President R. Albert Mohler, Jr. used his report to the 2026 Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting to point messengers to the health and faithfulness of the convention’s six seminaries, and Southern Seminary in particular, crediting the convention’s long commitment to owning and funding theological education. In his 33rd annual report as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Mohler expressed gratitude for the faithful support of Southern Baptists and renewed Southern’s commitment to leading in training ministers for the churches.
Mohler told messengers that the unity among the six SBC seminary presidents is itself a sign of the convention’s theological recovery. He spoke of the peace, camaraderie, and shared purpose among the men who lead the schools, a marked contrast, he noted, to seasons in the convention’s past. He also marked the coming retirement of Daniel L. Akin, president of Southeastern Seminary and a former colleague at Southern, as a reminder that leaders are entrusted with their work only for a time.
That health, Mohler explained, rests on a conviction Southern Baptists settled long ago. When the convention was formed in 1845, its messengers committed to a learned, faithful ministry trained within their own institutions rather than borrowed from elsewhere. Southern Seminary became the convention’s first answer to that need in 1859, joined over the following decades by Southwestern, New Orleans, Gateway, Southeastern, and Midwestern as the convention grew. With the Cooperative Program adopted in 1925, Southern Baptists chose not only to fund their seminaries but to govern them through trustees elected by the convention.
That decision, Mohler said, set Southern Baptists apart. While much of theological education elsewhere has drifted from its purpose and abandoned its confessional foundations, the SBC’s seminaries have remained accountable to the churches that own them. Southern Baptists, he said, did not want schools standing merely alongside the convention; they wanted seminaries that belong to it.
The true measure of Southern Seminary, Mohler said, is not its numbers but its faithfulness. The Lord has blessed the institution in an unprecedented way, and it remains committed to leading in theological education that serves the churches and keeps faithful Southern Baptists faithful until Christ returns.