From the Dean

The Great Tradition of Christian Thinking: A Student's Guide by David S. Dockery and Timothy George

Read more about this series here.

Read about the Corbin Family in the latest installment of Where Are They Now?

Beeson had the privilege of hosting the first planning meeting of a series of dialogues between Baptists and Pentecostal Christians from around the world. You can read more about these meetings on the website of the Baptist World Alliance.

(Click on Photo to go to album)

The Reformation Commentary on Scripture from InterVarsity Press.

We've thoroughly enjoyed celebrating the Reformation this week at Beeson through our Reformation Spirituality Conference, held in conjunction with Refo500. Below, you will find the message from Tuesday's worship service. Pictures to come....

It was our privilege today to welcome to campus the Most Reverend Robert Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America. Archbishop Duncan preached the message "As the Father Has Sent Me," which you can listen to or watch here. 

In this convocation service, it was also our pleasure to welcome and pray for three new members of the Beeson Faculty: Associate Dean David Hogg, Dr. Graham Cole, and Dr. Piotr Malysz.

As has been tradition at Beeson Divinity School since 1988, this first service of the academic year began with the singing of "For All the Saints," accompanied by organ and a brass quintet.

William Carey was born 250 years ago today on August 17, 1761.  The son of a poor school teacher in the tiny village of Paulersbury,  he never advanced beyond the level of a fifth-grade education.  Taught to patch shoes in a cobbler’s shop, he was converted to Christ as a teenager.  Soon he was gripped with a passion for sharing the Gospel with those who had never heard the name of Christ. 

In those days, missions was a naughty word, something obsolescent, restricted to the days of the apostles long ago.  But Carey read the Great Commission differently.  “Go ye,” he said, “means you and me, here and now.”  He challenged his fellow Baptists to respond to this call, to “expect great things from God, and attempt great things for God.”  The result was the first missionary society organized by evangelical Christians with the aim of carrying the Good News of Christ to all parts of the world. 

So, on June 13, 1793, William Carey, his wife, Dorothy, and their four children including a nursing infant, sailed from England on a Danish ship headed for India.  Carey never saw his homeland again.  He spent the rest of his life in India as a pastor, teacher, linguist, agriculturalist, journalist, botanist, social activist, and statesman of the world Christian movement.  He died in India in 1834 with the words of a hymn by Isaac Watts on his lips: “A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, on thy kind arms I fall.”

Now, two and one-half centuries after his birth, what can we learn from Carey today?  There are many lessons to be gleaned from the life of the father of modern missions, but I place these seven principles at the top of the list:

 

1.  The sovereignty of God.  Carey knew that true missionary work was rooted in the gracious, eternal purpose of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Today, more than a new program of missionary training or another strategy for world evangelization, the church of Jesus Christ needs a fresh vision of a full-size God—eternal, transcendent, holy, filled with compassion, sovereignly working by his Holy Spirit to call unto himself a people out of every nation, kindred, tribe, and language group on earth.  Only such a vision, born of repentance, prayer, and self-denial, can inspire a Carey-like faith in a new generation of Christian heralds. 

 

2.  The finality of Jesus Christ.  Sadly the message Carey preached—Jesus Christ and him crucified, risen, coming again—has become marginalized even within large sectors of the Christian community.  The uniquely divine nature of Jesus Christ and the cruciality of Christian conversion have both been called into question.  Carey’s life and witness encourage us to resist the seductive power of cynicism, relativism, and syncretism, and to remain faithful to the only Gospel which can deliver lost men and women from the power of sin and death.

 

3.   The authority of Holy Scripture.  Like Wycliffe, Luther, and Tyndale before him, Carey believed that everyone should be able to read the Scriptures in their own native language.  He poured his life into mastering the difficult languages of India and the East until he had either translated or personally supervised the translation of the Bible into some forty distinct tongues.  Carey’s plan to evangelize India included a three-pronged approach:  preach the Gospel, translate the Bible, and establish schools.  Proclamation, translation, education.  Carey knew that, as the letter to the Hebrews (4:12) puts it, the Word of God is “alive and powerful.”  He knew firsthand the transformative effect the Bible had on those who read, cherished, and obeyed it.  Today Carey’s legacy goes forward through the work of the Wycliffe Bible Translators and many others committed to sharing the life-giving Scriptures with all peoples everywhere.

 

4.   Contextualization.  Contextualization refers to the need to communicate the Gospel in such a way that it speaks to the total context of the people to whom it is addressed.  Carey knew the countercultural pull of biblical faith.  He had great respect for the antiquity and beauty of the cultural legacy he encountered in India.  Indeed, his translations and critical editions of the ancient Hindu classics contributed to what has been called an “Indian Renaissance.”  At the same time, he was quite sure that devotion to those writings and the religions they had spawned could never lead to eternal life anymore than being born in England or America automatically made one a Christian.  Carey’s ability to contextualize the Gospel without compromising the nonnegotiable essentials of biblical faith provides a balanced model for a truly evangelical missiology in our own age of social upheaval and cultural disillusion. 

 

5.    Holistic missions.  Carey knew that the Gospel had both a propositional and an incarnational dimension.  He refused to divorce conversion from discipleship.  He knew that Jesus had given food to hungry people on the same occasion that he presented himself to them as the Bread of Life.  Undoubtedly, he would have been in hearty agreement with the great Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones:  “A soul without a body is a ghost; a body without a soul is a corpse.”  The Gospel is addressed to living persons, soul and body, in all of their broken humanity and need for wholeness.

 

6.    Christian unity.  The modern quest for Christian unity was born on the mission field.  Carey pointed the way by working closely with believers of many denominations in India and by calling for an international conference of missionaries to develop a common strategy for evangelism and witness.  What would Carey think of contemporary ecumenical efforts today?  He would likely be wary of an uncritical ecumenism which would sacrifice the distinctiveness of the Gospel in the interests of a bland togetherness.  But he would surely rejoice in the coming together of Great Commission believers throughout the Body of Christ in the task of world evangelization.  Carey is a model for this kind of cooperation among Christian believers, one rooted in Richard Baxter’s great maxim:  In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.

 

7.   Faithfulness.  Carey’s work in India was a catalyst for a great missionary awakening throughout the church.  Today, two hundred and fifty years after the birth of William Carey, the mandate for world evangelization still looms before us.  The best lesson we can learn from Carey is the principle by which he lived and died: “You should think of us as Christ’s servants, who have been put in charge of God’s secret truths.  The one thing required of such a servant is that he be faithful to his Master” (1 Cor. 4:1-2). 

Dean George recently met with Rev. Bontha Samuel Sajan Kumar at a meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  A spiritual descendent of William Carey, Rev. Bontha is a pastor in South India.  Like Carey, his ministry includes education, benevolence, Bible teaching and preparing a new generation of Jesus followers for the twenty-first century.

 Dean George was a consultant to the dramatic film Candle in the Dark about Carey’s life and work.  He is also the author of the full-length biography Faithful Witness: The Life and Mission of William Carey.

The following is a great account of a recent trip to Ghana taken by Beeson professor Doug Webster and his wife Virginia.

Dear Friends,

Virginia and I made it back from Ghana Monday morning, after a nine hour drive from Carpenter in northern Ghana to Accra (Plan B, because the flight from Kumasi was cancelled), an eight hour wait in Accra, and then an eleven hour flight to Atlanta, plus the short flight to Birmingham. Kennerly and Patrick picked us up at the airport and we spent the rest of Monday trying to stay awake until bedtime at 8 pm.

The real story is the work in Carpenter: the time spent with David and Brenda Mensah, the conference with seventy-five pastors from the thirty-five churches planted by GRID-NEA, and the dedication of a new church building and pastor while we there. This is my fourth visit and Virginia’s second. We have seen remarkable progress over the life-span of this ministry project. In a country that labors under such burdens and obstacles, the Lord has richly blessed this work. You can imagine the logistical effort to feed and house seventy-five pastors for six days, but the NEA staff did a great job. Our schedule included devotions at 7:30 am with the staff and the pastors, led by various leaders. There were about one hundred of us for devotions, followed by breakfast and a break before our 9-12:15 session. Then, lunch and a break, before resuming at 3 pm and going until 5:15. I was expecting forty pastors, so I was surprised by the large number of pastors and I was impressed by their concentration. There were about ten women, also active in the ministry, who joined us for the entire time and engaged the material just as well as the men.

We worked through my pastoral theology material, as we explored the negative and positive tensions of ministry (the pastor/people tension, the life tension, the self tension, the leadership tension, the truth tension, and the preaching tension, etc). We were deeply rooted in the Word of God the whole time. The level of quick, animated discussion was an encouraging sign. Many of these pastors have not been to school. Several key pastors have been through a two year Bible school in Kumasi, but they responded as well as my Doctor of Ministry students do at Beeson. I wish you had been there for the lively exchange on whether preaching or farming was harder work. You would have thought you were in the company of the early church fathers as they debated the eternal values of the Kingdom and the necessity of physical labor. Can you imagine teaching a class of seventy-pastors who simply give you patient attention, trust and meaningful respect? That was my experience. By God’s grace, a good measure of the success belongs to David Mensah’s wisdom, leadership, and ability to communicate. For five days, the psychology of teaching went like this: first hour – start out hoping that the material will work; second hour – enjoy the flow of teaching and interaction; third hour – try to stay one step ahead of David’s translation and fatigue. After three hours in the heat, your mind begins to lag. I’d finish the session wondering what I would do next. It was exhausting and invigorating at the same time.

I have known some of these pastors for over ten years. They recalled some of the biblical texts that we have worked through previously. Several of them have known Andrew well from his three month visit in 2004. George, who pastors and heads up the agricultural sector at Carpenter, wore one of Andrew’s shirts for a couple of days. I was kinda touched by that.

On Saturday we headed to the large fish pond, after checking out the piggery and the fishery. It was a celebration of sort. About 20 NEA staffers fished the large pond with a huge net. The crew had a great time, under Thompson’s direction (sector leader for the fishery), drawing their large net across the lengthy width of the pond. They did it four times and gathered up a lot of fish. The list is long of initiatives to provide food and funding for a sustainable development project that supports the community. These initiatives include: cattle, ostriches, chickens, turkeys, shea nuts acres of tomatoes, peanuts, cassava, corn, ginger, etc. The project is big into pigs and fish as protein sources. One of the great things about this ministry is that its initiatives get turned into functioning programs. In a country where little gets off the ground, because the problems are so great, NEA has consistently attempted great things and succeeded. Initiatives get turned into productive programs because of wise planning and careful management. We laughed with the Mensahs about their constant need to develop back-up plans. In the face of constant challenges, the Mensahs shift into “Plan B” and sometimes “Plan C.”

No matter how you look at, this is a great work, and its most valuable produce is the witness it bears for Christ and His Kingdom. The Lord continues to makes this fruitful ministry more fruitful. Whether through the medical clinics, educational initiatives, environmental work, widow co-ops, water programs, and the inter-tribal peace-making efforts, the gospel of Jesus Christ is being proclaimed and the church is growing.

Together in Christ,
Doug & Virginia

Charles Colson will be honored on July 18 with the Mann Medal in Ethics and Leadership, Samford University's recognition of leaders who have made significant contributions to a more just and ethical society. The presentation will be made during a special luncheon at the Harbert Center in downtown Birmingham. There is no charge for this event, but seating is limited and reservations will be accepted on a first-come basis. Click here to register.

Mr. Colson will be in Birmingham to speak at the Beeson Pastors School and at a special event on July 17 at Samford University's Wright Center.

Dr. Timothy George, "Barmen & Manhattan: A Tale of Two Declarations" from Chris Franz on Vimeo.

This event is free and open to the public!

For more information, visit www.samford.edu/chuck-colson.aspx.

"Gardner C. Taylor is one of the towering figures of the 20th century pulpit, so it is no surprise that a book of essays on preaching that honor Taylor has been named our 2010 Preaching Book of the Year...." Read the full article from Preaching magazine here.

We are please to announce that Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas is the winner of the 2011 Pollock Award for Christian Biography.
The Pollock Award honors the great Christian biographer John C. Pollock and is presented annually by Beeson Divinity School to the author of the year’s outstanding Christian biography. 

Eric Metaxas received his award in a chapel service on March 1, 2011. Metaxas spoke at Beeson as part of the ongoing series on the Barmen Declaration.Click here to watch Metaxas's message.

If you have not done so already, this would be a great time to sign up to receive the BEESON PODCAST.  Yesterday, Dr. Robert Smith, Jr. and I begin a new podcast series, “Introducing Great Preachers Past & Present.”  This week’s posting is a classic sermon by Dr. Haddon Robinson, “A Good Snake Gone Bad,” first preached at our Beeson Pastors School several years ago.  We have chosen an amazing cadre of preachers for this series including Gardner C. Taylor, John Stott, Sinclair Ferguson, Will Willimon, John Piper, James Earl Massey, Tim Keller, Elizabeth Achtemeier, and many, many more.  On the Beeson Podcast, you will enjoy hearing interviews with outstanding Christian leaders, special lectures by noted scholars and theologians, as well as the sermon series Dr. Smith and I are launching today.  Please take a moment to subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at www.beesondivinity.com/podcast.  I hope you will take a listen and let me know what you think! 

Yours in Christ,

Timothy George

Congratulations to the new graduates of Beeson Divinity School!

I'm pleased to announce Dr. John Wigger as the winner of the 2010 John Pollock Award for Christian Biography for his book American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (Oxford University Press, 2009). Wigger is associate professor of history at the University of Missouri. Of the book, historian Mark Noll has said, "Francis Asbury was one of the three or four most important religious leaders in American history, but until now he has lacked a comprehensive biography. John Wigger fills this gap splendidly. But much more than filling a gap, Wigger's rich account of the man who created American Methodism as the marvel of its age also reveals a great deal about the United States in its formative decades. This is a terrific book on a major figure."

The Pollock Award honors the great Christian biographer John C. Pollock and is presented annually by Beeson Divinity School of Samford University to the author of the year’s outstanding Christian biography.  Past winners have included George Marsden for Jonathan Edwards, Alan Jacobs for The Narnian, and Timothy Dudley-Smith for John Stott.  Reverend Dr. John Charles Pollock lives in Devon, England and is the author of The Billy Graham Story (the authorized biography).  His other biographical subjects have included Whitefield, Wesley, Wilberforce, Moody, John Newton, and Hudson Taylor.

I commend to you the reading of Christian biographies in general, and in particular this excellent biography of Francis Asbury!

Today, Beeson Divinity School is launching the Beeson Podcast, a weekly program of sermons, interviews, lectures, and conversations about the church, ministry, and the Christian life.  You can listen and subscribe to the Beeson podcast  on our Podcast page.

Today’s episode features a conversation with Chuck Colson. In future weeks, the Beeson podcast will feature interviews with  Alistair Begg, Sinclair Ferguson, and  Annemarie Kidder.  We will also listen to a message delivered by the late David A. Hubbard at the dedication of Hodges Chapel in 1995:  “Word and Spirit: Inseparable, Infallible.”  Please listen and subscribe today!

Our own Dr. Lyle Dorsett had the privilege of preaching this past Sunday at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.  I am grateful for his representing Beeson Divinity School, and more importantly, our Lord Jesus Christ in this historic institution.  I thought you would appreciate reading “A Midshipman’s Prayer” which, I understand, is used each week in the chapel services of the Naval Academy.  This prayer has relevance not only for the young men and women preparing for service in their country’s naval forces, but for all believers in Jesus Christ who are called to sail on “the sea of life.”  

A Midshipman’s Prayer

Almighty Father, whose way is in the sea, whose paths are in the great waters, whose command is over all and whose love never faileth; let me be aware of Thy presence and obedient to Thy will. Keep me true to my best self, guarding me against dishonesty in purpose and in deed, and helping me so to live that I can stand unashamed and unafraid before my shipmates, my loved ones, and Thee. Protect those in whose love I live. Give me the will to do my best and to accept my share of responsibilities with a strong heart and a cheerful mind. Make me considerate of those entrusted to my leadership and faithful to the duties my country has entrusted in me. Let my uniform remind me daily of the traditions of the service of which I am a part. If I am inclined to doubt, steady my faith; if I am tempted, make me strong to resist; if I should miss the mark, give me courage to try again. Guide me with the light of truth and keep before me the life of Him by whose example and help I trust to obtain the answer to my prayer, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Beeson Divinity School is pleased to be a North American partner in an International project called Refo500. This multi-year project will highlight and celebrate the relevance of the Reformation as a movement of renewal and change. The year 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 theses on the Wittenberg door and will be the culmination of this celebration.

The first North American Conference for Refo500 will be held September 27-28 at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. Please visit the event website for a complete list of speakers (including Timothy George).

Please visit www.refo500.com for a complete list of Project partners who will  coordinate creative exhibits, lectures, conferences, and publications to illustrate the vitality of the Reformation.

M.Div. and M.T.S. Graduates

D.Min. Graduates

Many thanks to all of you who partcipated in the Sanctity of Life Forum last Friday. For those of you who missed it, here's a short video excerpt featuring Jacquie Stalnaker. You'll find videos of the complete event here. 

April 22, 2010, 10 a.m. Reid Chapel, 3 p.m. Hodges Chapel. Details here.

Please mark your calendars for Friday, April 23, at 10:00 a.m., for an event Beeson Divinity School is co-sponsoring with the Christian Legal Society, “The Sanctity of Life: A Public Forum.”  This will take place in Hodges Chapel.  Our featured speaker for this forum will be Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy and Jurisprudence at Baylor University.  Dr. Beckwith is an articulate speaker and leading advocate for the sanctity of life.  He is the author of what many judge to be the definitive statement on this issue from the pro-life perspective, Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (Cambridge University Press, 2007).   If your schedule permits, I hope you will plan to be present for this significant gathering.  A number of religious and civic groups committed to the sanctity of life are joining with us to help promote this forum.   More information here.

The Beeson Divinity School community and special guests celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of Hodges Chapel in special service of rededication on the bright winter morning of January 26, 2010. The service began at the statue of Ralph Waldo Beeson on Centennial Walk in the center of Samford's campus. The congregation processed to the site of the groundbreaking for Divinity Hall where it stopped for a Scripture reading and prayer, then continued into the chapel. Samford's president, Andrew Westmoreland, led the congregation in a responsive reading to reconsecrate the chapel. Dr. Lyle Dorsett, Beeson's Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism, prayed a prayer of dedication for chapel curator Vickie Gaston and this semester's chapel attendants. Timothy George preached the sermon "This Sacred Space," (message will be available on the Chapel Downloads page) then led  in Holy Communion.

A number of people have asked me to comment on the Manhattan Declaration which I drafted along with my brother in Christ, Professor Robert George of Princeton University and our dear friend, Mr. Charles W. Colson of Prison Fellowship. At the launching of the Manhattan Declaration on November 20, 2009, I wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post which you can read here. Here are a few additional comments:

WHAT IT IS: The Manhattan Declaration is a statement of Christian conscience, a confession of religious conviction supported by followers of Jesus Christ from the Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical families of faith. The Declaration addresses three of the most pressing issues in our culture today: the sanctity of life, the dignity of marriage, and religious liberty for all persons. These are not the only issues Christians are called to care about but they are threshold issues related to everything else we believe and do. Because these three matters are increasingly under assault in our society today, we feel compelled to speak out in their defense. In doing so, we desire to stand in solidarity with all persons of goodwill for the sake of justice and the common good and on behalf of the most vulnerable members of our community.

WHAT IT IS NOT: The Manhattan Declaration is not a statement of partisan loyalty or political posturing. It cuts across political as well as denominational lines and has garnered support from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike. The Manhattan Declaration represents an ecumenism of conviction, not an ecumenism of accommodation. While we acknowledge many ecclesial and theological differences among ourselves, we believe that our unity in Christ is sufficiently strong for us to stand together and speak out together on behalf of the least, the last, and the lost.

WHAT TO DO NOW: I encourage you to read the Manhattan Declaration, and if it resonates with your own convictions, endorse it. Our hope would be that we would have up to a million signatories who will want to stand with us. Already, in just a few short days, we are nearly one-third of the way toward that goal. The response to the Manhattan Declaration has far exceeded anything that Chuck Colson, Robert George, and I expected. We see this as a moving of the Spirit in our times. This is an important time for all Christians to come together, stand together and make clear what our convictions are. May the Lord continue to use this statement for the upbuilding of his Kingdom to the praise of his glory.

HOW TO SIGN: Go to www.manhattandeclaration.org for information on how to endorse the Manhattan Declaration.

Timothy George, Dean
Beeson Divinity School