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Theological Education in a New Decade: Looking Back and Forward on the For the Church Vision

Originally published in the Midwestern Magazine, Issue 39


This past October 15th marked seven completed years as president of Midwestern Seminary and Spurgeon College. It has been astonishing to see all that God has done over this time period.

At the personal level, I’m astonished how quickly the years have passed. We arrived in Kansas City with five children, ages 9—4, in tow. Now, those same children are 16—11. For the Allen family, Kansas City has become our home, and the seminary our life’s calling.

God has blessed Midwestern Seminary beyond measure. In the fall of 2012, we set forth a clear vision—that Midwestern Seminary would exist For the Church. Our stated goal was simple—to be the premier institution in North America training pastors, missionaries, and ministers to serve the local church. Thus, For the Church was born. Over the past seven years, God has chosen to bless our work in material and immaterial ways. For the Church has taken root and that is no small achievement. It has gone from being my vision to being our vision to being the vision for Midwestern Seminary.

We believe that Midwestern Seminary’s right to exist is directly linked to our faithfulness to the local church. Moreover, I believe that every parachurch ministry should be evaluated primarily based upon its faithfulness to serve, support, and strengthen the local church. Christ has promised to build his church, not his seminary, but as we are faithful to his church, doubtlessly He will build this seminary.

However, there are many challenges to face in 2020. They are numerous, interconnected, and wreaking havoc on Christian institutions across America. Daily, Christian institutions are being challenged, threatened, and punished for holding to traditional, biblical understandings of human sexuality, gender, and marriage. Though Christianity has taught—and Western Civilization has affirmed—these norms for millennia, many find these truth claims increasingly intolerable.

These challenges only increase our burden to exist For the Church. God has given Midwestern Seminary a good seven years, but what would it look like for God to give us a good seven decades? What does For the Church mean going forward? As an institution, how do we rightly steward our gains? How do we project forward and outward our mission and ministry? How does our commitment to be For the Church direct us into the future?

Consider with me these nine points:

First, For the Church is an a priori commitment.

We must relentlessly ask, in light of that, how do we most faithfully serve Southern Baptist churches? Each one of those words matter. How do we—not just me—most faithfully serve Southern Baptist churches? Midwestern Seminary is a Southern Baptist institution, proudly and happily so. We are not committed to Southern Baptists just in some generic way, but rather specifically to the churches of the Southern Baptist Convention. A continual question must be, “What does faithfulness to Southern Baptist churches look like in our generation?” That question will not be answered merely by our convictions, but also by us sensing and responding to our church’s needs and concerns. That changes year-to-year, decade-to-decade, and a faithful seminary will be responsible to the needs and concerns of the churches that it serves.

Second, For the Church must continue to mean, “For the Nations.”

If I could put one asterisk beside For the Church, it would be to underscore that we are For the Church—domestic and international. For the Church is a global vision. God is a global God doing a global work across the nations. We are a Great Commission people, and we should be intentional to talk about, strive for, teach for, and pray for the international church as well as the domestic church.

Third, going forward, we must guard our hearts.

God can do more in 10 seconds than we can do laboring for 10,000 years. At the same time, Satan, through a few ill-advised moments, can bring great harm to all that we’ve striven for. We should press this further. I do not merely mean through great moral failures or great scandalous sins; I also mean through pride that can creep in as we celebrate God’s faithfulness.

Fourth, we must assume nothing.

We must assume nothing, first and foremost, confessionally. We must continue to articulate, to advocate, to speak, and to hold ourselves accountable to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, the Danvers Statement, the Nashville Statement, and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. These are what the churches expect of us by way of our doctrinal beliefs, and we have to continue to state them again and again and again.

Fifth, we must never lose sight of a keyword—stewardship.

Everything I have previously addressed is a stewardship. The analogy I use is, “Leading a seminary in the 21st century is like sitting down to a game of chess where you are playing someone who has already been playing for many hours before you.” Certain pieces are on the board and certain pieces are not on the board. Certain pieces are arranged such that, if you had it do to over, you would put them elsewhere. In our generation, we have taken our place at the table, and we are playing the board to the best of our ability. One day we will get up from that chair and a new generation will sit down to lead and serve. Where are the pieces going to be located on the board when we leave it to them? What position are we going to leave this ministry and institution in?

Sixth, we must continue to pursue excellence.

We cannot fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to who we were or where we were five years ago. It is appropriate to do that in order to celebrate God’s goodness, but it is not appropriate to do that if it leads to comfort or complacency. The issue is not the institution we once were; the issue is the seminary that we can become. We must continue to prize excellence and pursue it. Institutions do not drift into greatness. Inertia has never taken anyone to the top of the mountain. It has to be fought for, worked for, and sacrificed for daily. What is more, there is no final victory in this great work. It is a pursuit we must continue to give our best energies toward.

Seventh, going forward, our greatest challenges will be external.

I write this not to be a prophet but, in one sense, to speak prophetically. Over the past seven years, our greatest challenges have been about fixing things internally. As we look to the future, our greatest challenges are going to be external. We live in a world that is increasingly secular. We live in a world with accreditation agencies that cannot figure out what seminaries do. We live in a world marked by governmental intrusion, from administration to administration. We live in a world where there is so much in front of and around us that could disrupt our work.

Eighth, Midwestern Seminary must increasingly take on a prophetic mantle for the church.

God has given us a distilled vision, and such a perch from which to speak, that we must continue to challenge other institutions and the church at-large about what they are doing for the local church. For the Church is such an obvious calling that every seminary and parachurch ministry should embrace it. Unfortunately, few have it as clearly and as prominently prioritized as they should.

Finally, ninth, we desire to build and maintain a seminary community where each member flourishes.

Our desire is that every member of our community—student, faculty, and staff—flourishes. Our goal is that every person finds on this campus a community in which they flourish personally as well as vocationally. As a whole, we want them to look back over their family lives and their personal lives and say, “Some of the best years of our lives were at Midwestern Seminary in Kansas City.”

Conclusion

As Midwestern Seminary labors For the Church, we do so with the assurance that Christ is building his church, but we also do this with a sense of custodial stewardship. Christ is building his church through pastors, teachers, and evangelists, whom we train.

In the ever-changing world of theological education, Midwestern Seminary owns a never-changing mission, to exist For the Church. Our mission to exist for the church is interconnected with the church’s mission itself, the Great Commission.

Midwestern most effectively labors For the Church when it labors with the church, and we must serve with and for the church in our combined Great Commission efforts until the end of the age, when “The Kingdom of the world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15).

May we never cease to be thankful to God for the victories he has given us these past seven years. May we never cease to serve in such a way that he is pleased to give us such victories going forward into this new decade.

 

Dr. Jason K. Allen | President, Midwestern Seminary & Spurgeon College

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