“The task of education, the task of teaching and learning, is an essentially theological task.” With that conviction, President R. Albert Mohler, Jr. set the terms for the Fall Convocation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College, gathering faculty, students, trustees, and guests in Alumni Chapel to consecrate the academic year to the Lord.
Mohler traced the seminary’s continuity with the medieval university, which emerged as a servant of the church. The name itself testifies to the universals, he noted, to the conviction that one sovereign God holds all truth and reveals it. He pointed to the evidence of that continuity in the scholarly dress worn by the faculty and in the congregation’s confession of the Nicene Creed, recalling the council at which the church faced the choice to stand or fall in confessing the one true Christian faith. “The church stood,” he said. There is a direct line from that to where we are now.”
The stewardship represented in the room, Mohler told the assembly, is measured by its consequences. “If this faculty misteaches, it will show up in the churches. If this faculty misleads, it will show up in souls. If this student body is merely casual in learning, it will fade away.”
Mohler preached from 2 Peter 3 in an address titled “Since All These Things Will Be Dissolved: Authentic Christian Education Must Be Aimed at Eternity.” Several people had asked what text he would use, and he said the answer drew strange looks. The passage describes the day of the Lord arriving like a thief, the heavens passing away with a roar, and the created order melting and burning. Peter calls it dissolved and uses the word three times. “Everything we know, everything we count on, not just breaking down, not just weaker than it was, not just winding down like a clock, but in this judgment on the day of the Lord melting away and dissolving,” Mohler said.
Mohler argued that the coming dissolving of all things gives the work of the year its weight. A secular president, he said, could only tell students to grab as much as they can and hold on as long as they can, because that is all there is. Southern Seminary and Boyce College students and faculty have books to read and write, papers to submit, lectures to attend, and a commission waiting for them in the churches and around the world. “All of this is to the glory of God,” Mohler said, “not in spite of the fact that everything is going to dissolve, but because of the fact that everything is going to dissolve… It’s good news because we’re looking for a new heaven and a new earth. And that reframes everything because it gives meaning to this life, to this term, to this semester, to this academic year.”
Mohler pressed the point as good news, expounding, “We’re the only people who can be told all things are going to be dissolved, but it’s good news,” he said, pointing to Peter’s promise of new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. God’s patience, he explained, is not slowness but purpose, time given so that the gospel may be preached and sinners may repent.
During the service, Mohler introduced three new faculty members: Trevor Coleman, Assistant Professor of Church Music and Worship; Bradley Green, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Theology; and Zachary Stanton, Associate Professor of Music and Worship.
The opening convocation was also the occasion for the seminary to welcome ten new members of its trustee board: Randolph Alles of Falls City, VA; Wesley Church of Columbia, SC; Nick Johnson of Lindsay, OK; David (Jeff) Mooney of Riverside, CA; Mark Pulliam of Louisville, KY; Austin (Hunter) Roe of Bremen, GA; Dave Russell of Charlotte, NC; Jason Simon of Oxford, MS; Matt Smethurst of Richmond, VA; and Jacob Speight of Inez, TX. The board holds the institution in trust on behalf of the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention, a governing structure established among the founding essentials of the seminary in 1859.
Concluding the address and sending faculty and students to their work for the semester, Mohler charged, “This is why this institution exists. This is why we’re gathered here on this day. This is why we are the people armed with this truth who are going to be undertaking this task before us with a renewed seriousness, simply because we know what is at stake.” He closed, “Judgment is coming. And all will be dissolved. And it’s going to be glorious.”
Watch President Mohler’s message here.