New leader eager to rejuvenate Fort Worth seminary after Baptist scandals, financial trouble

Like many, David Dockery wanted to be there when his family needed him most.

In this case, his family being his alma mater and his faith.

Dockery became the 10th president in the history of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth via a unanimous vote April 19 by the board of directors. He had served the previous seven months as interim president following the resignation of Adam Greenway, who left after three and a half years, citing “reputational, legal and financial realities” in his exit statement.

Dockery is only the second president in school history to be appointed without a search process, joining the seminary’s second president, L.R. Scarborough. He understands this comes at a time when there is unrest in the Southern Baptist Convention, and he knows the school from which he received his Master of Divinity degree in 1981 is in need of rejuvenation.

“It’s not anything I take lightly,” Dockery said. “I’m grateful to God for this appointment. I never imagined this would take place. I recognize significant Baptist leaders have held this role. I hold those people in high esteem.”

Dockery, 70, is from Alabama — and yes, he is a Crimson Tide fan through and through.

“I am pulling for the Crimson Tide. It runs deep in my DNA. I was born in Tuscaloosa and very early on I was taught to cheer for the Crimson Tide,” he said, adding the signature “Roll Tide!”

And he’s pulling for his beloved alma mater and the religion he’s devoted his life to, working to help both recover. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the Southern Baptist Convention’s handling of sexual abuse claims against clergy and staff.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is also fighting to rebound from allegations against former President Paige Patterson, who was fired in 2018 for his mishandling of rape allegations and comments he made about abused women.

Dockery’s support is strong as he takes on this new challenge at a stage in life when most folks would be looking at — or already in — retirement. He is believed to be the leader the institution needs at this time.

“Dr. David Dockery is God’s man for Southwestern Seminary in this hour,” Board Chairman Danny Roberts announced. “Our seminary’s at a critical juncture in this 115-year history, and in God’s providence, He has already provided the man to lead our seminary during this time.”

Facing challenges

Dockery does not flinch when the challenges facing his religion and school are brought up.

“It’s something the entire SBC is attempting to address,” he said. “We’ve learned from things in the past. We’re trying to move in a constructive direction, going forward with greater awareness, empathy and sensitivity with those whose lives have been affected by sexual harassment and sexual abuse.”

In 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News revealed that roughly 380 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers — from youth pastors to top ministers — had pleaded guilty or been convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998. The Justice Department announced its investigation late last year.

After Patterson left, several publications reported he and his wife took funds and property from the school and had donors divert money to the Pattersons’ personal nonprofit, the Sandy Creek Foundation. The school confirmed and addressed this in an annual report.

In October of 2021, Patterson was elected to a three-year term on the board of trustees of Yellowstone Christian College in Montana.

“It’s one of a double handful of issues we’re trying to navigate,” Dockery said.

Dockery said in an effort to move forward, the school is requiring staff and administrators — and encouraging students — to go through an orientation that includes awareness of sexual abuse and how to recognize signs of it.

He said the hope is to help all “have better antennas.”

Dockery also noted the school has adopted six core values. He said the seminary is a place that is:

• Grace filled.

• Christ centered.

• Scripturally guarded.

• Confessionally guided.

• Student focused.

• Globally engaged.

“The first two say who we are. The next two are on what we stand for to do our work, and the next two are the outcome,” he said.

Belief in his ability

Not only does Dockery have support from those on the seminary’s campus, numerous others have expressed faith he was the correct choice to lead the institution back to prominence and offer a strong voice in addressing the Southern Baptist Convention scandal.

“He is a bridge builder,” said Todd Brady, vice president for university ministries at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. “He brings people together. I think he is exactly what Southwestern Baptist needs right now.”

Brady worked for many years under Dockery, who was president at Union for almost two decades beginning in 1995. Brady is also a former student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“He’s straightforward, inviting, kind. It’s always been clear where he stands,” Brady said. “Baptists are not dogs on a chain. Baptists are cows in a pasture. There is a fence, but within that fence some like to graze on the north side and some on the south side. He is a good leader with a good understanding of the fence.”

Nathan Finn, provost and dean of university faculty at North Greenville University in Tigerville, South Carolina, said Southern Baptists are as divided as they’ve been in a generation. He cited differing opinions about how best to respond to the sexual abuse crisis, how best to live out the implications of the Christian faith in the public square, how best to cultivate and elevate minority leaders, and how best to navigate doctrinal differences within the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Far too often, these tensions provoke mistrust among Baptists,” Finn said, adding that the appointment of Dockery gives him optimism.

“In the midst of this turmoil, I’m encouraged by the recent announcement that David Dockery has been named the permanent president of Southwestern Seminary,” he said. “Dr. Dockery has been a denominational statesman for decades. He has a long track record of building trust and cultivating consensus. As the president of Southwestern, he has a strategic platform to speak helpfully into some of the chaos in SBC life.

“Perhaps more important, he is in a position to help educate current and future ministry leaders to lead with ‘convictional civility’ — one of his favorite phrases — during a time of division, both within the SBC and in our wider culture.”

Chris Wright is the lead pastor at South Hills Baptist Church in Fort Worth and a doctoral student at the seminary. He said Dockery’s integrity and wisdom, along with his decades of leadership in the area of Christian higher education, sets him apart and will prove valuable.

“I am certain and expectant that Dr. Dockery will bring greater stability, renewal, and growth to the seminary. The mission of SWBTS, and all or our Southern Baptist seminaries, is to train and send out men and women who are equipped to advance the gospel in local contexts and all over the world,” Wright said. “There is no better person to lead Southwestern during this time.

”Not only is he a leading scholar in Christian theology and a prominent voice among Christian educators, but he is kind, gracious, and humble.”

Love for all

Dockery stressed that despite the recent turmoil, the Southern Baptist Convention does have an umbrella that includes love for all. This includes the LGBTQ community.

In short, he said disagreeing with someone over a lifestyle does not translate into hatred, something he believes exists in too many areas.

“We want to be people who are faithful to what Jesus called the great commandment,” he said. “First and foremost, love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and secondly, love others, love our neighbors as ourself. We want to find a way to communicate well our love for people while being spiritually grounded.”

Dockery said the Southern Baptist Convention stands by its convictions that the Bible believes marriage to be between a man and a woman, adding that he understands, “Some people disagree with us.”

He said he also realizes that “it could be interpreted by some we’re not loving because we’re not affirming. We can be loving but we cannot affirm what we think the Bible speaks to in a direct way.”

Dockery said it is important to understand that each person has dignity and worth because they were created in the image of God. But, he said, “There has to be a place for genuine understanding that differences exist.”

Bringing students and finances back

Another challenge Dockery is meeting head-on is to bring enrollment and finances back up.

It’s not a new situation for him. Under his leadership at Union University, enrollment more than doubled and net assets more than tripled. Union sprang to a place of national leadership in Christian higher education and earned him a place among the first to be inducted into the university’s Hall of Honor.

In 2014, he was installed as the 15th president of Trinity International University near Chicago and served for five years, then transitioned to the role of chancellor. At Trinity, he brought guidance to an institution that had previously experienced more than a decade of significant enrollment decline and an array of institutional challenges.

He led processes to strengthen the Trinity board and enhance denominational relationships. New academic programs were introduced, and four new academic centers were established.

Financial challenges helped lead to the resignation of Greenway in 2022, the former seminary president said, and certainly the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t help things.

Greenway is now on the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board.

At the start of the pandemic, Southwestern eliminated programs, cut jobs and tapped its endowment, according to Christianity Today.

In the short time Dockery has been president, both interim and now permanent, the school has seen an increase in its enrollment and donations. While 2022-23 figures aren’t complete because summer terms have not happened, the spring headcount is 2,640, an increase of 79 over the spring of 2022, while the fall headcount was 2,872, an increase of 282 over the fall of 2021.

Also, while the current year’s figures have not yet been released, the school reported the vast majority of students in recent years has been part-time. Looking back over the school’s history, as many as more than 3,100 students were full-time in the early 1990s.

The spring 2023 graduating class of nearly 350 is well over the average enrollment of institutions in the Association of Theological Schools. The 111 prospective students who participated in the Spring Preview Day in March was the most in more than four years.

“We’re deeply grateful for the uptick we’re experiencing,” Dockery said. “Our Preview Day pointing to the fall is extremely hopeful. It gives us reason to believe we can begin to turn things in a different direction.

“It will not be quick, but over a sustained period we can see enrollment stabilized and moving in a positive direction. Southwest has such a strong heritage. It was once the largest in the country. That was the case when I was here. We’re still the sixth largest.”

In its long history, which began with B.H. Carroll as the first president in 1908, the seminary was a longtime landmark in Fort Worth and a shining star among Baptist seminaries. As recently as the early 1990s the seminary had around 3,100 full-time students before enrollment began a consistent decline shortly after the turn of the century — albeit with a couple upticks in 2005-06 and 2007-08 — to fall below 1,000 by 2020-21.

Comparing unrestricted gifts for the first seven months of 2022-23 with the same period the previous two years shows $2.4 million compared to $1.4 million in 2021-22 and $1.1 million the year before.

A comparison of total giving shows $7.6 million during Dockery’s tenure compared to $11.2 million in 2021-22 — but that school year included two new endowed chairs at $2 million each.

Dockery said the recent sale of 140 dormitory units to the city of Fort Worth in March for $11 million to house the homeless was not connected to financial problems. He said the property, which is not contiguous with the main campus, was sold because the dorms are more than a half century old and have experienced rising maintenance and renovation costs. He said it will also not have an effect as the enrollment increases.

Background

Dockery joined the seminary’s faculty in 2019 when he was named distinguished professor of theology and theologian-in-residence for the B.H. Carroll Center for Baptist Heritage and Mission. He also served as special consultant to the president. Additionally, he serves as the inaugural director of the Dockery Center for Global Evangelical Theology, which was named in his honor by the board of trustees at its spring 2022 meeting.

Before his return to the seminary, Dockery had a lengthy career in Christian higher educational leadership at Trinity International University outside of Chicago, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2019 he was invited to assist with the founding of the International Alliance for Christian Education, a global alliance of Christian educators based in Fort Worth.

Dockery is a sought-after speaker and lecturer and former consulting editor for Christianity Today, and has authored, edited or contributed to nearly 100 books, including his personal favorite, “Renewing Minds: Serving Church and Society Through Christian Higher Education.”

“I’ve had books that have sold more, but that book has been read by higher education leaders and key faculty and embraced by many as a trajectory around which our shared work can follow,” Dockery said.

Dockery has also won numerous awards. The one dearest to him, he said, is the Global Leadership Award from the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

“It came from leaders in which I’ve invested my whole life,” he said, noting that it is only given when the council deems someone worthy of receiving it. Dockery’s life has taken him around the world.

He said while there are distinct differences in cultures around the globe, one thing ties people together. “I’ve been fortunate to be on every continent, been there long enough to make friends around the globe, regardless of background, culture, languages,” he said. “We share the commonality of having been created in the image of God.”

Dockery said this was confirmed to him shortly after he graduated from seminary when he and his wife Lanese moved to Brooklyn, New York, for him to minister at Metropolitan Baptist Church.

“We were two Bama kids in our 20s with three little kids packing up to go to the most densely populated city in America,” he said. “That was an amazing opportunity for us to serve a multiethnic, multi-lingual congregation in that setting. It helped us see how big the world is, helped us see and appreciate the diversity and backgrounds.”

Near death experience

For decades Dockery got by on no more than five hours of sleep each night. While it contributed to his ability to accomplish a lot, it also almost took his life, he said.

Dockery suffered a heart attack on March 6, 2017. He spent a week in intensive care in Northwestern Hospital in Chicago.

“I almost died,” he said grimly, adding, “Now I work really hard these days to get my rest, walk and eat right. I trust I have a lot more years to invest in this place and watch my grandchildren grow up.”

He and Lanese, his wife of 47 years, have three sons, all born in Fort Worth. All three are married and between them have given their parents seven grandchildren.

John, 43, lives in Holland, Michigan, and is on the general council of the Western Theological Seminary. Ben, 42, lives in Chicago and is a minister at Christ Church in Lake Forest, Illinois.

And Tim, 41, lives in Little Rock and is the executive director of principal gifts and estate for the University of Arkansas Medical School.

How much longer?

Dockery said he has no idea how long he will remain president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, though he does realize that retirement is on the horizon. Before then, however, he is determined to do all he can to restore the school to its former glory.

Brady, the administrator at Union University in Tennessee, said the restoration begins with trust, which he said can already be seen with Dockery at the helm.

“You can’t do anything unless trust is there, and from what I’ve seen trust is going up. They know Dr. Dockery’s reputation,” Brady said.

“I pray each day the Lord grants me strength, energy and focus,” Dockery said. “I’m committed to being the most faithful steward I can.

“I don’t golf, fish or hunt. I love this work, this institution, this faculty and I want to help turn a corner and be ready for the next opportunity.”