The past two months have been difficult! Feelings of amazement, grief, frustration, anger, and disbelief have shrouded the days and weeks since March 9, 1994, the day the Southwestern Seminary trustees took action to fire President Russell Dilday. As a student of Southwestern, I have witnessed and felt the actions of the board of trustees. It is still difficult to believe that twenty six men and one woman could plot and scheme toward such a disruptive end. I have often asked myself, and other students, just who these people are that Baptists are supposed to trust? What have they done to earn our trust for the days ahead? I do not know the individuals personally, I only know what I witnessed that Tuesday and Wednesday at Southwestern, and what I have seen and read since about the way they have defended their actions— Amazing! What hurts and amazes most is the way things were done. It was not even Christian—plotting for over a year, giving a positive evaluation one day, firing the next, locking the doors, trying to manage the news! These actions and the spirit with which they were carried out are so contrary to what we have been taught at Southwestern.

Over the past two months fellow students and I have had a negative lesson in what justice, integrity, and Christ-likeness means from the trustees. Since the firing of Dr. Dilday, the students, young men and women, have had to take a hard look at theological education in a Southern Baptist Convention context, the future priesthood of the believer in a Southern Baptist Convention context, the role of the local church in a Southern Baptist Convention context, and the political policies of the Southern Baptist Convention. What would a real community of believers look like? At the same time, we’re doubly grateful for the faculty and administration currently at Southwestern, we have come to love support, and encourage one another as friends, ministers, and as a spiritual family.

It is for our Baptist family that we grieve. But in suffering together we have found hope and peace in a genuine fellowship of believers and in the cross of Jesus Christ. Dr. Dilday ia friend and I am certain that he will be a model throughout life for most of us. Southwestern is a family and currently a place where one can find Christian depth and get a great theological education. We do not know what the future holds—can we really trust the trustees! What new president of Southwestern Seminary could? Dr. Dilday and his family will move on to other areas of ministry and we support that. An exceptional faculty will be eventually replaced. Hopefully in God’s providence we will all have the freedom to work as Baptists. The freedom and love of Southwestern will live on in the lives of the faculty, the administration, and the students, but what the future holds for the institution, for the bricks and mortar, is uncertain.

Our responsibility is to continue in the same manner as that of Dr. Russell Dilday and the faculty. To continue to “do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.” We will not forget to hold each other accountable for our actions, and we will not forget to hold the immediate trustees and the power politicians of the SBC accountable for their acrimonious deeds, their present incredulous actions, and the future. The end never justifies the means in the church of Jesus Christ. It is not authoritarian, coercive power that builds the Kingdom of God. It is the sacrificial love of Christ found only in the humility and suffering at the cross that provides the basis for our theology and for our actions. For it is in the sacrifice and the power of the cross that we are saved, and it is in the caring and loving of others, in humble service, that the Kingdom of God has its future. In this Dr. Dilday and the faculty of Southwestern are our examples. God is faithful! We must seek only to honor Him in our grief, our fear; yes, even in our anger. And we must continue to minister, called to a suffering world.

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