Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Back From The Abyss
(ANALYSIS) It has been a rough couple of decades for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Once upon a time, in those misty years of the 1990s, SWBTS in Ft. Worth, Texas, was arguably the top seminary in the nation. Dr. Russell Dilday had turned it into a behemoth in about every way. It was the largest seminary in the nation, with 3,500 full-time equivalent students (and a total headcount of more than 5,000).
It was raising money hand-over-fist, buying real estate, building buildings and creating the largest endowment among Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) schools. A 1990 poll by Christianity Today readers ranked it No. 1 in effectiveness among the top graduate theological schools in the nation.
But the Southern Baptist Convention was in turmoil during the Dilday years (1978-1994). The so-called “conservative-moderate” divide was widening. Dilday called himself a “constructive conservative,” but his detractors successfully portrayed him — at least within the SBC — as a moderate, and he was ousted from the presidency in 1994.
My purpose is not to write a history of the SBC’s civil war of this era and SWBTS’ role in it. I will simply say that in the 30 years since Dilday departed, the seminary’s enrollment has fallen by two-thirds, it has seen a succession of controversial presidents, and its financial position went from flush to circling-the-drain.
(By the way, if you want that, I recommend historian Thomas Kidd’s excellent work, especially “The Baptists In America,” which he co-wrote with Barry Hankins. For a shorter analysis, more targeted toward SWBTS, Mark Wingfield’s recent article “How Southwestern Seminary Is Bouncing Back From Financial Catastrophe” is a helpful primer.)
It would be easy to predict that SWBTS was going the way of many Christian colleges and seminaries of the past few years. MinistryWatch has written dozens of articles about the crisis facing Christian education. Most of these articles were motivated by the closing of yet another Christian college.
But that does not appear to be the fate of SWBTS, and if the saga of SWBTS does indeed have a happy ending, or at least a thriving next chapter, a good bit of the credit can be attributed to one man: Dr. David Dockery.
David Dockery delivers the spring convocation address at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. (Photo courtesy SWBTS)
If you have been around Christian higher education for a while, especially in Southern Baptist circles, David Dockery’s name is familiar to you. Before becoming president of SWBTS in 2023, he served as president of Trinity International University and Union University. His tenure at Union is now the stuff of legend. Under his leadership, the Jackson, Tennessee, school’s enrollment more than doubled, and its academic reputation soared. When a tornado destroyed the campus in 2008, Dockery provided inspiring leadership as the school was rebuilt.
Dockery has also earned a reputation as a trusted friend and mentor. His proteges now provide leadership to Christian colleges across the nation. That reputation, and the network it created, propelled him to the presidency of the Evangelical Theological Society and — more recently — to the presidency of the International Alliance of Christian Education. He also serves on the board of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.
However, when Dockery came to Southwestern two years ago, at age 70, he could not rely on the achievements of years past. The school did not need a caretaker or a figurehead: It faced existential threats.
One of the first things Dockery learned when he took the reins of the school was that the school did not have enough cash to meet its next payroll. Dockery went to the school’s bank and got the school’s line of credit extended in exchange for a commitment to cut 10% of the school’s expenses immediately.
He then did something that at first caused a shock, but which eventually proved to be vital: He released 20 years of detailed financial audits. Mark Wingfield of Baptist News (which has been highly critical of the SBC and SWBTS) wrote, “There is no other institution in the SBC that has shown the courage of financial transparency of Southwestern Seminary.”
Dockery also made bold moves with the school’s real estate assets. When Dockery arrived, the school owned 200 acres. He sold 20 acres of unused student housing, a transaction that netted Southwestern more than $14 million. Dockery used the funds to pay off nearly $7 million in short-term debt and put the rest in a severely depleted cash reserve fund.
Wingfield concludes: “Credit must be given to President Dockery and his leadership team, along with some trustees who have found the light. Dockery has been the steady hand at the wheel who has brought sanity back to the administration at Southwestern Seminary.”
So, is SWBTS out of the woods? It is too early to say. Christian higher education faces long-term challenges that Southwestern will still have to conquer even after the immediate, short-term challenges are solved.
However, today, according to Baptist News Global, “the seminary has a $35 million budget, with $12 million in income from tuition and fees, $8 million in endowment earnings, $6.2 million in Cooperative Program gifts, $3 million in Annual Fund giving and $7 million from auxiliary income. With $160 million in endowment value, Southwestern remains the best-endowed of the six SBC seminaries. The next-closest is Southern Seminary, with $110 million.”
And with David Dockery leading the team, I like their chances.
This article was originally published at MinistryWatch.
Warren Cole Smith is the editor in chief of Ministry Watch and previously served as Vice President of WORLD News Group, publisher of WORLD Magazine and has more than 30 years of experience as a writer, editor, marketing professional, and entrepreneur. Before launching a career in Christian journalism 20 years ago, Smith spent more than seven years as the Marketing Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers.