of
mental or spiritual exercise. They think of faith
“Christians must
believe, teach
and confess the
central teachings
of their faith.”
as a mere act of the will. They are not thinking
of faith that is scripturally defined in terms,
first of all, of the truth that is there affirmed,
the content of that faith. We are not saved by
faith in faith, we are saved through faith in
Christ. There is a huge difference there.”
Southern Seminary is a confessional institution,
adhering to the Abstract of Principles,
a statement of faith that Basil Manly, Jr., a
founding faculty member, penned and the
school adopted when it opened
in 1859. Professors must sign the
document, agreeing to teach “in
accordance with and not contrary
to” its doctrines.
Four members of the Southern
Seminary faculty signed the
Abstract prior to Mohler’s sermon:
T.J. Betts, assistant professor
of Old Testament interpretation;
Greg Brewton, associate professor
of church music; Mark Coppenger,
professor of Christian
apologetics; and Randy Stinson,
dean of the School of Leadership
and Church Ministry.
“It is important for us to
remember that this is not an innovation,”
Mohler said. “We did not
come up with this.
“This comes out of a tradition
of confessional subscription, out
of a creedal and confessional history
of the church whereby God’s
people, particularly churches,
have received the stewardship
of biblical truth and have sought
to articulate that truth, to perpetuate
that truth, to make that
truth a matter of common accountability and
common faith…It is done before a watching
church by a teacher who says ‘these are the
things that I believe. I take my stand upon
these doctrines, defined and definite.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 23

Southern Seminary beefs up
biblical counseling faculty
By Garrett E. Wishall
Southern Seminary continues to bolster its
biblical counseling program with the addition
of several renowned authors and scholars as
visiting faculty.
Paul David Tripp, president of Paul Tripp
Ministries and a counselor for 25 years, and
David Powlison, faculty member at the Christian
Counseling & Educational Foundation
(CCEF), have both been added to Southern’s
faculty as visiting professors.
Tripp, who also serves as an adjunct professor
at CCEF, said being
able to impact the next
generation of leaders
attracted him to Southern
Seminary. He said he
looks forward to helping
students integrate God’s
Word, sound theology and
wise counseling into a unified
whole.
“I view successful ministry
as building a bridge
from the shore of God’s
Word to the shore of everyday
life,” he said. “It seems that theologians
are often able to build a bridge from the
shore of God’s Word and theology, but they
struggle with connecting it to every day life.
Counselors seem to struggle with the reverse
problem. I love having the opportunity to help
people build a completed bridge so that they
can look at life in a fallen world from a biblical
perspective.”
Tripp is the author of Lost in the Middle,
Age of Opportunity, War of Words and Instruments
in the Redeemer’s Hands. He also
serves as an adjunct professor at Westminster
Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where
he earned his D.Min.
David Powlison edits The Journal of Biblical
Counseling, is a visiting professor at Westminster
and is the author of several books,
including Seeing with New Eyes and Speaking
Truth in Love. He earned his master of divinity
from Westminster and his Ph.D. from the University
of Pennsylvania.
Powlison said he looks forward to teaching
at Southern and is pleased with the Seminary’s
decision to center its counseling on pastoral
ministry and not secular professionalism.
Paul David Tripp David Powlison Robert Jones Robert Burrelli
“I pray that Christian colleges, universities
and seminaries will get a vision toward orienting
counseling around the Gospel,” he said. “One
expects pastoral training, missionary training
and evangelistic training to be centered on the
Gospel, but counseling has been the odd sister
out. To play a role in [changing] that is a terrific
opportunity and a great honor.”
In addition to Tripp and Powlison, Southern
has added as visiting faculty Robert Jones,
assistant professor of biblical counseling at
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary,
and Robert Burrelli, pastor of Grace Bible
Church in Bridgewater, Mass.
Jones is the author of Uprooting Anger:
Biblical Help for a Common Problem and
Burrelli is a certified counselor with the
National Association of Nouthetic Counselors.
Stuart Scott, director of the Center for Biblical
Counseling at Southern, said the addition of
all four men will help the seminary continue its
mission of training biblical counselors.
“I am very pleased that several outstanding
men in the biblical counseling arena have agreed
to come and teach a course or two each year
here at Southern Seminary,” said Scott, who also
serves as associate professor
of biblical counseling at
Southern. “Drs. Powlison,
Tripp, Burrelli and Jones
are fully committed to the
sufficiency of God’s Word
for counseling and will be
invaluable assets to Southern’s
growing biblical counseling
program.”
Tripp said applying
the biblical counseling
model to counseling,
instead of taking a secular
or integrated approach, best complements
the faithful proclamation of Scripture that
should take place in local churches.
“If you have a person who is faithful in
their attendance to church, and they are hearing
good preaching that is giving them a good
model of thinking about life – and they then
go to a counseling office on Tuesdays that
presents a different way of thinking about
life, then that is very confusing,” he said. “It is
helpful if people are hearing the same thing
from counselors that they are hearing from
the pulpit.”
Over 120 people participated
in the 2nd Annual 5K Walk /
Run for Missions. Photos by
John Gill
page 24
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

York squares off against
former KY governor in
televised gambling debate
By David Roach
Expanded gambling in the state of Kentucky
would be a moral outrage because it involves
the government attempting to cash in on sin
and broken families, Hershael York said July 30
Hershael York, Southern Seminary professor,
debates former KY Governor Brereton Jones
(D), July 30 on “Kentucky Tonight.”
on “Kentucky Tonight,” a statewide television
broadcast on KET.
“Enough is enough,” York, who serves as
Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Christian
Preaching at Southern Seminary in Louisville,
Ky., and pastor of Buck Run Baptist Church in
Frankfort, Ky., said. “Let’s stop it where it is.
It’s bad enough. Families are being destroyed.
The government getting a piece of the
destruction families to me is completely unacceptable.”
Appearing with York were former Kentucky
Governor Brereton Jones (D) and Patrick
Neely, executive director of the Kentucky
Equine Education Project (KEEP) who support
expanded gambling. Joining York on the antigambling
side was John-Mark Hack, director of
Say No to Gambling.
The program explored arguments for and
against expanded gambling and speculated
about how such expansion could affect the
Bluegrass State.
In the end, Christians must realize that
gambling is popular because it appeals to
humans’ sinful greed, York said. He noted that
the remedy for gambling is for believers in
Jesus Christ to follow the admonition to love
their neighbors.
“Let me say something to those people who
call themselves Christians — and I know that’s
not everyone,” he said. “But frankly, Jesus told
us and the command is ‘love your neighbor as
yourself.’ You cannot claim that you love your
neighbor as yourself and [that] you want to take
his money from him. Gambling is based on getting
somebody else’s money.”
Boyce College signs
former Bryan assistant as
Bulldogs head coach
By Garrett E. Wishall
Boyce College this summer signed Corey
Mullins as the new head coach of the Boyce
Bulldogs basketball team.
Mullins served as head assistant coach of
the women’s basketball team at Bryan
College in Dayton, Tenn., for the past
four years. During that time, Bryan
won more than 20 games each season
and annually qualified for the National
Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
(NAIA) national tournament, advancing
to the round of 16 in 2006. Bryan
competes in the Appalachian Athletic
Conference of the NAIA.
Boyce athletic director Lee Sexton
said his on-court success as well as
Mullins’ ministry experience made him the
right man for the position.
“What I saw in Mullins was someone who
had been in a very successful program for
the past four years as a top assistant,” he said.
“The other thing I saw was a commitment to
Corey Mullins
ministry. He had been a youth director and
a children’s minister and had a solid background
in the Southern Baptist Convention.
I felt like we were getting a good fit for who
Boyce and Southern are.”
Mullins described the position as a
“unique opportunity” because every
student-athlete at Boyce senses a
definitive call to ministry. He said
he looks forward to coaching in that
environment.
“I want to help continue to train
Great Commission workers by using
athletics,” he said. “I want to help players
develop spiritually, ministerially and
academically through athletics.
“Success for us in the next few
years will come through discipline.
This means working hard in the classroom, in
the community and on the court. Winning is
a by-product of discipline. As we continue to
build our program, we will start to win games
and in three or four years, I would love to be
winning 15 games a season.”
Southern Seminary
Upcoming Events
October 8-12
Heritage Week
October 12-13 Seminary Preview
Conference
October 19-20 Boyce College Preview
Conference
December 7
January 22
January 28
Seminary Graduation
Boyce College
Classes Begin
Seminary Classes Begin
New SBJT defends
classical view of
atonement from
contemporary attacks
The cross of Christ has been under
attack since the day Jesus hung between
two thieves on a hill outside Jerusalem,
but there is a surprising new category of
opponents who are attacking the traditional
view of the death of Christ: evangelical
Christian scholars.
Essayists in the Summer 2007 edition
of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
(SBJT) interact with both evangelical
and non-evangelical scholars who reject
the penal substitutionary view of the
cross, and contributors defend the historic
orthodox view of Christ’s atoning death in
the place of wrath-deserving sinners.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 25

School of Church Music and Worship
Youngsters shine at
Summerfest Pops concert
By Garrett E. Wishall
What do 4-year-old Sarah Beth Plummer,
6-year-old Aimee Quinn and 9-year-old Knox
McMillan have in common? They all participated
in the 2007 Summerfest Pops concert at
Southern Seminary.
The Pops concert, held annually, featured
orchestral music from “The Sound of Music”
and “Phantom of the Opera” and work from
Carmen Dragon, best known for his setting of
“America the Beautiful.”
Conductor Douglas Smith said the music
in the concert is designed to be enjoyable, yet
challenging for performers and familiar, yet
pleasing for listeners.
“The Pops concert provides an opportunity
to play a large body of interesting and
entertaining literature,” said Smith, Hogan
professor of church music and associate dean
for doctoral studies for the School of Church
Music and Worship at Southern. “Often new
players break into the orchestra with this
experience, and also younger players are
invited to participate, players who are not
quite ready for the more demanding literature
of the fall and spring concerts.”
The orchestra in the Pops concert is comprised
of some seminarians, with the majority
of performers coming from other sources in the
greater-Louisville area, Smith said. Several performers
are Louisville orchestra retirees, Smith
noted, while a smattering of particularly gifted
high school players also participate.
Nine-year-old McMillan stole the show
with his work conducting Sousa’s “Washington
Post” march. McMillan’s grandfather of
the same name conducted bands and though
the younger McMillan never knew his grandfather,
the youngster developed early a desire
to conduct, often mimicking the motions of
his church music minister.
Smith said the younger McMillan jumped
at the chance to take part in a “real orchestra.”
McMillan’s formal training was a quick
lesson on checking the eyes of players and
giving a strong downbeat and with this under
his belt, the 9-year-old led Sousa’s march to
resounding applause.
Another piece performed annually at the
concert is “The Radetzky March” by Johann
Strauss Sr, which features sections where the
audience claps with the orchestra, Smith said.
Former conductor Lloyd Mims founded
the Seminary orchestra in 1980. Initially, Pops
concerts were performed in the Josephus
Bowl, now called the Seminary Lawn, while
families shared food and fellowship. Smith
began his tenure with the orchestra in 2000,
and the first Pops concert under his direction
was moved into Alumni Chapel because of
inclement weather. All Pops concerts since
that time have been held inside.
The 2007 concert also featured a performance
by the Lynn Camp Hollow Boys,
a group from a local church that Smith said
sounds remarkably similar to the group featured
in the movie “O Brother, Where Art
Thou.” The Lynn Camp Hollow Boys played
a version of the spiritual “Joshua” and “Two
Coats,” a piece that Smith said draws an analogy
of old and new clothing to represent conversion
from a life of sin.
Seminary voice major Matt Crook, from
Madisonville, Ky., sang George Gershwin’s “I
Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” at the concert. Seminary
student Laura Patton, from Memphis,
Tenn., also performed, playing a piano improvisation
from two hymns, the latter called
“Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” better known
as “The Navy Hymn.”
Biblical teaching
for women
“Christian Essentials is
taught by real women who
face real struggles and wish
to share from a wealth of
ministry experience.”
— Mary Mohler, Director,
Seminary Wives Institute
Looking for in-depth biblical teaching designed just for women?
Want to give your women’s ministry a doctrinal boost? “Christian
Essentials” is just what you need. This unique program designed
by Southern Seminary to prepare seminary wives for real world
ministry is available for use in your home or your church. These
professionally produced audio and video lessons feature some of
the SBC’s greatest theologians and their wives. If you’re ready to
grow closer to the Lord and deeper in your faith, let us help you
with the “Christian Essentials.”
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www.ChristianEssentials.com
page 26
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

Noted author,
alumnus added to Lead School
School of Leadership and Church Ministry
By Garrett E. Wishall
The School of Leadership and Church Ministry
at Southern Seminary has taken another
step toward building a family ministry focus
in the field of Christian education with the
recent hiring of Timothy Jones as assistant
professor of leadership and church ministry.
Randy Stinson, dean of the School of
Leadership and Church Ministry, said pastoral
experience and a vision for unified, family
ministry make Jones the right fit for the position.
Jones is a graduate of Southern, having
completed his doctor of education from the
seminary in 2003.
“Through the interview process, it became
clear to me that Dr. Jones is going to be an
important part of the School of Leadership
emphases in the coming decades,” he said.
“He is an experienced pastor and a disciplined
author. His classroom instruction will
be informed by his experience and his multiple
books and articles add to our academic
influence and credibility. He will also be able
to help us coordinate some key writing projects
over the next few years.
“The fact that he is a product of this
seminary means he is already wholeheartedly
committed to its vision and direction and will
be able to hit the ground running as soon as
classes start.”
Jones co-authored The Da Vinci Codebreaker
and has written several books,
including Christian History Made Easy,
Prayers Jesus Prayed, Finding God in a
Galaxy Far Far Away and Misquoting Truth.
Above all, Jones said he desires to help students
prioritize ministering to their families
and leading churches in a way that emphasizes
spiritual growth.
“There is a point that the people in
my previous congregation heard over and
over during my time there: What you do
for God beyond your home will not typically
be greater than what you practice with
God within your home,” he said. “There is
a deep need among men and women for a
focus on their home lives, training them
how to guide their families and how to
relate to family members in constructive
and godly
ways.
“Too often, churches have expected fami-
lies somehow to become integrated at home,
even as we “dis-integrate” their families at
church, attempting to lead them to spiritual
maturity as isolated individuals without
modeling for them how to work together as
families. I believe that Dr. Stinson’s familycentered
focus will help to accomplish that.”
Jones said lessons learned from 14 years of
ministerial experience would help him equip
students for local church ministry. Jones
served as senior pastor of First Baptist Church
of Rolling Hills in Tulsa, Okla., from 2003-
2007 after serving as the church’s minister to
students. Previously, he served for six years
as pastor of Green Ridge Baptist Church in
Green Ridge, Mo.
Having enjoyed his time as a student at
Southern, Jones said he looks forward to mov-
ing into the
role of professor at the seminary.
“Ever since the first moment I set foot
on this campus, I have absolutely loved this
place,” Jones said. “It has been a place of
joy for me and my wife. My passion is to
equip students to guide church ministries
in ways that are rooted first and foremost
in the Scriptures and in biblical theology,
then in compassion for people’s real
needs and in awareness of their cultural
contexts.”
Jones directed the Tulsa Extension
Center of Midwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary from 2002-2005
and taught there as adjunct profes-
sor of Greek.
Jones completed his master of divinity at
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
in 1996. He and his wife Rayann married in
1994. In 2003, they adopted Hannah Rachel
Jones, who is now 11.
New Orleans trip refocuses church’s mission vision
By Marilyn Stewart
With eleven of their fifty plus regularly attending
church members on mission in New Orleans,
chances are Clifton Heights Baptist Church’s
vision for missions will be impacted. That’s
exactly what the Louisville church is hoping for.
“This mission trip has opened the world
to our youth,” said Brett Gibson, the church’s
youth and music minister. “I hope it will be the
start of something we can do year after year.”
The team of six Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary students, a grandmother and
four youth, worked with Baptist Crossroads,
a partnership of First Baptist Church of New
Orleans and Habitat for Humanity. Crossroads
has a five-year goal of building 300 new homes
in a low-income neighborhood with forty
homes completed since the summer of 2006.
With Cooperative Program giving at 11%,
pastor Michael Galdamez said the focus on
missions in the church has broadened recently
Timothy Jones
as those with mission experience – including
SBTS students – have encouraged others to
take an active role.
“As far as anyone can remember, this is the
church’s first mission trip,” Paul Hudson, a
retired Canadian air force navigator and a first
year SBTS student said. “This trip has been
as good for the church as it has been for the
people in New Orleans.”
Kristen Tannas, a
SBTS student from
Alberta, Canada, said the
hurricane has encouraged
Christians to put
their faith in action by
doing things they didn’t
think possible before.
“Many who had
never left home before
are down here building
houses,” Tannas said.
“They are realizing ‘I can
Kristen Tannas Southern Seminary
student from Canada, works on a roof
with another worker.
do this.’”
Galdamez said the Crossroads partnership
with Habitat presents opportunities to talk
to non-believers and share the gospel as they
work side-by-side, adding that the trip was also
an opportunity to demonstrate to the younger
team members “what it means to serve others.
“This trip has encouraged our team members
to do more for missions,”
Galdamez said.
“Not only are we hoping
to come here again,
but are thinking about
an international trip as
well.”
Marilyn Stewart is the
New Orleans correspondent
for the Louisiana
Baptist Convention
Communication Team,
John L. Yeats, director.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 27

New associate deans,
theology conference announced
School of Theology
By Jeff Robinson
Southern Seminary’s School of Theology has
two new associate deans and will soon host
an annual theology conference.
Russell D. Moore, Dean of the School
of Theology and Senior Vice President for
Academic Administration, announced the
appointments of Donald Whitney as senior
associate dean and Gregory A. Wills as associate
dean for the division of theology and tradition.
Moore also announced a forthcoming
Southern Seminary Conference of Theology,
to be led by Professor Bruce Ware.
The theology
conference will begin
after Ware’s tenure
as president of the
Evangelical Theological
Society and will be
held on the Southern
Seminary campus.
Ware, who formerly
served as senior associate
dean, will now
serve as director of
the conference,
launching a biannual
conference
designed to engage
contemporary issues
from the standpoint nt
of confessional
conviction.
Moore said Ware
is a natural choice to
lead the conference
because of
his scholarly
engagement
of numerous
issues within the evangelical lworld. Ware has
opposed open theism in books such as God’s
Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open ism and God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God
The-
of Scripture and the Christian Faith and has
defended the historical doctrine of the Trinity
in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Relationships,
Roles and Relevance.
“Bruce Ware is the Athanasius of contemporary
evangelicalism, confronting error, be it
open theism or evangelical feminism, with the
glorious truth of Scripture,” Moore said.
“Professor Ware is the natural choice to lead
the Southern Seminary Conference on Theology.
He is respected all around as one of the
most significant thinkers in American Protestantism
today. He understands the issues. And
he has the courage and conviction to speak to
issues others may find controversial or uncomfortable.
I look forward to working with Professor
Ware on leading a conference that doesn’t
just address ideas, but changes lives.”
Donald Whitney, who serves as professor
of biblical spirituality
and director of applied
ministry, has been promoted
to senior associate
dean of the school
of theology. Whitney
is the author of several
books, including Spiritual
Disciplines for the
Christian Life and Ten
Questions to Diagnose
Your Spiritual Health.
“The School of
Theology is not about
programs
or initiatives; it is
about being part of a cosmic
war plan
against the Serpent
of Eden,” Moore said. “It is
about
sending out pastors of
churches that are countercultural
outposts of the
Kingdom of Christ.
“With that the case,
nothing is more important
than discipleship and spirituality. Don
Whitney is the right man to serve with me as
we lead this School toward the sending out of
thousands of pastors and preachers into the
mission fields of North America and around
the world.
“He is a seasoned pastor, a respected
scholar, and the preeminent scholar among
Baptists and evangelicals
on issues
of spirituality and
discipleship. Years
before I knew him,
the Lord used Don’s
Spiritual Disciplines
for the Christian
Life to transform my
own walk with Jesus.
It is a joy to labor
with him every day
in a task in which
churches, souls, and
lives are at stake.”
Gregory A. Wills,
who serves as professor r
of church history and
director of the Center
for the Study of the
Southern Baptist
Convention, has
been promoted to
associate dean for theology
and tradition in the School of Theology.
He is the author of Democratic Religion:
Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline
in the Baptist South 1785-1900 and is currently
writing a history of Southern Seminary.
“Greg Wills, perhaps better than any
scholar alive, understands why the point of
a theological education is healthy churches,”
Moore said. “Professor Wills possesses a keen
mind and a pastoral heart and will serve with
distinction.”
The Southern Seminary community marked
the beginning of another academic year with
the Fall Kickoff Festival. Photos by John Gill
page 28
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth
By David Roach
Summer mission trips send
SBTS students across globe
Sharing the Gospel on university campuses
in a country largely closed to Christianity,
working with church planters in a remote
area of Canada and researching Japanese
immigrants in Argentina were among the
ministries conducted on mission trips this
summer by teams from Southern Seminary.
Through late-July, five mission trips coordinated
by the seminary’s Great Commission
Center have taken students and faculty
to three continents. The trips have gone to
East Asia; Argentina; Quebec, Canada; Newfoundland,
Canada; and South Asia.
“The Great Commission Center wants to
involve every student and every professor
in intercultural missions, both overseas as
well as among immigrants in the USA,” said
David Sills, director of Southern’s Great Commission
Center and associate professor of
missions and cultural anthropology.
Sills led a team of nine Southern students
July 1-14 to conduct research on how to
reach Japanese people living in Buenos Aires,
Argentina. After a week of class instruction on
Southern Seminary student Will Brooks (left)
explores Scripture with a university student in
Asia during one of five mission trips this summer
by students and faculty.
how to conduct ethnographic research, the
group surveyed the Japanese population.
In a trip to Gaspe, Quebec, Canada, June
24-30, a team of five Southern students and one
professor worked with a church-starting strategist
from the Canadian Convention of Southern
Baptists to prayer walk, share the Gospel and
encourage a family of church planters.
Trip leader J.D. Payne said there was at
least one significant victory on the trip when
his team showed a discouraged church
planter how he could partner with other
Baptists to improve the effectiveness of his
work. Payne serves as assistant professor of
church planting and evangelism at Southern.
The Newfoundland, Canada, team, which
was also led by Payne, worked July 15-21 with
the first Southern Baptist missionaries ever to
serve in Newfoundland. The team, made up
of 18 Southern students and faculty members,
encouraged the missionaries and shared the
Gospel with lost Newfoundlanders.
The team in East Asia shared the Gospel
on seven college campuses June 3-23
through activities such as basketball, English
classes and engaging people on the streets.
The group of nine Southern students shared
the message of Christ with at least 100 people
individually and saw at least three people
trust Christ as Lord and Savior. They were
able to spend a large amount of time discipling
each of the new believers and helped
them get connected to a local church.
Boyce College
Boyce guides Bone to
church music ministry
By David Roach
For Matthew Bone doing music ministry at Shively Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., began as a
part of his educational program at Boyce College. But it developed into an opportunity for him
to impact hundreds of Shively members by applying his Boyce education on a continuing basis.
Bone, a junior from Columbia, Tenn., went to Shively in the fall of 2005 to fulfill a Supervised
Ministry Experience component of his music ministry degree. After a semester of work,
however, he began talking to the church’s music minister and realized that there were needs he
could help meet if he would stay at Shively as a music intern.
“I was able to apply directly what I was learning at Boyce on a weekly basis to my ministry,”
Bone said. “Even the music theory classes that everyone hates were able to show me new ways
in which I could teach or plug in exactly what I was learning.”
Among the first projects Bone undertook in his new ministry role was to start a youth
choir. Approximately 40 teenagers signed up initially, and the ministry expanded both in its
numbers and in its impact. Last summer he took the youth choir on a tour through Tennessee
and Alabama.
Today, in addition to leading the youth choir, Bone leads the music in worship services
regularly, sings in the adult choir and fills in playing trumpet and guitar in the orchestra
when he is needed.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 29

With your help we can continue to build on the legacy of
Southern Seminary’s founding fathers. By investing in the
work of preparing God-called men and women for ministry,
you will play a vital role in advancing the Kingdom of God.
You will build a legacy.
You may give to the Annual Fund or through trusts and
annuities that offer tax benefits plus a lifetime income.
Also you may give through your will so that your
investment keeps on working for generations to come.
For more information on giving to Southern
Seminary, contact the Office of Institutional Relations at
1-800-626-5525, ext. 4143, or visit online at www.sbts.edu.
Invest in tomorrow’s churches. Build a legacy today.
The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary
page 30
Give online today! www.sbts.edu/alumni/giving
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

Southern donors won’t
regret one dime,
Dooley says
Bob and Patricia Dooley
“You can’t come
[to Southern] without being
inspired and feeling like your
donation is well spent. You’re
giving to the Lord.”
photo by Mark Kidd Studios
By David Roach
Anyone seeking for a reason to give to Southern Seminary needs only
to look at the impact the seminary’s graduates are having on the world,
said Bob Dooley, a seminary donor and member of the Southern Seminary
Foundation Board.
“If they would just look and see and listen to the men that come
out of the seminary and their passion for the ministry and for God’s
love and just listen to them and see what they have in their heart and
the energy they have for the Lord, they would just be so astonished,”
Dooley said. “It just amazes me the people that come out of there now
and the love they have for the Lord and the passion they have.”
Dooley is more qualified than most people to make such an assessment
because he has seen firsthand the type of ministers Southern
produces. His son, Nathan, graduated in 2005 with a master of divinity
and currently serves as associate pastor for high school ministry at First
Baptist Church in Naples, Fla. He credits much of Nathan’s success and
progress in ministry to the training he received at Southern.
“We had seen the progress that our son had made at the seminary,
and we were so proud of that,” he said.
Dooley was first introduced to the possibility of donating to the
seminary between six and seven years ago when Douglas Walker, Southern’s
senior vice president for institutional relations, served as interim
pastor of Dooley’s church in Lexington, Ky., Southern Heights Baptist
Church. Information from Walker combined with Nathan’s experience
to turn Dooley’s attention toward the seminary.
“We had seen the turnaround in the seminary because we had seen
the way the seminary had been in the past,” he said. “And to be truthful
about it, we had seen some negative points about the seminary in the
past. Going up there and seeing the positive points now, we were just
thrilled about it.”
Visiting chapel services on campus cemented in Dooley’s mind
Southern’s status as a place where doctrinal orthodoxy and passion for
God’s glory combined.
“I don’t think anyone can come to chapel with the speakers they
have there — Dr. Mohler, Dr. Moore and some of the others — and
hear the singing and the choir and the orchestra and everything,” he
said. “You can’t come there without being inspired and feeling like your
donation is well spent. You’re giving to the Lord.”
Professionally, Dooley is co-owner of Landmark Sprinkler Inc., a
company that installs fire sprinkler systems in residential and commercial
buildings. Some of his work has included installing sprinklers
in buildings at Southern. Dooley has owned part of the company for
twenty years.
In addition to his work, Dooley is also an active churchman at
Southern Heights. He currently serves as a deacon, as chairman of the
church’s pastor search committee and works extensively with church
finances.
“I’ve been on the finance committee for a number of years. I’ve
been treasurer since the early ‘90s. That’s been one of my major ministries,”
he said, adding, “That’s probably been my main interest.”
With his experience in church financial ministry and in business,
Dooley has a great concern for whether ministries use donors’ money
effectively and efficiently. At Southern, he said, donors can be confident
that their money is used responsibly and to advance God’s kingdom.
If potential donors could see the daily work of the seminary, “they
would see that what money they give, they would not regret one dime
of it,” Dooley said.
Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 31

People
and Places
Southern Seminary has a rich history of alumni serving Christ throughout the world.
The intent of this section is to help the seminary family stay close – whether that
be through the news of a new ministry position, a retirement, a birth or a death. To
submit information to People and Places, call 502-897-4143 or e-mail irprojects@sbts.edu.
Royce McNeal is completing 10 years as
assistant minister of music and senior adults at
First Baptist Church of Monroe, Ga.
40s
Ira “Mac” McMillen, Jr. (’44)
received the Ken Chaffin Award
from Georgetown College at the
annual Georgetown College pastors conference
on April 17. Hughlan P. Richey (’47) celebrated
his 65th year of ordination and his 89th
birthday on Aug. 26, 2006. R. Furman Kenney
(’49) is the author of “People Like M’Self ” by
AuthorHouse Publishing Co. Dr. and Mrs. Kenney
reside in Newport News, Va. John E. (’48)
and Arlena (Smith) Hasel (’48), Clermont, Fla.,
celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on
Sept. 10, 2007.
50s
Clyde R. Simms (’54) has retired as
pastor and director of missions.
Chaplain Vasten E. Zumwalt (’58)
and his wife, Betty, celebrated their 53rd wedding
anniversary Feb. 10. Vasten also celebrated
53 years as an ordained minister Mar. 14. He is
retired in Ponder, Tex. James Rice (’59) and his
wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary
last year. Rice is the pastor of Living Water Baptist
Church in Connelly Springs, N.C.
60s
Paul E. Epps (’61) recently retired
as pastor of Temple Baptist
Church, Madison, Ill. Jerry A.
Songer (’61) is the interim pastor of First Baptist
Church, Orangeburg, S.C. Edsel L. West
(’64) retired Jan. 2000 in Harriman, Tenn. He
is currently serving as chaplain and doing
interim work in Knoxville, Tenn. Avery Sayer
(’69) will retire after 34 years of service with
the North American Mission Board (NAMB)
as pastor/director of Weekday Ministries at
United Trinity Baptist Church in Queens, NY.
Sayer also taught for three years at Hong Kong
Baptist University. He and his wife, Myra (’67)
will move to Sharpsburg, Ga.
70s
William “Bill” P. Steeger (’70)
is the pastor of First Baptist
Church Paragould, Ark. Kenneth
H. Maahs, Sr. (’72) published his second book
The John You Never Knew: Decoding the
Fourth Gospel, Peter Lang Press, 2006. Maahs
also occupies the Clemens Chair of Biblical
Studies at Eastern University. Mark A. Stover
(’75) is preaching at FBC Dixie in West Virginia.
He is also hoping to start a prison ministry
soon. Douglas Van Devender (’76) has recently
published a book entitled PRAYER TALES:
Twelve Unusual Expeditions into the Human
Heart available from AuthorHouse.com.
80s
Isaac “Tim” Mizelle (’80) has been
promoted to associate professor in
educational leadership at Concordia
University, Chicago. Dr. J. Stuart (’83) and C.
Jeanette (’83) Cundiff celebrated their 50th wedding
anniversary with a trip to Istanbul, Turkey. Dr.
Cundiff retired after 18 years as director of missions
in Indiana and accepted the call as director
of missions with Franklin Association in Frankfort,
Ky. Heidi (Bright) Parales (’83) serves as the new
communications director for St. Thomas Episcopal
Church in Terrace Park, Ohio. David C. Howard
(’84) received his Doctor of Education in Ministry
degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological
Seminary in May. He also serves on the Board of
Trustees for Shorter College in Rome, Ga. Larry J.
Brant (’89) was appointed senior chaplain of the
Lincoln Chaplaincy Corps. He is also the associate
pastor of worship and discipleship at Southview
Baptist Church in Lincoln, Neb.
90s
Robert W. Bell (’90) was appointed
as the Dean of Erskine
Theological Seminary, July 1,
2006, in Due West, S.C. Robert Segrest (’90)
retired as Eastern Regional vice president of
the Tennessee Baptist Children’s Homes on
June 30. He and his wife, Barbara, now reside
in Ooltewah, Tenn. Craig Webb (’91) is the
editor of LifeWay’s Pastors Today e-Newsletter
and LifeWay’s Proclaim Online. He is also the
bi-vocational minister of spiritual growth at
Gladeville Baptist Church in Gladeville, Tenn.
Miguel A. De La Torre (’95) published a new
book Liberating Jonah: Toward An Ethics
of Reconciliation. Eugene Vann Burrus, Jr.
(’96) is the minister of music and worship at
Black Creek Baptist Church in Mechanicsville,
Va. Greg Heisler (’98) accepted a position at
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in
2005. He also published his first book, Spirit-
Led Preaching, with Broadman & Holman.
2000s
David S. Ro (’01) was
elected president of
the Council of Korean
Southern Baptist Churches in America at its
2007 annual meeting in June. Dr. Ro has been
pastor of River Dell Korean Baptist Church in
River Edge, N.J. Richard F. Jones (’03) is now
a Christian comedian based in Ohio. Bruce
Allen (’04) is the pastor of Underwood Baptist
Church in Underwood, Ind. Steve Doyle (’04)
recently planted a new church, Milestone
Community Church, in Dacula, Ga. David
Fee (’04) is the senior pastor of Summerlin
Community Baptist Church in Las Vegas, Nev.
Harry “Terry” Jones (’04) is the senior pastor of
Christ’s Church at Tiffin in Tiffin, Ohio. Frederick
“Freddy” Cardoza, II (’05) is the associate
dean at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
in Kansas City. He is also the associate
pastor of First Family Church, Overland Park,
Kan. Steven M. Darr (’05) is the pastor of First
Congregational Church in Torrington, Conn.
Jeremy R. Howard (’05) was named editor of
Bible and Bible references at Band H Publishing,
Nashville, Tenn., on July 1. Jim Langston
(’06) serves as pastor of Roosevelt Memorial
Church in Pine Mt. Valley, Ga. James Neilson
(’06) serves as pastor of Edgewood Baptist
Church in Beaver Falls, Pa. Chap. Bryan T.
Wright (’06) is a U.S. Army chaplain stationed
at Fort Thomas, Ky. He received his endorsement
from NAMB.
BIRTHS
James (’02) and Terra (’07) Santos announce
the birth of their first child, Hannah Mai,
born May 26. Eric Schumacher (’02) and his
wife, Jenny, announce the birth of their son,
Elijah Ames, born Aug. 2. Eric is also the pastor
of Northbrook Baptist Church in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa. Craig Wurst (’03) and his wife,
Heidi, announce the birth of their new son,
Jonathan Edward, born March 12. He joins
his sisters Abigail (4) and Kristine (2). Craig
is the pastor of Meadowbrook First Southern
Baptist Church in Moro, Ill. Brad King
(’04) and his wife, Nicky, have two children:
Jenna Grayce born Dec. 2, 2002 and Jackson
Bradley born May 23. Mark Day (’04) and his
wife, Angela, recently adopted two children
from Ethiopia. Jamie L. Coomer (’05) and his
wife announce the birth of their first child,
Nehemiah Layne, born July 15, 2005. Derrick
(’06) and Dawn (’03) Ousley announce the
birth of their first child, Walker Ross, born
Aug. 2006. Derrick is the pastor of First Baptist
Church Mt. Vernon, Ind.
page 32
Fall 2007 | Southern Seminary Magazine

DEATHS
T. T. Crabtree (‘49, ‘53, ‘74) on
Sept. 18, 2007. He pastored
several churches in Kentucky,
Tennessee and Oklahoma before
spending 19 years at FBC Springfield,
Mo. He served on Southern
Seminary’s board of trustees from 1959-1983
including a term as chairman.
Wilson Alvis Herring died April 22. He was the
founding superintendent of Sunny Crest Children’s
Home in Bakersfield, Calif.
1940s
Olivia Stephenson Lennon (’45) wife of John
Lennon (’48) died June 6. Dr. E. Lowell Adams’
(’45) wife died Feb. 2.
1950s
William Travis Bassett’s (’51) wife, Eva, died
Aug. 25, 2006. The Bassetts were married
for 54 years. Rev. H. Grady Jarrard, Jr. (’53)
died July 3, 2005. Capt. Joseph G. Lerner
(’54) died May 2, 2007 at the age of 91 after
a major stroke. He had been living in
Maple wood, NJ for seven years. Donations
may be made in memory of Joe Lerner by
making a tax-deductible gift to: The Joseph
G. Lerner Memorial Visitation Ministry, c /o
Morrow Memorial Church, 600 Ridgewood
Road, Maplewood, New Jersey 07040. James
A. Cates’ (’55) wife, Olivia, died Feb. 18.
Mervin A. Brown, Jr. (’56) died April 19.
V. William Tanyas (’58) died Jan. 9.
1960s
Monte “Tommy” Starkes (’64) died May 19 at
the age of 67 in Las Vegas, Nev. James F. Walters
(’64) died May 22 of a brain tumor. He
was the retired pastor of First Baptist Church
Mobile, Ala.
1970s
Eddie Ashmoore (’70) died June 18 at the age
of 64. Mr. Ashmoore was an employee at
Southern Seminary for 18 years.
CORRECTION:
Paul S. Carter (’50) died on Oct. 4, 2006 at
the age of 85. He pastored several churches
in the Baptist General Association of
Virginia during his ministry of 35 years.
Upon retirement he also served as interim
pastor of churches within the association.
Southern alum
becomes
college president
David Olive, a 1993 master of divinity graduate,
became the President of Bluefield College in Bluefield,
Va., July 1.
Olive served previously as an executive vice president
and chief operating officer at Pfeiffer University in Charlotte,
N.C. He is also an attorney and a licensed minister
who served as an interim and associate pastor at First
Baptist Church in Georgetown, Ky.
“The educational opportunities I had at Southern
certainly helped shape my ministry and my theological
underpinnings,” Olive said.
Army Chief
of Chaplains a
Southern alum
Douglas L. Carver was promoted to Major General during
ceremonies at Fort Myer, Va., on July 12. He is the
first Southern Baptist to hold the position of chief of
chaplains since Chaplain (Maj. Gen.) Ivan L. Bennett
held the post in 1954.
“The Scripture talks about how God is the One who
raises up leadership,” Carver said. “For such a time as
this, it has appeared that God has raised me up as a
Southern Baptist chaplain to provide spiritual leadership
for our chaplains in the Army.”
Carver earned an M. Div. degree from Southern
Seminary.
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Southern Seminary Magazine | Fall 2007 page 33

Sharper
Stronger
Better
A DMin for
the 21st Century
Southern Seminary has a strengthened DMin degree that
is practical, convenient, biblically based, and designed
with your ministry in mind. DMin concentrations are
available in:
• Evangelism and Church Growth
• Black Church Leadership
• Expository Preaching
• Biblical Counseling
• Missions Leadership
• Biblical Spirituality (Jan. 08)
• Korean Church Leadership
For more information about these exciting
programs, visit us online at www.sbts.edu/dmin
or call 1-800-626-5525, ext. 4113.
The Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary