Why a prominent Southern Baptist seminary is on the verge of 'crisis' after leadership upheaval

A prominent Southern Baptist seminary is taking corrective action as it reels from a cascade of financial mismanagement and reputational hits spanning several presidential administrations.

Interim leadership at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, disclosed to its board and the public last week details of its predicament following the resignation of President Adam Greenway in late September.

“Southwestern is not in a crisis, but our challenges could quickly escalate to a crisis if we do not aggressively move to address them,” Southwestern interim president David Dockery said in a statement Tuesday.

Southern Baptists’ demands for transparency from Southwestern has intensified in recent weeks. In response, the seminary announced significant cost-saving measures, leadership changes and details about conflict between Greenway and the board.

Resignation:President of major Southern Baptist seminary Adam Greenway steps down

Meanwhile, leaders acknowledged the blame also falls to Greenway’s predecessor, Paige Patterson, who is considered one of the most influential Southern Baptist Convention leaders over at least the past four decades.

The Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention is the nation's largest Protestant denomination and has six seminaries that it financially supports through a budget called the Cooperative Program. The Cooperative Program is funded by church giving.

Southwestern has historically been one of the two largest SBC seminaries. However, it’s now the fourth largest after recent declines in full-time student enrollment, according to most recent data from the Association of Theological Schools.

“We pledge that we are going to work hard to earn the trust of all our SBC churches going forward and give a proper accounting of Cooperative Program dollars entrusted to us,” O.S. Hawkins, Southwestern’s senior adviser and ambassador-at-large, said in a statement Tuesday.

Past concerns and future course correction

The seminary will reduce its operational budget by at least 10%, or about $3.6 million, and has already listed for sale a 24-acre student housing village. Also, it appointed two new interim administrators: a provost and chief financial officer.

In addition, trustees authorized administrators to negotiate a line of credit, and to reevaluate policies for hiring and firing senior officers, according to a news release.

The board’s concerns about Greenway included dysfunction among senior leadership and low morale, budget mismanagement and overspending, and passing blame onto chief financial officers, board chair Danny Roberts said in a statement Tuesday.

“More recently, it became clear that action was required after evidence emerged of escalating morale problem in the institution, especially among the faculty, and a resistance to safeguards board leadership wanted to implement,” Roberts said.

Mismanagement under Patterson

Greenway is far from the first at fault, Southwestern leaders acknowledge.

When he took over in February 2019, “he accepted a very, very difficult assignment, which was further complicated by a global pandemic less than one year later,” Roberts said in a statement.

Greenway stepped in after the board fired Patterson, who was Southwestern’s president from 2003-2018, when reports emerged that Patterson mishandled claims of sexual assault at Southwestern and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, where Patterson also served as president.

A trial in a federal lawsuit against Patterson and Southwestern related to one of those incidents was recently rescheduled for February.

Patterson fired:Southern Baptist leader Paige Patterson removed as Texas seminary president after comments on women, abuse

Related:Southern Baptist seminary admitted registered sex offender during high-profile leader's tenure

Patterson is considered the architect of the Conservative Resurgence, a movement that started in the late 1970s that dramatically altered the SBC, and he was SBC president from 1998-2000.

Patterson’s dismissal from Southwestern in 2018 was in the early stages of the heightened awareness within the SBC about leaders’ response to reports of clergy sexual abuse and care for abuse survivors.

But it wasn’t just Southwestern’s reputation at stake when Patterson left. The seminary had also been losing students, or its key source of revenue, while spending went up.

Between the 2003-04 to 2017-18 school years, total full-time student enrollment dropped by 48%, according to Association of Theological Schools data. Meanwhile, the seminary’s operating budget increased by 34%, according to SBC records.

Southwestern enrolled 1,105 total students in the 2021-22 school year, according to most recent data from the Association of Theological Schools.

In contrast, enrollment at similarly sized Southern Baptist seminaries went up along with their respective operating budgets.

Also, Southwestern’s investments grew little under Patterson after the seminary cashed out part of its endowment in 2009, moving the money in house from an outside fund manager, according to SBC and IRS nonprofit records.

Spending spree

As Southwestern saw fewer students enroll while it tried to keep up with existing building maintenance costs, the seminary’s spending went toward new facilities when Patterson was president. Major additions included the 3,500-seat MacGorman Chapel, a three-story academic building, and its Baptist Heritage Center.

MacGorman Chapel opened in 2011 with a specifically designed space for an exhibition of six fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls the seminary purchased in 2010 and later admitted were likely fakes. The chapel also featured stained glass windows commemorating Conservative Resurgence leaders that the seminary has since removed.

The Baptist Heritage Center was designed to house a library for Conservative Resurgence archives and a living space for a short-term theologian in residence, an honor initially offered to Patterson and his wife.

Property is a major piece of the Southwestern’s current financial puzzle.

“Southwestern has a campus footprint that is now quite large in light of our current circumstances. Southwestern is blessed to sit on 200 acres,” Dockery said in his statement Tuesday. “But this blessing also presents significant challenges.”

Interim leadership will be seeking other ways to offload campus property in addition to the apartment complex it already listed for sale.

When Greenway took over in 2019, he announced within months a $3 million budget reduction as part of a “recalibration and reset.” Throughout the four total school years Greenway led the seminary, the operating budget went decreased by 4%, according to an analysis of SBC records.

But those decisions under Greenway didn’t meet the demand, as Roberts’ statement Tuesday indicates.

Roberts added in his statement that Southwestern’s board is asking auditors “to carefully examine all expenditures, especially those which raised concerns.”

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary acknowledges mismanagement