You are stewards of something you don’t own,” President R. Albert Mohler, Jr., told graduates as he closed his charge from the apostle Paul’s first letter to Timothy. “You are stewards of a faith once for all delivered to the saints. You are the guards of the deposit entrusted to you.”
On Friday, May 8, 2026, faculty, family, and friends gathered on the Seminary Lawn for the 237th Commencement Ceremony of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. They joined together on a beautiful spring morning for a day Mohler called “marvelous” and “stupendous in gospel eyes,” celebrating the graduates as they prepare to take their place in pulpits, churches, classrooms, and mission fields around the world.
This year, 335 graduates representing 38 states and 22 countries received their degrees, sent out to serve and strengthen Christ’s church as pastors, missionaries, theologians, counselors, and scholars. As Provost Paul Akin prayed in his invocation, “May these graduates go forward for your glory, for the good of the church, and for the sake of the nations.”
Fight the Good Fight
Preaching from 1 Timothy 6:11–21 in a sermon titled “Fight the Good Fight,” Mohler set before graduates Paul’s charge to his beloved son in the ministry. The apostle’s letters to Timothy, Mohler told the class, are not merely historical correspondence but living charges that come down with apostolic authority to every minister who follows in the line of those called to preach. “You are the ones who now answer the call and bear the stewardship of the Christian ministry.”
Mohler pressed the urgency of Paul’s first command. “I think you would probably be well advised by a text that said avoid these things. Resist these things. Refrain from these things. But the apostle Paul to Timothy said no such thing. He said, flee these things.” Graduates are to flee false teaching, the love of money, and the wreckage that overtakes those who do not run from such dangers. Against the things to be fled, Mohler set the things to be pursued: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.
The third command defined the posture of gospel ministry itself. “We’re not sending you into peace,” Mohler told graduates. “We’re sending you into war. Fight the good fight of the faith.” It is a fight, he said, that this class has already glimpsed in the classroom, between those who hold the Scripture as the inerrant Word of God and those who would treat it as a merely human document, between those who stand for the faith once for all delivered and those who would revise it.
The climax of the sermon came at Paul’s final imperative, and it gave the day its anchor. Guard the deposit. The deposit, Mohler said, is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the entire treasury of faith, what Charles Spurgeon called “every coin of Scripture.” Graduates are entrusted with what does not belong to them. “When you go out into the fields of ministry, and some of you are already deployed, just guard the deposit that has been entrusted to you,” he said. “You are stewards of something you don’t own. You are stewards of a faith once for all delivered to the saints.”
Mohler reminded graduates that they had been formed by a long line older than the seminary, older than the medieval university, reaching back through prophets and apostles, patriarchs and preachers, reformers, Puritans, and missionaries. “We didn’t bring ourselves here. This generation didn’t just say let’s do this. Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have given sacrificially because they believe in the promise of the gospel and of the ministry.” Whatever they were taking from the seminary in the form of a diploma, he said, was “only the tiniest representation of what the Lord has done in you during this time.”
He closed with the apostle’s own signoff. After all the charges Paul issued across three pastoral letters, the apostle ended each one the same way. “Grace be with you,” Mohler said. “Paul said that’s all we have to say. It’s all we need to say.”
A Public Commissioning
The ceremony was marked throughout by Scripture, prayer, and worship. Hershael York read from Psalm 119 and Thomas Schreiner from 1 Timothy 4. Matthew Haste offered the prayer for the church, and J. Keith McKinley the prayer for the nations, lifting up graduates as they go to the fields where God has called them. Following the conferring of degrees, the Class of 2026 stood together to recite Southern Seminary’s Graduation Pledge, declaring, “We are soldiers of Christ, arrayed in truth, and we commit the length of our days to the service of our Savior.” The service concluded with the entire congregation singing “Soldiers of Christ in Truth Arrayed,” the seminary hymn written by Basil Manly, Jr. for the institution’s first commencement in 1860 and sung at every commencement since.
Honoring Teaching Excellence
This year’s Findley B. and Louvenia Edge Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence was presented to Ayman S. Ibrahim, Bill and Connie Jenkins Professor of Islamic Studies. A leading evangelical scholar of Islam and director of the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam, Ibrahim has shaped a generation of seminarians for ministry to Muslims. Named in honor of longtime professor Findley Edge and his wife, Louvenia, the award recognizes excellence in classroom teaching and faithful investment in students.