Press Release 12/18/2007

GOING BACK TO THE OLD SCHOOL WITH A NEW MISSION:
LIBERTY SEMINARY RESTATES ITS BAPTIST HERITAGE AND NAME

In an era when denominational identification is anathema, the Liberty Theological Seminary has retrofitted its name to the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. The irony is the man who lead the seminary to take Baptist out of the name is also the one who lobbied to reinsert it, the President of the Seminary, Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner. Last week, Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. agreed, and the announcement was made during the Seminary Christmas Banquet on Friday, December 14, 2007. The following is taken from Dr. Caner’s address:
“When I became President of the seminary at Liberty University three years ago, I was compelled by Dr. Jerry Falwell to shake things up. With enrollment on the mountain approaching 10,000 resident students, the seminary was the smallest of the eight schools of the university. The name change served notice to the larger Christian community that we were willing to do anything for the sake of the mission, short of changing our doctrine. We did not change our doctrine one whit. In fact we redoubled our commitment to the vision of the Seminary’s founding in 1973- soul winning, church planting and cultural confrontation with the Gospel. Changing the name was just one small component in our overall strategy. It obviously worked. We have had three straight years of growth and have doubled our residential enrollment to over 400 in the seminary.
“However, since 2004, much as changed, both here at Liberty University and in the Southern Baptist Convention. Too many schools have Baptist in their name but not in their doctrine. Some have drifted into liberalism and cultural relativism; still others remain orthodox, but have drifted toward non-Baptist reformed doctrine and cultural isolationism. For us, this was our line in the sand. We want to build bridges to a lost world without burning the bridges of our doctrinal heritage. We are putting Baptist back in our name, and taking back a term that has been misused.
“We want to train students from across the evangelical spectrum, in the classic Baptistic stance of our Anabaptist tradition and Sandy Creek revivalistic heritage. These doctrines include:
• The inerrancy of Scripture
• General atonement
• Free church polity and pastoral authority
• Missions obsession
• Imminent return of Christ
It just made sense, following the vision of our founder and the new chancellor, to proudly state that we are Baptist with a capital “B.” Since 1525, the word Baptist has meant something and it still does at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.”

10 August 2007

It is amazing how myopic our culture can be!  Recently, I was watching two consecutive newscasts on the main networks. On one, Islam was presented in the most respectful and glowing terms. Somewhat like Newsweek magazine, that has abandoned all sense of objectivity long ago, they bent over backwards to present Islam with grace.  On the next broadcast, Christians were portrayed as some aberrant and ignorant group of subspecies.  Currently, Islam is in the most glowing coverage…perhaps out of fear.

It fascinates me. Muslims cry, “Stop calling us violent!”

What happens if someone dares to question Islam?

They become violent. Every time.

Perhaps we need to heed the words of Winston Churchill, written over a century ago, before the birth of political correctness, and the emasculated media:
CITATION: Winston Churchill, The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248 50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!

Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine‹must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science‹the science against which it had vainly struggled‹the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

27 July 2007

We now stand three weeks away from classes beginning on Liberty mountain. In just a little less than a month, 12,000 kids will be walking the campus and worshipping Christ. I have the greatest job!

I sent the following to my faculty, to remind them how good we have it. In 1872, a number of School Boards across the country (most notably in Kansas and North Carolina) adopted a set of rules for their teachers. Most schools were one-room school houses, with coal or wood heat, and students from the grades two to eleven.

Read these rules as a reminder of the blessings of God. Times may be tough, but at least no one is getting fired for getting married! I do like the fact that, if you went to church, you could actually double your courting time…

from North Carolina School Board notebook,  transcribed from the original document in the collection of the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society, Salina, Kansas.
On file at the National Association of Independent Schools (http://www.nais.org)

1.    Teachers each day will fill lamps and clean chimneys.
2.    Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
3.    Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
4.    Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5.    After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
6.    Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7.    Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
8.    Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
9.    The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

13 JULY 2007
DEATH AT THE AGE OF FORTY

In November of last year, I hit one of those milestones that most men dread. As my wife, who is much younger than I am, reminded me I was approaching forty. It doesn’t really seem real, and certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve turned forty. I guess in my mind, like most men, I will always be that eighteen year old guy with a mullet and parachute pants, wearing a sleeveless British flag shirt and trying to play pick-up basketball. But here I find myself, in 2007, as a man approaching my forty-first year.
The reason I am blogging about this is because I may be the most idiosyncratic person on the planet. The most difficult transition for me was not turning forty. As a matter of fact, as you’ll see at the end of this blog, turning forty for me was quite easy. The hardest one for me was turning thirty. I became a Christian in my late teens, and so I spent all of my twenties in the learning years.     In 1996, when I hit thirty, I had completed an entire decade in the ministry, and that was probably the most difficult thing. I couldn’t imagine that I was becoming one of those guys who would talk about his ministry in terms of “well, you were too young to remember this.” When I turned thirty, I had students who had been in my youth group back in 1984-85 who were now in the ministry. And so I was experiencing the generational shift.
Turning forty for me actually is anti-climactic. If you ever read that I’ve died, and wonder, “Oh my goodness, he died so young!” please erase that thought from your mind; because I find myself at the age of forty with all of my greatest dreams realized. When I was a twenty-year old preacher boy, I always said I wanted to write books, and I wanted to teach and reach other people with my writing and my teaching. At forty, because of the graciousness of Dr. Jerry Falwell, and the long-suffering of the Liberty University students, I find myself in that exact position.
I’ve written books that have sold quite well, and I continue to write. And every day I get to get up and do exactly what I’ve always dreamed of doing. Being a seminary president is fascinating to me because I don’t know exactly what that means and what it entails, I’ve only been doing it for three years. But teaching is my passion. Standing in front of a classroom and trying to impart passion and logic and reason, incorporating pathos, ethos, and logos simultaneously is my dream. I’ve often been asked, “what’s your next step?”
My next step is to continue doing this job as long as they’ll let me. I want to do this when I’m eighty.  As long as I can continue to teach, as long as I can continue to be in the classroom, and as long as I can continue to write, that’s my driving force. So turning forty, for me, was no big deal; because when I turned forty I was doing exactly what I always dreamed of doing. The hardest things for me were climbing the mountain. Now I just enjoy the view, and I’ll work hard to continue to learn.
I don’t know what I’ll write when I turn fifty. Braxton will probably be in college at that time and Drake will be getting close. But I do know this. If it’s as much as being forty, God always gives us our best ride during the last half our ministry.

Why did God bless our Pastor and Chancellor, Dr. Jerry Falwell,  so greatly? Because he was a man of integrity and courage- He never feared men…he just feared God. He believed that Christ died for every man, and that whosoever will could come. He believed retreat was impossible, and idleness was a sin. He stood, even when he had to stand alone. He believed in the Book, the blood, and the blessed hope. He believed there were only two types of Christians- soul winners and backsliders. He believed God could use anyone, and that the broken hearted were within God’s grasp.

Thank You, Lord, for letting us know such a man who followed you through fire, flood and famine…and never lost his grace or determination.

“And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and said to him, “The Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor!”
-Judges 6:12