“Our Gospel Fellowship”: The Presidential Inaugural Address of Robert E. Naylor

Introduction

Robert Andrew Baker’s history of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Tell the Generations Following, relates much about its founding, difficulties, and growth.¹ Baker covers the history of the Seminary through 1983, but makes claims about the Southern Baptist Convention’s Seminary in Fort Worth that remain accurate years later. One of those claims is found in the title of the chapter on the years under Naylor’s presidency, “Unprecedented Growth.” This period of Southwestern Seminary’s history is one of great growth numerically, financially, educationally, and spiritually. 

The birth of the Seminary in 1908 and the birth of its fifth President came not far apart. Born January 24, 1909, in Hartshorne, Oklahoma, Robert Ernest Naylor was a man whose calling and determined work led him to graduate college and matriculate at the Seminary by the age of 19, having received special permission to enter at such a young age. He would go on to pastor and lead a variety of churches, including Fort Worth’s own Travis Avenue Baptist Church. Having served on the Board of Trustees of Southwestern Seminary when the search committee was seeking a candidate, the Board looked to Naylor to fill the role leading Texas’s Baptist Seminary into the future. 

For twenty years Naylor cast his vision for the Seminary and its three schools, leading to great growth in all areas. For instance, the teaching faculty grew from 53 employees to 125 by the end of his tenure in 1978. Similarly, the budget grew from $1,349,846 to $6,396,434; all salaries at the institution quadrupled; buildings were built and remodeled; the endowment grew; and most of all, student enrollment increased from 2,395 students to 4,136. This work was accomplished with many across the campus, including John Earl Seelig, Jesse James Northcut, Huber Leland Drumright, John Paul Newport, and Florence M. “Floy” Barnard. But the visionary leadership and strong work ethic of Robert Naylor arguably vaulted Southwestern Seminary forward during this time.

At the end of his career Naylor would summarize the two decades of his work as aimed at his commitment, with the trustees, to “faithfully follow Him [the Lord] and that we would adhere to the authoritative revelation of God in Christ Jesus set forth in the one book.”² Baker’s assessment was that Naylor remained consistent: “From his inaugural address to his last word to the trustees, he magnified the gospel of Jesus Christ and the need to take it to every person.”³

What follows is an edited transcript of the address that Naylor delivered on November 25, 1958, to mark his inauguration as President of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Here one can see the leadership that led Southwestern Seminary to become one of the largest seminaries in the world. Naylor had a vision not just for teaching students but for all Southern Baptists to cooperate as one body for Kingdom Advance and Great Commission work.

The biblical text he chose for his address is Roman 1:16, an apt exposition for the simple necessity of the gospel. For Naylor, that gospel is the singular idea that ties all Southwesterners together, from Benajah Harvey Carroll in our beginning to the numerous graduates serving to the uttermost ends of the earth today. As Naylor unpacks the biblical text and the Christian gospel, in more than a periodic expositional style, we hear from a visionary leader who saw where Southwestern Seminary needed to go.

Naylor knew the cost for him and for his students. Some would even pay the ultimate price. Yet our fifth president declared, “Let us not be afraid of the price that is demanded.” The gospel provides the content of the fellowship that binds the seminary and the center from which it must go forward. The gospel brings unity but also “demands a Seminary.” More than anything, Robert Naylor knew at the beginning of his leadership that this gospel fellowship “promises a victory.”

The inaugural address of Robert E. Naylor as the fifth President of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, originally presented in 1958, is published here as a means of encouraging faithful reflection upon the centrality of the gospel of Jesus Christ for Southwesterners yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

“Our Gospel Fellowship”

Edited by Malcolm B. Yarnell III

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek (Rom. 1:16).

Is there a single word that can tie together the first year of this Seminary’s life with this year and the last year? That can include the germ years in the womb of a new continent when the light of the gospel was often but a single ray in the darkness? A word that includes the change in a man which is the new birth and at once the change in a world by the witness of changed men? A word that can call forth names that ought to be called upon such an occasion: Boyce, Broadus, Carroll, Scarborough, Head, and Williams?⁴ A word that can make the events of this day here a part of the bloodstream of the kingdom of God?

There is! There is a single word that includes the founding fathers of this institution; the faculties and administration—past, present, future; the students who have become alumni and changed the course of this present world; the men and women yet to be trained; the great army of men and women that have believed in Southwestern, befriended it, made contribution to it and through it, willed their estates to its ministry.

The Word is Gospel

The word is Gospel. Paul said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” Seventy-two times it is the Kerygma, the Proclamation, the Message. One hundred and twenty-nine times it is the “evangelism” (evangelion), the good news. This gospel is the least common denominator for all believers. It is the common ground on which we stand. It is the point at which our ministries are met.

The gospel was the ministry of Jesus. Matthew writes, “Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people” (Matt. 4:23). Mark begins his gospel, “The beginnings of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Paul speaks of “fellowship in the gospel” (Phil. 1:5), “defense and confirmation of the gospel” (v. 7), “furtherance of the gospel” (v. 12), “glorious gospel” (2 Cor. 4:4).

C. H. Dodd describes the unity of the Scriptures at this point. It lies in what the New Testament itself calls “the proclamation,” “the message,” “the Kerygma.”⁵ And again, “With all the diversity of the New Testament writings, they form a unity in their proclamation of the one gospel.”⁶ This unity wrought by the gospel, recognized by other scholars, is not only the basic wonder of the Scriptures but it is the marvel of kingdom fellowship. We are gospel preachers, teachers, students, witnesses. The meaning of our ministries and the unity in our diversities is the gospel.

What is this gospel, you ask? Paul states the hard core of it, the irreducible minimum that is in it, in First Corinthians 15:3-4, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” He declares that this was a gospel which he had received. It had been committed to him from other lips and lives. It was the gospel formula preached by the apostles and by the disciples scattered abroad by persecution. Anything less than this is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Not only did Paul receive this gospel but he delivered it unto these Corinthians. The receiving and the delivering are properly tied together. As we shall see, this is the inevitable sequence of the true gospel.

A Factual Gospel

First of all, this is a factual gospel. It is not first an emotion nor an ideal, but there are certain historical facts which lie at the very heart of the gospel. These facts are three: Christ died, he was buried, and he rose again the third day. These matters are historically attested. You do not believe the gospel, nor can you be said to preach the gospel if you do not believe and preach these basic facts.

Christ really died. Need there be any insistence upon the reality of His death? Are there any who would question the fact that he is dead when those around the cross pronounced Him dead? The Scriptures insist upon the reality of the death of the Son of God. Jesus, the Messiah, went to the cross and died in the same sense that we die. The expressions used of his death are the same: “He was killed” (Acts 2:23) or “slain” (Rev. 13:8), the Scriptures say. “He expired” (Luke 23:46); “he breathed out his soul” (Matt. 27:50; Luke 23:46); “he gave up the ghost” (John 19:30). Jesus really died (Rom. 5:8; 1 Cor. 15:3; etc.)

There is a tendency on the part of some to think that there was some divine illusion about the death of Jesus. There are those who would spare him the agony, the separation, the emptying, the struggle, which are all a part of death. Yet the gospel we preach declares that Jesus really died on the cross of Calvary.

The fact that he was buried is but to put the seal of finality upon his death. It does not require the hollow echo of the rock as it is rolled against the tomb to prove his death. But the very fact that he is laid away in this borrowed tomb is to declare to the world that the finality of the death of Jesus is surely once for all.

The third fact is that he arose again on the third day. The grave did not hold him. The resurrection is a reality. He is Lord of life and Lord of death (John 6:68; Rom. 14:9), Lord of time and Lord of eternity (Eph. 1:10; 1 Tim. 1:17; 6:15-16). It was a generally accepted fact for twenty-five years after its occurring that Jesus arose from the dead.

The interpretation which ties these facts together to give them life, to make them a gospel, to make them the gospel, is that Christ died for our sins. Upon the cross of Calvary, he actually bore the guilt of the responsibility for my sins. Peter said, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). The “once” is once for all (cf. Rom. 6:10; Heb. 10:10-14). His atoning sacrifice was a sufficient, adequate, total, final sacrifice of God for our sins.

Paul said, he “gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world” (Gal. 1:4). No wonder then that there is hope in the good tidings. No wonder then that “hope springs eternal.”⁷ No wonder that this is the great unifying tie of our ministries, this gospel that Christ died for our sins.

All of this, his death and his resurrection, was “according to the Scriptures.” This must be in the formula. This is a part of the gospel. He came in the fullness of time, not ahead of time, not behind time, but in God’s time. He came as it had been prophesied. He came according to the divine love and purpose of God. This is the fulfillment of God’s redeeming love.

That the Scripture was so fulfilled is to declare not only that Jesus is the Saviour but that he is Lord. It promises the judgment of God upon this world. It indicates the intercession of Jesus, “whoever lives to make intercession for us” (Heb. 7:25). It offers the promise of the world to come.

This is not an exposition of the gospel but simply a laying bare of the heart of our fellowship. Here in the Good News is our tie. On this ground every Christian stands.

A Fellowship of Appropriation

We have then the fellowship of appropriation in our acceptance of the gospel. Brunner, in his book, Man in Revolt, says, “Faith in Jesus Christ is not an interpretation of the world but it is participation in an event; in something which has happened, which is happening, and which is going to happen.”⁸ This gospel can only be individually accepted because it is the individual offer of the redemption of God in Christ Jesus. Each one of us must face Him with our sins and receive Jesus as our Saviour.

This is the supreme crisis in life, when we hear the gospel. It is not simply the meeting place with the written word, but it is a personal encounter with Jesus. James Stewart says, “The very proclamation constituted for the hearers a divine invasion crisis.”⁹

That is what happened to Pilate when he said, “What shall I do then with Jesus which is called the Christ?” (Matt. 27:22). In spite of the fact that he was surrounded by a mob crying for the blood of Jesus, there came a moment when Pilate was made personally responsible. He seemed to realize that there was a decision which he alone could make. This is the inevitable crisis of a life that faces the gospel and therein faces Jesus.

Our fellowship then lies in the fact that we are all forgiven sinners. We stand on even ground. There are no ruling classes; there is no superior race; there is no room for individual boasting; but we are all alike men and women of grace, saved by our Lord Jesus.

A Fellowship of Identification

There is a wonderful result of this new life. We now have the fellowship of identification with the gospel enterprise by our acceptance of it. We face the supreme crisis of our sin when we hear the gospel and resolve it when we accept Jesus. With the acceptance of Christ the crisis has become a compulsion. The gospel immediately “puts you in business” when you receive it. You become a man or woman responsible with a new demand living within you.

Paul said, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16). He is not talking about some outside authority. He does not speak of some proposed judgment upon his delinquency. He speaks of an inner love, a drive, that will not be denied, a dedication which the gospel works in the life that believes it. 

Kierkegaard said, 

There is something quite definite I have to say and I have it so much upon my conscience that (as I feel) I dare not die without having uttered it. For the instant I die and thus leave this world (so I understand it) I shall in the very same second be infinitely far away in a different place, where still within the same second the question will be put to me: “Hast thou uttered the definite message quite definitely?” and if I have not done so what then?¹⁰

The Student in the Seminary says, “I have believed. Therefore, by the will and special call of God I must preach the gospel.” So, this one turns away from a professional study to the Seminary. This one turns away with his engineering degree to the things of theology. The compulsion becomes primary in life.

The Teacher says, “I have believed the gospel. Therefore, I must teach the gospel in this Seminary. Teaching is more than a profession or vocation; it is the handling of the word of life.”

The Administration says, “I have believed. Therefore, under His will I must lead in training the ministers, sending missionaries, building a school, dreaming dreams.”

The Layman, the Trustee, the friend of the institution, says, “Having believed, I must help in training the called of God. I will give direction and advice, build a building, give money to endow a chair of teaching in this institution, preach the gospel through thousands of lives.”

The Denomination says, “Our fellowship of faith and cooperation demands that we must train these men and women called of God to preach. These thirty thousand new preaching stations will have for them men and women whom God has chosen. These we must train.”

What a mighty compulsion is at the heart of our fellowship. The gospel received, accepted, living, demanding, loving, calls us to our task. We are bound together in this compulsion.

A Fellowship of Transformation

There is a fellowship of transformation found in our proclamation of this gospel. To handle the gospel, to teach the gospel, to preach the gospel, to participate in the preaching of the gospel, is to partake of the gospel qualities. You cannot handle the Word of Life and ever be the same again. The dimensions of the gospel will become the dimensions of your own life.

In our state we were recently startled by the headline news of a young man that had handled radium. He did it deliberately, having stolen it from a hospital in which he worked. Having handled it, he became contaminated by it.¹¹ He actually partook of the qualities of the radium to his own harm.

In admiration for a life, we are apt to miss the fact that the dimensions of the life are established either by something that is without or something that is unseen or unmeasured. That Saul of Tarsus was a man of intellect, personality, inner drive, many talents, none of us would deny. It is a temptation to overstate the attractiveness of his personality. The only adequate explanation of his life, however, the life of Paul the preacher, the leader of New Testament church-building in the first century, is the gospel that he preached. He was used of the Holy Spirit to write a great portion of the Scriptures. His dimensions are gospel dimensions.

Grace is marvelous and instantaneous. The change in the life of this man was abrupt and sudden. The new birth is exactly that. The development of his life was equally marvelous. As he accepted the responsibilities of his gospel call, his stature became larger and larger.

It was so with Peter. You can make a long list of his personal characteristics, good and bad. You may give proper credit to his place of leadership with his fishing fellows. But if you want to explain adequately the life of Peter you have to do it in terms of the message that he preached. The wonder of Pentecost is not the power of his persuasion, but it is the Spirit-powered quality of the gospel that he preached (Acts 2). Truly, “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation unto everyone that believeth” (Rom. 1:16).

B. H. Carroll, the founder of this Seminary, was a mighty man. Have you read the story of his beginnings? There was no hint of greatness in that Arkansas lad who became a member of a Baptist church without an experience with Jesus. There was no greatness in those dark days of struggle in his young manhood, knowing the hypocrisy which his church membership represented. See him as he came back from war, broken in body, desolate in spirit, struggling in his soul against the knowledge of his sins. I have wept with him many times in his descriptions of his desolation of soul as he hobbled home on his crutches. I have wept for joy in the faith that came to him and the new birth that God gave him. This message is no place for his biography, but you will discover the dimensions of B. H. Carroll in the fact that he was a steward of the gospel.¹²

What about Lee Scarborough? Meet this attractive, forceful, gifted, intellectual, young lawyer-to-be as he goes to Yale. Meet him again when his life belongs to the hands of the Lord Jesus. Be warmed by the fire that was the fellowship of Lee Scarborough with his Lord. You can only explain his stature in terms of the gospel to which he was dedicated and in which he met Jesus.¹³

Look around these buildings on this campus. There are names written on these stones. There is the name of Cowden on Cowden Hall. You will find the name in the early minutes of the Seminary, the records of its beginnings. There is no question in my mind that this man, Cowden, partook of the gospel which he furthered by his contribution.¹⁴

There are living names that could be called, names identified with this institution by their generosity, their stewardship, their compassion. And there are the names of people who have been blessed and magnified to whom God has given stature because they participate in the gospel.

If we are faithful in this gospel, it will transform us. If we share in its furtherance, if we give ourselves to its handling, it will work a miracle in our own lives in terms of Christian growth. This is a place for personal testimony. In the positions that we occupy and the service that we render there are those who do us honor and express gratitude. In their presence I want to say, as Peter said, “Stand up, for I also am a man” (Acts 10:26). Yet I know they are doing honor to the gospel which I preach, wherein I live. Words cannot describe my debt to this gospel in its application of grace and then in the continuing, unfolding of life which it affords.

A Fellowship of Immortality

We would not want to miss the fact that there is an immortality in our gospel fellowship. This gospel has in it the eternity of the Godhead. The facts which it presents, like the Person that it exalts, have significance before time and after time through all eternity.

To link your life to the gospel is to live forever. To identify yourself with gospel enterprise is to bring immortality into your being. Jesus said, “Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel is the same shall save it” (Mark 8:35). Paul said, in writing to young Timothy, “But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). This gospel is a beacon-light of immortality.

As Jesus sat in the house of Simon the leper, there came in a woman with an alabaster box of spikenard, precious perfume, with which she anointed the Saviour. There was murmuring among the disciples. Someone was bold enough to say, “Why this waste?” Jesus came instantly to her defense. He commanded them to let her alone, insisting that she had wrought a good work, and then he said, “Where so ever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole earth, this also that she hath done will be spoken of as a memorial of her” (Matt. 26:6-13). It is not this woman’s deathless devotion that immortalizes her. Neither is it the selfless sacrifice of her anointing. Rather is it the fact that Jesus now links that which she did with this living gospel and she too will live.

What a priceless privilege is this Seminary ministry of ours, this thing we share in this inaugural service. In every degree that you participate in the training of these men and women called of God you participate in the spreading of the gospel and its proclamation. To share in such proclamation is to become immortal under the promise of God.

There is a sober consideration in the conclusion of this message. Men have died in the proclamation of this gospel. They have been beaten with many stripes, stoned with many stones, suffered unspeakable indignities, paid an unbelievable price that they might be faithful to the gospel. From these very halls there have gone out men and women to die in strange lands and to be buried in foreign soil. They have fallen victim to disease, to tragedy, to accident, and even to martyrdom.¹⁵ Yet you will not find in the lives of these or any who have been called upon to pay such a price any note of complaint. Rather is there a note of joy, a note of compulsion, the note that was in Paul when he said, “This I must do” (1 Cor. 9:16).

Let us not be afraid of the price that is demanded. Let us be sure that the rewards are beyond our computation. The diversities of our ministries are evident. More remarkable is the unity of our devotion. This Seminary has no right to live without the gospel. The teachers’ ambition is meaningless without the gospel. The staunch friends and stewards of this cause are but mourners at the bier of a dead hope if there be no gospel. The administrator leads a forlorn and lost cause without the gospel.

But we have a tie, a oneness that is strange as the mystery of the identity with Christ, the vine and its branches. It is the gospel. To train those called of God, to proclaim it, we will commit our lives, make investment of our money, provide our facilities, knowing that the kingdom of God is come.

The gospel brings hope, creates a fellowship, explains a church, defines a ministry, constructs an institution, demands a Seminary, and promises a victory.

Robert E. Naylor

November 25, 1958¹⁶

1. Robert A. Baker, Tell the Generations Following: A History of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 1908–1983 (rev. Fort Worth: Seminary Hill Press, 2020). ↩︎
2. Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 405. ↩︎
3. Baker, Tell the Generations Following, 354. ↩︎
4. James P. Boyce and John A. Broadus were early presidents of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which was established in Greenville, South Carolina, then relocated to Louisville, Kentucky. B. H. Carroll, L. R. Scarborough, E. D. Head, and J. Howard Williams were, respectively, the first four presidents of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. ↩︎
5. Charles Harold Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments: Three Lectures with an Appendix on Eschatology and History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 7. ↩︎
6. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, 74. ↩︎
7. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man in Four Epistles (Glasgow, 1750), 4. ↩︎
8. Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt: A Christian Anthropology, transl. Olive Wyon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1947), 494. ↩︎
9. James S. Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 43. ↩︎
10. Søren Kierkegaard, Attack upon “Christendom”, transl. Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944), ii. ↩︎
11. See “Medicine: Spilled Radium,” Time (December 1, 1958). ↩︎
12. For the most recent treatment of Carroll, see David S. Dockery, “Benajah Harvey Carroll: A Founding Theology,” in David S. Dockery, W. Madison Grace II, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III, eds., Shapers of the Southwestern Theological Tradition (Fort Worth: Seminary Hill Press, 2025), 9-22. ↩︎
13. For the most recent treatment of Scarborough, see Carl Bradford, “Lee Rutland Scarborough and Roy J. Fish: A Theology of Evangelism,” in Dockery, Grace, and Yarnell, eds., Shapers of the Southwestern Theological Tradition, 37-43, 46. ↩︎
14. Mrs. George E. Cowden gave $150,000 in 1925 toward the construction of a building for the music faculty. See Hannah Williams, “History of the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,” Texas State Historical Association (Dec. 11, 2006; https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/southwestern-baptist-theological-seminary-school-of-church-music). ↩︎
15. Five alumni from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary were identified as martyrs in 2017. Alex Sibley, “Walkway Honors Southern Baptists Who Gave Their Lives for Christ,” Southwestern News (October 20, 2017; https://swbts.edu/news/walkway-honors-southern-baptists-who-gave-their-lives-for-christ/). ↩︎
16. Robert E. Naylor, “Our Gospel Fellowship,” The Robert E. Naylor Collection, Archives, Roberts Library, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX. ↩︎