Dockery urges conviction, cooperation, collaboration among Southwesterners during Convocation

President David S. Dockery called on Southern Baptists and the seminary community to recommit to conviction, cooperation, and collaboration as he looked toward the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas next June during the fall Convocation service at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Aug. 27.

The Dallas SBC will be the centennial anniversary of the 1925 annual meeting in which three historic actions closely connected to Southwestern were taken: adoption of the Baptist Faith and Message confessional statement, creation of the Cooperative Program, and transfer of Southwestern’s ownership to the SBC. Southwestern’s second president, L.R. Scarborough, played a key role in each matter, Dockery noted.

“Let us reflect together on the ongoing implications of those three important decisions 100 years ago in 1925, doing so with remembrance, thanksgiving, and recommitment,” Dockery said.

The Convocation service marking the beginning of the 2024-2025 academic year also included the installation of four new academic chairs and a new dean, two faculty signings of the Book of Confessional Heritage, and the introduction of two new faculty members.

Dockery announced Southwestern’s fall semester enrollment of 2,821 already exceeds the 2023 fall enrollment total of 2,782, although this fall’s data will not be final until later in the semester.
“For each one of these students, those who are on campus and online, all 2,821 of you, we give thanks to God and thank you for your confidence in the faculty and staff of Southwestern Seminary and Texas Baptist College,” he said.

During the service, Dockery recognized new students as “Southwesterners,” an annual tradition at the seminary.

In his Convocation address, Dockery noted that Southwestern was founded by President B.H. Carroll in 1908 as part of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, with the goal of serving churches in the Southwest. The receiving of the seminary by the SBC in 1925 “expanded Southwestern’s reach and influence in new and substantial ways” because of the cooperation and collaboration the SBC provided, he said.

With the birth of the Cooperative Program, Southern Baptist churches were able to work together more effectively to fund missionaries, seminaries, and other SBC missions, allowing the Gospel to reach farther because of the cooperation of what has grown to more than 47,000 churches and their state conventions. Dockery pointed out that Southwestern has received more than $420 million over the past 100 years and continues to seek to steward those gifts well.

The SBC’s plan to cooperate in missions-funding efforts coincided with Southern Baptists uniting in their shared doctrinal convictions in the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), the first formal confession of faith adopted by the SBC, which has been updated over the years. Dockery said the BFM was created in response to growing concerns about evolution and naturalism in the culture and some Baptist schools.

“Within Southern Baptist polity, churches do not actually join associations or conventions, though it’s often talked about in that way, but it really means they choose to voluntarily cooperate together for shared purposes,” Dockery said. “What is needed at this time, then, is a spirit of convictional cooperation and cooperative conviction, a spirit that we want to prioritize on the Southwestern campus. It is our prayer that Southwestern Seminary will model and embrace these commitments in new and fresh ways today as we prepare to enter our second century of our relationship with Southern Baptists.”

Today, Dockery said Southwestern and Southern Baptists need to return to that spirit of conviction, cooperation, and collaboration. At times, Southwestern has experienced an imbalance in those three commitments, but Dockery said the Southwestern community has experienced its greatest effectiveness when all three are emphasized.

“We must deepen our commitments to the full truthfulness and authority of Scripture, to the uniqueness of the Gospel, and to an overarching Christian orthodoxy,” he said. “These things are needed now more than ever. In our confused secular context, we need a generation that would be both convictional and cooperative, that purposely chooses not to compromise and not to be cantankerous, that purposely chooses not to work without cooperating with one another, doing so with a focus on Scripture and the Gospel message.”

While differences in doctrinal stances remain and have at times threatened the unity of the convention, Dockery said the true threat to the Gospel is not those differences but the rise of liberalism and the changing culture, including shifts toward deconstructionism, neo-paganism, and metamodernism.

“We’re called to engage the world without being characterized by it, emphasizing the truth, love, holiness, and unity,” Dockery said.

Through conviction, collaboration, and cooperation with compassion, Dockery said the convention in the past has recovered from such drifting from a focus on the Gospel. And still today, regaining that spirit of cooperation is not just for efficiency in the denomination, but to show the world what God’s people should look like, whether in the convention or on seminary campuses like Southwestern.

“We want people to look at Southwestern and see how they love one another,” Dockery said. “‘Look at how well they work and serve together. Look at how they think of others as more important than themselves.’ We long for that kind of spirit to permeate this campus.”

Just as the Southern Baptist Convention is made up of thousands of churches from cities and states across the nation with memberships of diverse backgrounds and cultures, so the Southwestern community is also diverse and should also be united in serving Christ and each other, Dockery said.

While looking back at Southwestern’s heritage and 100 years as part of the SBC, Dockery also said the institution is looking ahead to the 2025 SBC annual meeting, which will be held in nearby Dallas next June, and the continual task of equipping the next generation of men and women who will carry the Gospel to a lost world.

“We need conviction and cooperation, boundaries and bridges, and a Holy Spirit-enabled sense of collaboration to guide us in the days to come,” Dockery said. “So in faithfulness to the best aspects of the Southwestern heritage, as well as to our institutional mission and shared core values, let us pray for ongoing revitalization across the Southwestern Community, celebrating our past with remembrance and heartfelt gratitude, our looking forward with renewed commitments.”

Faculty recognitions during Convocation included: installations of academic chairs Joseph R. Crider, James C. McKinney Chair of Church Music; O.S. Hawkins, L.R. Scarborough Chair of Evangelism (“Chair of Fire”); Jonathan Okinaga, Hope for the Heart Chair of Biblical Counseling; and Lilly H. Park, Hultgren Chair of Ministerial Counseling; installation of Carl J. Bradford as dean of Texas Baptist College; signing of the seminary’s Book of Confessional Heritage by Amy Crider, associate professor of foundations of education, director of the Center for Writing Excellence, Jack D. Terry School of Educational Ministries; and John Okinaga, assistant professor of biblical counseling, Jack D. Terry School of Educational Ministries; and introduction of new faculty Kevin Rodgers, associate professor of missions, Texas Baptist College, and Cristian Rata, professor of Old Testament, School of Theology.