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DALLAS—Criswell College trustees approved on Oct. 4 a bold vision to expand beyond the school’s core Bible curriculum to “train biblical leaders in strategic disciplines” of business, law, communication and education, and continued working on the potential of a residential campus to accommodate expected growth and to better meet the needs of the 325-member student body.
“We feel confident this is the right direction for God to use our school to do something dramatic for the kingdom,” explained Tom Hatley of Rogers, Ark., who chaired the long-range study over the past year. “It’s time for the sacred to reintegrate the secular.”
Trustees were reminded of their founder’s identification of two proper functions of an education at a Christian college, hearing an audio recording from 1967 of W.A. Criswell’s appeal “to train and educate first a ministry for Jesus” and “second, that we might train Christian leaders to do God’s work in the earth.”
“For over 40 years, Criswell College has trained biblically passionate men and women to lead in church ministry and denominational service,” stated President Jerry Johnson in a release issued following the meeting. “Next year, we will introduce an expanded curriculum that will bring full circle W.A. Criswell’s dream of equipping leaders of all vocations to carry out their chosen profession or ministry through the Word of God, a Christian worldview and a strong Christian witness.”
The expanded curriculum will be developed by the faculty and approved by the board to enable the school to educate more men and women for “real-world ministry,” Johnson said. “Our vision is to train biblical leaders in strategic disciplines and charge them to impact every area of life with the teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Hatley added, “An expanded curriculum and new residential campus will allow us to fulfill Criswell’s original vision, bringing similar biblical revolution to the workplace and to secular environments.”
Trustee Ed Rawls of Plano described for the full board the initial meeting of the committee tasked with developing a vision for the future. “We needed to make a decision of whether Criswell College would remain a small Bible school, isolated in its influence, or make a jump to the next level of education.”
While surveys of alumni, faculty, students and friends confirmed the school had filled a niche as a theologically conservative training ground for ministers, Hatley said, “Others are doing what we alone once did.” Consequently, he said the group began asking what need was not being met and then rallied around Criswell’s original vision.
Trustee Keet Lewis said the committee imagined “a uniquely biblio-centric college education with intentional focus on the preparation for immediate deployment of graduates in the ‘white unto harvest fields’ as pastors, missionaries, church administrators, church planters and church revitalization coaches, as well as into marketplace ministry as leaders in business, medicine, law, public policy and other disciplines.”
“The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention has invested money, students, time and prayers in Criswell College,” noted trustee Jim Richards, who serves as SBTC executive director. “Now Criswell College must take the steps necessary to serve the SBTC constituency better by having a residential campus and an expanded curriculum,” he said, calling it the best decision for the convention, the college and the kingdom of God.
Offering his full support of the concept, trustee Jack Pogue of Dallas said the board should honor the theology on which the school was founded, but be ready to replace the facility in which it resides.
Trustee Jack Brady of Dallas asked whether approval of the proposal constituted a commitment to move to a new campus. Rawls responded, “If you make that decision you have no choice but to move to an outside location. We do not have enough room, enough expansion space. There is no way to support the university model here.”
Noting that a number of Bible colleges had gone out of business in recent years, trustee Harold Rawlings of Florence, Ky., added, ‘If we continue in the way we’ve been going that will be true of this school. This is a great step forward. It means the saving of Criswell College.”
Brady said he preferred to give more time to pray about the matter, while all of the other trustees there stood in support of a motion to begin the process toward an expanded curriculum and possible relocation.
Prior to deliberation, the board heard from Founder’s Day chapel speaker Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., who said their vision would either expand or limit the future of the college. “You let the size of your God determine the size of your vision,” he said, encouraging them to begin with vision casting, not problem solving.
In other business, the board promoted James W. Bryant to senior distinguished professor of pastoral theology. While serving as minister of evangelism and church organization at First Baptist Church of Dallas, Bryant was tasked by W.A. Criswell to explore the possibility of beginning a Bible institute. In 1971 he became the school’s first academic dean.
He pastored churches in New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas, led Luther Rice Seminary as president and taught religion at the University of Mobile before returning as academic dean at Criswell in 2002. In 2004 he began teaching pastoral theology.
Trustees also instituted a policy for instructional compensation for the president and vice presidents, approved trustees eligible for re-election and agreed to enlist a real estate firm to explore the sale of property in Arlington.
Newly elected officers include Lewis as chairman, John Mann of Springtown as vice-chairman and Pogue as secretary.
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