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Well, thank you all. I know that this is a different type of chapel that we get to come together. We will have good music from our bands coming back to us and engaging in opening the word. But it is important from time to time that we come together and know each other as a community. Much of what Dr. Dockery has mentioned is important for us to understand who we are at Southwestern and Texas Baptist College. So I know that you just got the introductions of the credentials of my colleagues that are up here, many of whom you have in class, and I know that you love. Let’s give it up for all of them one more time.
But just to orient the rest of us who don’t have you in class, just kind of real quickly, tell us about— We heard where you went to school, but tell us about your field. What’s your favorite class? Why is it your favorite class? And what really drives you as a teacher? We’ll just start with Dr. Bradford and go down the road.
All right. Well, good morning, everyone. My field is area of evangelism. My favorite class is contemporary evangelism, which I’m proud to say we have 108 people in that class this semester. Yeah, I’m excited about that class because it is a mixture between theology, Bible, and practice. Also, I love to get to see the face of the students when they realize they have to go out and engage individuals with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So that’s always good every semester.
Yes, in my field, I’m a bit of a mutt. I think church history is what I did my PhD in, and then I just decided to like do a bunch of other stuff for fun because I wanted to waste my money, I guess, and spend time. But in general, I study the thought of Augustine, as I often say, Augy’s my homeboy, and I think the thought of Augustine opens up a lot of vistas for theological reflection, spiritual reflection, historical reflection, and so I kind of make the joke that every one of my classes is about Augustine, just has a different title. So, but in particular, I really love teaching spiritual formation because it is an opportunity for us to bring a lot of conversation together under one banner, and then of course apply that to the spiritual life of the community, our personal spiritual life—it’s more than about disciplines. It’s much more about what I would call spiritual theology, taking the understanding of God, the deep things of God, and applying that to daily life and decisions. So, yeah, that’s my favorite class—not 108, but no, I’ll get there.
Yeah. So my field is philosophy, apologetics, and ethics. But particularly at Texas Baptist College, I teach the philosophy courses, teach critical thinking, and I think my favorite class is probably Great Books of the Enlightenment. Even though that’s the smallest class that I have and that I teach in the spring, the reason is when we go through the Enlightenment, what we’re encountering are a lot of the origins, or at least the articulations of concepts that have formed kind of the water we swim in today. That a lot of people don’t realize where they come from, and so we get to go back to the sources, we get to engage with them, we get to find out where we agree with them and where we disagree with them and why, and I’m really passionate about not just reading texts and asking what are they saying, but critically engaging with them. Do they make good arguments? Are they actually supporting what it is that they’re saying? And then the most important question for us, from a Christian worldview, out of a biblical understanding of reality, is this true? Do we agree with this? And if so, why? And if not, why not? I also just love watching students who have never heard of the names that we’re reading come out of that class, and very often, at least one of the books really hits home with them, and they go, “Man. This this was something I didn’t know that I would like, and I really came out enjoying it.” So that’s why I like to teach that class.
My specialty is public theology, Christian worldview, and Christian ethics. A little bit of historical theology, and it’s hard to say which class is my favorite because I really enjoy getting to teach all these classes, but I think I’m partial to Intro to Christian Ethics. I really enjoy sort of helping students think through just the different frameworks that people have used when it comes to you know deciding, making decisions, their behavior, and sort of how Christians think through that. What does it look like to, as Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” And what does that look like not only in the easy, very clear decisions that we have, but also some of the harder, grayer ones, particularly today in a very confusing culture. So we’ve had some great conversations in there about some very difficult topics.
So I really appreciate that. My specialty is missions and intercultural studies. I don’t know that I can pick a favorite. That’s super hard. I think every single one of my courses has a historical, theological component, a theological, missiological, biblical component, and then a practical component that I think is really transferable all around the world, not necessarily just overseas, but even right here in the U.S. And I guess cultural anthropology and cross-cultural communication—either one of those could fit the bill. I love those classes, but I love world religions, intro to missions, all those other electives that I teach as well. They kind of all come, I think, sort of like Dr. Ford mentioned sort of from the same place, the same heart. This desire to have students sort of lift their eyes from right where they’re at in their context and see the beauty of God’s creation, the wonder of God’s image in people all around the world, the diversity that’s there, and honestly, to maybe train some ethnocentrism out of our hearts in terms of discipleship, so that we can see the need to reach everybody all around us with the gospel where we serve right here in Texas or all around the world.
So I’m a professor of history and humanities. I teach broadly in history, the great books, courses, advanced topics. I think any given fall, whatever advanced topic I’m offering, will be the one I look forward to most. But week in and week out each semester, it’s church history, and just the joy of helping students see their place in the great tradition. And one of my academic heroes, Timothy George, used to always begin his church history class with, “I’m here to show you that people existed between Jesus and your grandma, and it matters.” And I really take that to heart. I think there’s such wisdom to be found in those who went before us, and to see our connection with them, and that I make my students read dead people and see that there’s really not that many new ideas. Most of the new ideas out there in church aren’t new, and they’re not good. And so that we can find the wisdom of the ages, and find that folks before us were wise and loved the Lord, and faced different issues from us, and so they’re not going to have the same blind spots that we do. And so when we can look at the faith through the ages, and not just look at the folks, but just remember who God is, that a study of history is going to show that God is faithful, faithful when people are faithless, and that is a great reminder for all of us.
Yeah, thank you all. That’s really encouraging to hear and to see the diversity that is across our faculty. Not everyone is here today. We have more professors in TBC, but this is a good sampling of our undergraduate program. Dr. Bradford, there are a lot of options in higher ed today for someone to go do an undergraduate program. Large state schools, other private schools, other Christian schools. So, what is it about TBC that sets us apart from other schools?
Yeah, I believe there’s about three things. It’s more than three, but for the sake of time, well, we’ll cover three, and they all kind of segwayed into one. Number one, as I think about the idea of faith integration, when we think about faith integration, how we weave our faith into our disciplines. Faith is as important in a systematic theology class just as much as is important in an English class that’s taught by Dr. Coleman Ford, and so it’s not just a part of a department. It is what we do. These individuals that you’ve heard from and others on our faculty, they teach in the master’s program at Southwestern as well, and so their whole life has been to lend itself to theology and Bible, and so this is not an add-on just in a chapel program, but it’s what we actually do.
So you want to get real faith integration. Second, I believe that the fact that our core value of being confessionally guided, we are more than that, but we’re tied to a seminary that we have a biblical foundation, a rich historical and theological convictions. That for someone to come here to Texas Baptist College, they know what they are getting. They can believe in our traditions and can believe in the Bible and affirm our convictions. And then, last, I would say, calling. Many schools you go to, calling is thought about as preparing a person for a particular skill where they can go out and earn a living. Others see calling as only spiritual, somewhere working in ministry. Well, we combine the two, and we see calling in that we are preparing our students to think biblically, have a biblical worldview, be able to interpret the world. We are training our students to be spiritually informed, spiritual transformation, and we are providing those skills where they can go out into the world, go into ministry, serve the church, and the world. So I believe that it’s calling faith integration and our confessionally guided.
Thank you for that, I think it’s important to recognize that we all need to be trained and equipped to think as Christians, and I think this faculty is committed to that. Not all of us are called to be pastors of churches or to be missionaries or to be on staff of churches or work in parachurch organizations. Many of us are called to other types of vocations, and our world needs, it needs people that are equipped and trained to think Christianly, and I love that that that’s what TBC is trying to do. Wherever you all may go in your undergraduate program, that we’re going to equip you to be successful. Another component of that is built into that confession, and that confession is part of who we are at Southwestern and TBC, and we’re a great commandment and a great commission institution.
And so, Dr. Rogers, could you just speak for a moment? You teach in the area of missions in our intercultural studies, but you teach beyond just our ICS students. You teach all of our students in TBC. Talk to us a little bit about how missions and intercultural studies is a part of who TBC is.
Well, of course, I mean we’re globally engaged, like the rest of our institution, and so that’s obvious. You know, kind of low hanging fruit there to mention that that we are, and so we should be. But thinking about global engagement is different for different people, and usually when we have an intro to missions class, one of the first things I say on day one is that look, if you’re here and you’re a Christian studies major or humanities major and you have been rolling your eyes and dreading coming into an intro to missions class, I just want to prepare you that this is exactly where you need to be. The reason being because we live in a mission field all around us, we’ve got people, and they’re not just lost people. That’s obviously true, but we’ve got people from every tribe, every tongue, every nation right here in Fort Worth and wherever we live, wherever we serve. And I think a lot of times what we do is we tend to be so focused on our church ministry or our staff role or what we’re doing and the people right in front of us that we don’t see the lost people across the street who might come from a different faith background or some different kind of worldview that we need to be equipped to be able to engage.
So honestly, if you’re going to be the best pastor you can be, you need cross-cultural training. If you’re going to be the best evangelist you can be, you need to be equipped to reach people from other backgrounds, other worldviews, and other religious perspectives. If you’re going to be the best youth pastor you can be, you need to be able to engage all the youth in your community, not just the ones who look like you or come from the same background. So these concepts, and that’s why we call it intercultural studies. Intercultural studies is very important, informative for every single person who’s going to be a believer. Honestly, not just somebody engaged in ministry, but especially for people in ministry. And yes, there are many who are called to go to the ends of the earth, and it also serves to equip you for that as well. But I love trying to call students to just lift their eyes a bit and look around them and see the world, and what does it really mean to be involved in the Great Commission here in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and also to the ends of the earth?
That’s great. That’s great. We want to make sure that all of us are focusing in on that mission imperative. Dr. Jennings, thank you for your comments earlier, especially about how you’re cultivating thinkers. What is a habit that you want all TBC students to have coming out of your classes, just for life, that you would want them to develop a habit in their heart, in their in their practice, a discipline? What is one thing that you would say all your students need to do when they leave here?
I think it’s a just general. I want them. I want them to think. We live in— You go well. Yeah, duh. But social media, right? I mean, that’s exhibit A that people don’t normally think before they speak, they don’t think before they react. They don’t think before they solidify on some sort of a stance. We live in a culture that is very emotionally reactive, that emotionally reacts to something that’s put before them, and only then tries to come up with reasons why that emotional reaction was accurate because certainly my emotions can’t mislead me. My emotions must be pointing in the right direction. So whatever my emotional reaction to something was, that must be the right reaction. And so we have this whole industry culturally of outrage, right? We call it rage baiting. That headlines are designed to get you to click on them because either you vehemently agree with what they say already and just want to be further affirmed in your agreement, or you vehemently disagree with what they say and want to rage at the person who wrote and talk about how obviously wrong they are. If you watch TikTok and you go down all of the posts on TikTok, you’ll see such and such position defeated in 30 seconds. Abortion destroyed in one minute. You’ll see these guys who are like, here’s one atheist versus 50 Christians, or one Christian versus 50 atheists. And I just want people to realize, if it’s something we’re still talking about, it cannot be defeated in one minute. If it’s something that we’re still debating, there is no mic drop argument that just gets rid of it. It’s something we have to engage, we have to think about, and we have to understand nuance, and we have to understand context, because our goal as Christians is not to beat people. Our goal as Christians is not to debate them into agreeing with us.
Our goal as Christians is to mirror Christ to them, and when you look at the Bible and you look at the way that people interact with each other in Scripture, they think, they critically assess, they bring in all of the tools that their worldview provides them, and they press those tools into service to try to help convince somebody to persuade them of the truth, and that can be in the form of poetry. That can be in the form of prose, like with Paul. It can be in the form of narrative, like with John, where at the end of his gospel he says, “I wrote these things so that you would believe.” I’m trying to persuade you through the narrative story of Jesus’s life, death, burial, and resurrection that He is the Christ, and I think that’s just something we’ve lost in culture: is the ability to think in nuanced ways, to assume that the person I’m talking to is not dumb, and has thought through what they’re claiming in some sense, but that maybe I disagree with them, and I need to be able to give good reasons for disagreeing with them, and so in that sense, we as Christians, and what we’re trying to train y’all to do here, is to go out into culture and to be the salt and the light, not because you win every argument, but because you can present people with a persuasive argument for the truth that opens up their heart to hear the gospel, so that they can be transformed by it. If Christianity is true, then it can withstand any attack thrown against it, any question asked of it, and we ought to be able to engage that well. That’s just what I want to train people to be able to do.
I think it’s important to everyone to hear what Dr. Jennings has said. We do live in a culture that is just driven by feelings. Many of you decided to come to chapel today based upon feelings. Like, do I come here because I actually want to come with the community that’s at TBC and Southwestern? Do I come here because I want to learn something and grow? Do I come here because I have to swipe my card in the back to be a part of this group? And we want you holistically in our curriculum, in our co-curriculum, and everything we do on this campus to become better thinkers. The society we live in has stopped thinking, and we have the ability to think better and to think Christianly. So I just want to double click on that. That’s really great. Thank you for that.
Could you tell us a little bit more how, in the decisions that you make and that the faculty makes, and in their classrooms, these students sometimes feel like there’s a distance between you and the faculty and them, and there should be. They are the professors, you are the students. But how does our being student-focused come into the decisions you make in leading TBC?
Yeah, I would like for our students to know that you are a part of every aspect of this campus, our curriculum, our faculty, as we think about how to best propel TBC into the future. And so whether that’s thinking about how we spend our schedule, this is something that we talk about in faculty meetings and in faculty evaluations. What are we doing with our time? And so our faculty are committed to a couple of times a week of being in the lunch hall and talking to our students about life and talking about curriculum, we are committed to spending time with our students outside of the classrooms. We talk about the co-curricular and going to events and engaging with them and mentoring them.
I can give you two examples in other areas. Just this week, we had a dedication of a reading room dedicated to our Texas Baptist College students, a place where they can go and read, and quietly meditate and be able to learn. And that came out of observation and conversations. That came out of observing that our students kind of needing to go across the campus and go to the library and study before class, only to try to get some time and run back before the class. So seeing students in a classroom trying to study before another class, it come about through conversations as we’re talking to students and expressing and saying we wish we had a place like that, and so we are listening to what our students need and what’s a help to them.
We are even observing when students think we are not. Give you an example, chapel, right? We’ve always had chapel, and I’m grateful for that. But I’ve been in the dean role going into my third year now, and I remember coming in. One of the first things I did was to look at some of the reflections of the chapel. And we, as I read some of the reflections, there were things like the lights were cool, the music was banging, right? And we laugh at that. But that gives me an opportunity to let me know that our students are lacking something as it relates to chapel. So we change that. We ask three important and primary questions now. Number one, what was the thesis of the talk? Number two, what was the supporting points of that talk? And in 75 words or more, taking what was said, how do you apply it to your life to make you a better informed disciple for Jesus Christ into the bedroom of God?
So whether it’s chapel, whether it’s curriculum, whether it’s bringing on a new faculty member, we’re always thinking about our students and what gives our students the best experience and trains them up in a way that they can be better used by along.
Yeah, just a follow up to that on the student focus side of things. I know that when students look at their curriculum and they see the scope and sequence and they see some classes, like oh, I really want to take that class. I hear this is wonderful. Like Dr. Ford’s going to teach us. I want to be in there. And then they look at other classes, and you kind of alluded to this already. Like, do I really want to take, you know, the intro to missiology? Do I want to take Baptist heritage, Baptist history and heritage? And I know that Dr. McKinney and I both teach that class, and students often bemoan having to take that one at times. Dr. Bradford, how does the ability of being student-focused come into the creation of this curriculum, especially in sometimes classes that students might not want to take, what goes into the decision-making factor to build a curriculum that really is student-focused?
Yes, as we’re looking at curriculum, we’re thinking about how does this class help our students think? How does how help our students develop a biblical worldview. How does this class, this particular curriculum, help our students to go out and be effective in ministry for the Lord? And so every class has that behind it. Me personally, and I know as well as some of my colleagues here, I like to take the first day of the class and go through the syllabus and talk about is each activity important? Each assignment important, and what is going to lend itself, and how it’s going to transform you throughout this semester? So yes, as we look at the curriculum and we think about the curriculum, we have no classes that are just like, hey, we just need an extra class, so we’ll put this class here. Every class is thought about and how we can transform our students through that.
Thanks for that, Dr. Ford. Earlier on, you talked about all your classes pretty much being the same class, in the sense of all being taught from Augustine, right? And of course, as has been said since the medieval period, everything is just a footnote on Augustine, right? But you do teach a lot about spiritual formation, and some of this comes from Augustine’s thought. Some of this comes from others. How does that idea of spiritual formation transcend from your classroom into the co-curricular aspects of TBC, into the just the broader culture and community of TBC. How do you approach that that task in in class, outside of class, and how does TBC as a whole embody it?
Yeah, it’s a good question because spiritual formation is our task as educators in a Christian environment, higher educational environment. We are called to spiritually form students toward gospel ministry, missions, local church, or other vocational settings where they can honor the Lord. And going back to the class, the way that I structure the class is I actually weave the narrative of Pilgrim’s Progress throughout the class, so that you know the journey of Christian going towards the celestial city, and try to connect topics to that really great narrative by John Bunyan. So it’s not just all about Augustine, but and I think that narrative is very helpful for us because it is the narrative of our entire life. As we encounter the vanity fairs of our life, how are we going to pursue faithfulness as we need the faithfuls that come alongside us, as we enter into the house of the interpreter, as we consider the community of faith that is necessary for our spiritual vitality. That’s not just a classroom conversation. That’s not just a three-hour block on a on a schedule. That is the entirety of the Christian life, right? I mean, I know you believe this, but who are we without the community? Right. So the community of faith, and this is a community of faith, but in particular, we’re talking about the local church in the sense that you are not a complete Christian without the community. You are lacking in your spiritual growth, and this doesn’t mean your community is perfect. Doesn’t mean that you don’t have church woes or leadership issues. But the way that the Lord has wired it, because He Himself is community, is that you must exist in community with others in order to grow in the way that God has ordained into the image of Christ, and so that’s a lifelong conversation. That’s something that impacts and connects to every single facet of our life, because again, this is what marks out Christians. We are a particular community of faith that does particular things for the sake of the world, for the glory of God, and so we, of course, weave that into I think many of our activities. Right again, we don’t presume to be the church. That’s not what we would say. But when you have other activities like our TBC Chapel, which is a unique event, or you have mentorship groups like I lead and other faculty lead, or other iterations of that, right? All of that, I would think, is an opportunity to tug on the thread of how are you going to be a faithful member of the community once you leave here, or as you are here. And if we can do that, like if we can graduate y’all and say, I still love the church. I want to be a part of the church. I’m not sure which local church yet. Maybe I’m going to be a part of, or leading, or being a minister in. But if you can walk away with a greater love for the community of faith, educationally, I think I’ve succeeded. I think we’ve done our job. So yeah, so I think that’s how we weave it together, and the hopeful goal that comes out from that.
That’s great. I think that there are so many opportunities in the classroom, outside the classroom, for us to build that community formation. We are really blessed to have Alex Miller as part of our community here and our student life teams. If you’re in part of the student life team, just raise your hand and or shout out. So like, they’re really humble, but they serve really well, helping us, and so let’s give themtThanksgiving for the great work that they’re doing. Because I know that we do have events that that come up throughout the year, and all these events with student life is intended to build upon this sense of spiritual formation. Sometimes it’s a very deep conversations like our mentor groups. Sometimes it’s how the faculty is going to really, really destroy the students Friday night in the kickball game. So just make sure you come out and see how the how the faculty is going to win out, right, guys? Dr. Ford, that’s sports ball, so it’s a game, so but all these things that they come together to to form us spiritually.
So I appreciate your thoughts there, but we do go into a world that is antagonistic towards Christianity, towards faith, and into a culture that we are called to be light in, and so, Mr. Darling, if you could talk to us a little bit, you’re also the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement. Could you talk to us a little bit more about how your classes and your part of the curriculum at TBC helps form us to be able to engage culturally?
Yeah, I think you know the purpose of thinking about engaging the culture Christian worldview, as many of you have set up here, is just that God is sending us out into the world as it is. Right? Jesus said in the John 17 that He has not taken us out of this world, but he’s put us in this world, and he has not erred in having us live in this time and place. Right, he has made us to live in this moment, and so how do we represent Christ well wherever we go? And I think really it’s important for us. I say this to my own kids. I have two in college, two in high school, and I also say to my students that your education here, obviously, there’s an end in mind immediately that you want to get your degree, like to get a job. You know, those are all important things. That credential to get a job is good. Your parents will eventually want you to, you know, have a job and be able to support yourself. But that’s not really the main goal of your time here. That your time here is to form you for all of life. That your calling encompasses all of your life, not just where you get a paycheck. And so you’re a future husband, future wife, future church leader in some capacity, future citizen, and being able to think well about all these different things is really important, and to be able to engage the world that God is sending you into is really important.
And so every day we’re flooded with all these kinds of ideas and ideologies that come across our social media timelines, come through pop culture, that come through conversations with friends, and being able to understand and think and apply the Christian worldview, apply scriptures to these things is really important. Because if we don’t understand how to do that, we’ll be, as Paul says in Ephesians, we’ll be tossed about by a pretty winded doctrine. And you see Christians who really don’t have that worldview basis kind of drift one way or the other. There’s several ways to drift, by the way, and you’ll be taken along by your favorite celebrities that have ideas, or maybe your political party, or maybe all these sorts of things that will just pull you, and all of a sudden you find yourself in a place of like, you know, you’re believing things that are really at odds with God.
So to have that firm worldview to think through these things. This is one of the things I tell my own kids. People think of school as, well, am I ever going to use this in the workplace, right? Well, most of what you’re learning, you’re not going to use in that sense. Except you are using it because it’s shaping the whole person. The whole of you is going into that workplace, into that community, to that family, and as a witness for Christ. And so, all of it matters, and to have this dedicated time in your life to be shaped and formed, to be able to interact with the world as it is is really important.
Thank you for that. That’s helpful. You all are academics in your fields, and you want to write and research deeply, and then teach from that, and so sometimes professors can be completely focused on research across higher education, but the faculty at TBC have an ability to have this high level academic rigor, but also see that the purpose for why we exist, and we exist as to serving Christianity, to serving the churches. So, Dr. McKinney, can you talk to us from your own seat of how you kind of balance this strong drive for academic rigor for yourself and for your students, but also trying to have the other side of being balanced in a kind of a pastoral ministerial care model as well. So, how do you do that as a professor?
Yeah. So, if we believe the Bible, which we do, Christ is preeminent, and Christ is excellent, and He has called us to love the Lord with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so, Christian education should be excellent. It should be rigorous. It should be hard. Unfortunately, too often in culture, that Christian adjective before something can mean it’s worse, like Christian film. But Christian education should be better. It should be rigorous. It should be something we are seeking to love the Lord with our minds, and seeking to learn to think Christianly, and to take to be able to learn different ideas that challenge our own, and be able to restate them in such a way that people say, “Yes, that’s my idea,” and then say why it’s wrong with conviction and stability, and so that means that we hold students to high standards. This is part of college life: is learning to step into that adulthood and step into responsibility.
You’re training for ministry, and you show up on Sunday morning and say sorry guys didn’t get the sermon done had a busy week can I have an extension you’re not serving the church. And so we want to make sure that people are doing their work and people are pursuing excellence and they are seeking to honor the Lord in how they do their work and yet with that, we all know what it’s like to have a really bad semester. Things go wrong, and things are difficult, and sometimes it’s something happened to you. Maybe you know, broken feet happen. You know, car accidents happen. Things happen, and you have to have some grace, and then sometimes we do things to ourselves, right? I keep a box of booklets in my desk for the students, the high achieving students that come in, who have found their identity in A pluses their entire lives, and think that they are somehow less if they get a 92, and we laugh, but it’s true.
So many people find their identity in their performance, and it’s good to be reminded: you are not your grade. You are not your transcript. You are who you are in Jesus, and part of our job is to both hold you to a high standard, but also to remind you of the gospel of Christ, to remind you what your identity actually is. And so, with all that, I’ll go ahead. I haven’t talked to them ahead of time, but I’ll go ahead and speak for all of us. If you are, if your life is falling apart. Come to us, talk to us, tell us why you’re having trouble with that paper. Use your words, Doctor Rogers says, because we care. We care for your souls. Your souls are more important to us than your grades, and I don’t know about y’all. I don’t really remember who got the B minus. I don’t look at people and see grades floating above their heads, but I think people often can think that we operate that way. What remember is where I’ve seen growth in people, where I’ve seen faith, and sometimes that’s when people messed up and they owned it, and they grew, and that’s part of our Christian walk together. We are all sinners redeemed by grace, and we are all growing into the image and excellencies of Christ by the by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, rigorous. Do your work. Turn it in on time. If you do your work on time, honestly, you’ll do well in every class. But at the same time, if life gets hard, you’re part of a church, and you should be. And you’re part of a Christian community that loves you and cares for your soul.
Thank you for that. We want to push a rigorous program here. We want you to work as hard as you can and strive for excellence. This honors the Lord, but this term will come to an end. These classes will be over, and the relationship we have with you is what’s most important. That you’re part of a community of Southwesterners that are around the globe, that are doing the work of the Lord. Some in churches, some on the mission field, some as business leaders, all leading in the name of Christ. And so, it’s more important to be part of that culture as a Southwesterner. I think is important.
Question for all of you, and we’ll start on the other end here, Dr. McKinney. You have a book that’s about to come out, and so some of you have books that are about to come out. Some of you have books that you’re working on. So if we could just briefly go back around this way to Dr. Bradford and tell us objects are on the horizon for you.
So I have a book coming out october 20, the German Protestant Church struggle toward a new history, looking at the experience of German Protestants under the first four years of the Nazi Reich, and then Dr. Ford and I have a book coming out at some point that we’re working on death.
I’m not sure I can follow it up. Dr. Copeland and I are in the middle of writing an introduction to missions textbook because we don’t like any of the ones that are out there, and we convinced B&H that there needs to be a new one that’s actually more Baptistic and has a lot of awesome things that we want all of you to buy copies of. So anyway, that’s coming out next year.
I am also writing. I’m a commentator for the Spiritual Warfare Study Bible that’s coming out also next year I’m doing the commentary for First and Second Peter, First, Second, Third John, and which is new for me—not new to study those books, but new to do a study Bible kind of thing to do the notes and articles for that. That’s been fun, and then the next project on the horizon, I’m going to write the definitive work on animism in traditional religion, and hopefully we’ll start on that next year. So pray for that.
I’m got a few things in the hopper. I’m contributing to a study Bible with Thomas Nelson. It’s called the Way of Christ Study Bible, doing all the passages on government and community, those kinds of things, and then I have a book co-authored with a friend of mine, Dr. Dennis Greason, and it’s a book on parenting and Christian worldview. It’ll be out in a few months, and then I just turned in a manuscript to Moody Publishers, an advent book on the prophecies of the incarnation.
So, yeah, I’m finishing up a book called Thinking with Scripture, and it is looking through passages in Scripture, asking how do the biblical authors think? What kind of argumentation strategies are they using? How do we discern what it is they’re trying to say? And then the real question is, how do we let? How does that form our minds to think well? Kind of basing it off of Psalm one and the idea that the one who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night will be like a tree planted by streams of water, and that there ought to be these mental formation aspects of reading scripture just as much as there are heart formation, because all of that’s unified as the whole of us. And if we are transformed, then our minds are transformed. So that’ll be coming out next summer, as long as I hit all of the deadlines that they’ve asked of me.
And then I was fortunate to contribute an article to the upcoming new edition of the Apologetic Study Bible. Ted Cable, who is one of our senior professors at the seminary, is the general editor of that. I got to write a short essay on whether the Bible teaches that all lost people go to hell. We believe that people will be in hell for all of eternity, but not everybody agrees with that or thinks that that is a good doctrine, and so that’s an apologetics issue. I was also fortunate to contribute some very short essays to the upcoming new edition of the Net Study Bible, and so those are things that I’ve got going on, plus some more academic projects going on that I’ll be presenting at Evangelical Theological Society and Evangelical Philosophical Society annual meetings this fall.
These are great. These are fun. The Death Book is on the docket. Dr. Grace and I also have a book coming out in a couple months on how Baptists do spiritual formation. Okay, there you go. My class right now is previewing that book, just so you know. Then they have to buy it once it comes out.
Yes, I have a book that I’m trying to wrap up on Christian spirituality according to the earliest church fathers. So looking through sort of their lens and how they did and lived out the Christian life. Also, going to be working on a book soon called “40 Questions on the Early Church,” the series by a publisher called Kregel. So, me and a co-author are working on that. Really excited about that. Yeah, some dictionary entries and things that are kind of looming. The more sort of nerdy stuff that’s out there that I still have to get done, but running a dictionary entry on Ignatius of Antioch and sort of his biblical interpretation for a Brill encyclopedia, and a chapter coming out on beauty in patristic tradition with a Baker academic book. That’s coming soon.
Actively working on three books. Glad to know. Number one, a textbook. Dr. Grace asked me the other day. He heard me talk about it. He said, “Why do you need another textbook in evangelism?” I said, “Because I didn’t write the other ones, so therefore we need one.” And but you know, also I was talking to my friend Trey Moss, and he said, “Man, we just need an evangelism textbook that says what the Bible has to say and is academic in nature.” It’s just not all the way practical, and so we want to do that to that end. Second, a book on Jesus and personal evangelism. Again, a similar situation. Many of the books that we have in that area are very practical, and so we want more academic rigor as it relates to that, and then a love of mine where what I did my dissertation in is charismatic interpretation. I want to publish that, but I do understand when sometimes you write a dissertation, you need to go back, let it sit for a little while, and go back and then put things into it, and so I want to publish something on charismatic interpretation, showing how curriculum, the proclamation of the first century church, has changed from particularly the New Testament scholarship from the 18th century into the 21st century.
That’s great. They are busy, so I know you were looking at your syllabi, and you’re like, “How do I get all this work done? I have all these assignments.” These professors just keep adding this, but they’re also they also have assignments and they have due dates from publishers and they’re working hard.
I hope you get to see that that this isn’t just fun that they do. They do like writing and researching. The fruit of that comes to play in your classes, and you become the recipients of the research that they’re engaging in, so we have a great faculty at TBC that are working forward in the mission of Southwestern Seminary and helping equip our students and moving forward in the areas of culture and Bible and theology. So I’m very appreciative for all of them and what they are doing.
But as we come to a close, Dr. Bradford, what’s the future of TBC? Where do you see where this group is going?
I think for TBC we need to approach the future in two different ways. Two ways. Number one, we continue to lean into our core values. I would hope that all of our faculty knows and our student know those are not just components that Dr. Dockery taglined and put up there for something to be cool for people to be interested in our school, but these core values drive who we are as a faculty and as we are as an institution
So we want to continue to be grace-filled, Christ-centered, scripturally grounded, confessionally guided, globally engaged, and also student focused. But another component of that, I believe that as we talk about scope, we need to consider the opportunity we have before us to expand our scope, not change our identity as those core values, but to expand our scope. And one of the ways I mean to do that is our offerings and what we have for students that are coming, students that will be starting each and every semester. So we, as a faculty, have been actively looking, investigating, and working towards offering new degrees—some of the ones that just come off my mind. No promises to any, but come off my mind. Business, education, communications, things of that nature. And when we think about this, someone may say, “Well, hey, you’re just talking about adding more programs and just being a liberal arts school.” No, we’re talking about keeping our same identity and broadening our scope that we can bring on more students, more people for the kingdom like yourself, and have them serve in as many sectors in the world as possible, and may be a witness for Jesus Christ.
Well, that’s great. We look forward to seeing how the Lord is moving in Texas Baptist College and Southwestern Seminary. Let’s give our panel a round of applause. I know that as you get to know them, you get to work with them, work alongside them, have them in class, that you appreciate them greatly. But I know that they would love a word of encouragement as well. So when you have a time to say thanks for what you’re doing in my life, I know this faculty would appreciate it. Thanks for being here at chapel today.
