Fuller Theological Seminary Names New President…… | Information & Reporting

Fuller Theological Seminary, the largest Protestant interdenominational seminary within the nation, named Black church theologian and missions chief David Emmanuel Goatley its subsequent president.

Goatley, who leaves a publish at Duke Divinity Faculty to start in January, says he needs to counter the “partisan poison” he sees in American evangelicalism, and switch college students’ eyes to the testimonies of the worldwide church. And like presidents in larger schooling in all places, he additionally faces the issue of declining enrollment.

He would be the first Black president on the 75-year-old establishment. Outgoing president Mark Labberton stated when he introduced his departure final 12 months that he hoped his substitute can be a woman or person of color.

Goatley has a Baptist background however is centered within the Black church. Ordained within the Nationwide Baptist Conference-USA, he pastored a Black Baptist church in Kentucky for 9 years, then spent the following 20 years as CEO of a historic Black missions company, Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

“There’s a sure illustration that’s necessary … The journey of which I’m half issues,” Goatley informed CT. “I’m a Black particular person in the US, which suggests a few of my story has to do with discrimination and segregation and slavery, and all of that helps to present perception to how I deal with myself and the way I search to deal with creation and interact with different individuals.”

He added: “It additionally means one thing vital that Fuller Theological Seminary was capable of take critically the candidacy of a Black man. They didn’t explicitly or implicitly rule me out. I’ve had that occur to me earlier than.”

Because it has expanded packages for on-line and nontraditional college students, Fuller emphasizes its ethnically numerous pupil physique and goals to develop its international attain. At round 3,000 college students, the historic California faculty is outnumbered solely by Southern Baptist–affiliated establishments amongst Protestant seminaries, with Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on the high of the record for enrollment, in accordance with the Association of Theological Schools.

Fuller’s management the previous 30 years has come from Presbyterian and Reformed traditions. Labberton, who was president for a decade, is ordained within the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Richard Mouw, a Reformed theologian, served as Fuller’s president for 20 years earlier than that. The seminary has all the time described itself as evangelical, although it doesn’t match into neat evangelical classes. It has allowed an LGBT pupil group on campus but additionally successfully defended in court its code of conduct for college students, which features a conventional Christian intercourse ethic.

Goatley, who hung out in 35 nations whereas main the Lott Carey missions company, thinks US seminaries could be restricted to “a Euro-centered imaginative and prescient, or a Western North Atlantic imaginative and prescient of theology.”

“It’s not that that’s unhealthy,” he stated. “However there are different sheep that the Lord has. There are different voices. … I’m not saying we have to put off European and Western North Atlantic insights and frameworks. What I’m saying is we don’t have to rely completely or totally on that alone.”

He recalled being in Liberia on the eve of its civil warfare, going by way of checkpoints guarded by youngsters with weapons but additionally seeing church buildings persevering with to work faithfully by way of wartime.

“One of many challenges we now have in the US is to return to the belief that we’re not the axis of the universe,” he stated. “We’re not the middle of what God is doing. We have to … come alongside our siblings elsewhere of the world the place God is working regardless of the challenges that persons are experiencing.”

His personal schooling at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary passed off earlier than the “conservative resurgence,” when he stated “Southern and Fuller have been extra comparable in temperament and theological trajectory.” That have gave him mental rigor, he stated, but it surely included an “over-reliance” on European-centric theology.

“Thankfully I used to be nurtured in a family and a church that had a dedication to missions, each close by and globally, so we had glimpses of what God was doing different locations,” he stated. “My theological formation was not completely grounded within the establishment the place I obtained degreed.”

Jimmy Mellado, a Fuller board member and the CEO of Compassion Worldwide, stated Goatley was chosen from a couple of thousand candidates, and that the board voted for him unanimously. Mellado sees Goatley as carrying ahead a world imaginative and prescient for the college: “We’re not searching for a 180-degree flip right here.”

The board appreciated that Goatley is a “holistic chief,” stated Tom Lin, a Fuller board member and the pinnacle of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Goatley introduced a background as a pastor, group chief, missions company chief, and educational.

“He’s going to steer ethnically numerous leaders in an ethnically numerous world,” Lin stated. “I used to be one of many first nonwhite presidents of a big nationwide evangelical group, Jimmy [Mellado] and I share that. I perceive the challenges Dr. Goatley will face. … Individuals will need him to talk to specific points within the Black church as a result of he’s a Black chief, or assume that he’s going to steer it in a path that’s this or that due to his ethnic background. We selected him as a result of he’s an excellent candidate.”

Lin added: “He holds dearly that the evangel that Jesus proclaimed is actually excellent news.”

Goatley does desire a extra optimistic gospel imaginative and prescient for US church leaders, who’re in peril of a “partisan, politicized, polarized poison, that takes our eye off Jesus,” he stated. “We have now to work in that poisonous atmosphere with out succumbing to the poison.”

The seminary, he acknowledged, must cope with extra sensible issues too like declining enrollment and making schooling inexpensive. He stated the pipeline from church buildings to sure graduate packages “has burst.”

Seminaries with out denominational ties, like Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity Faculty, have suffered financially and seen enrollments drop. Fuller has equally gone by way of monetary turmoil and enrollment decline in recent times. Enrollment has dropped from about 4,000 in 2019 to three,000 now.

Saddled with debt, Fuller closed some satellite tv for pc campuses and put its historic campus in pricy Pasadena, California, up on the market in 2018, with the concept of shifting to a inexpensive space in Pomona. That may even have made it inexpensive for college students.

However in 2019 the school reversed course, citing excessive building prices in California and “variations” with town of Pasadena over the sale. It lowered a few of its Pasadena footprint.

The college’s most up-to-date tax documents present that it has trimmed down annual bills by about $8 million since 2015 however has been working within the pink for some years, with a $14 million deficit in 2017.

Mellado stated more moderen monetary information, which the most recent 990s from 2019 don’t seize, is healthier: The seminary posted two years of revenues exceeding bills, and the college is 85 % to its purpose of elevating $150 million.

Goatley sees the cultural and monetary process forward: that Fuller must make the case for seminary schooling globally.

“The world wants good church buildings, church buildings want good pastors, organizations want good leaders,” he stated. “We might help.”