Accountable for Failure and Won’t Own up to It

In our previous article BJU's Soteriology, “Turn from Their Sins” for Salvation we discussed the shift in BJU’s stance toward the Lordship Salvation (LS) interpretation of the gospel.  We asked if BJU still rejects LS, as it had for many decades, they should revise the Position Statement as it currently appears. As of this writing they have not.

Following is an extended comment posted under my article The Closure of Calvary Baptist Seminary: Predictable and Repeatable (August 20, 2013).1  That comment appears under, They are Accountable for Failure and Won’t Own Up to It.2 See if you don’t find parallels to what is happening at BJU presently.

I saw the transformation of Calvary seminary firsthand and this article [The Closure of Calvary Baptist Seminary: Predictable and Repeatable] is spot on. Unfortunately the leadership you [Lou] mention seemed to be more interested in being validated by some of the mainstream evangelicals than sticking with the principles they were trained under and passing them on to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

I was there when Sam Harbin was taking a class with Haddon Robinson3 and he was star struck like he had just met Elvis. A culture began to spread that we all needed to go to Westminster or another “accredited” seminary to learn what the “experts” were doing. I remember thinking “If I wanted that why would I be here?” Regardless, the desire to get the validation of the brightest and the best of the mainstream thinkers seemed to begin to drive the decisions of the seminary and even the church.

My opinion is that these men fell prey to the desire to be somebody and became very much focused on their own motivations and what they wanted out of life. Unfortunately they’ve gotten the outcome of what happens when you do things that way. It’s obvious they are upset about the failure and they have tried to put the best face forward on the closure by calling it a success or celebration. The reality is that they are accountable for the failure of the seminary and just won’t own up to it.

"Chief" Jordan

Instead they in effect blame God by saying that He has other plans. They also say that Dr. E. R. Jordan would have been on board, but there is no way Chief would have ever agreed to bring on a Calvinist professor, and this desperate move right before closing for good just shows how off the focus has been and the disregard for what Calvary has always been.

There was even a letter that was sent to Alumni when that decision was made stating that Calvary “had always leaned more towards Calvinism” and that this wasn’t a bad thing. Regardless of your views on the subject this was an outright lie and misrepresentation of the historic position of the seminary, insulting the alumni and the memory of Chief.

In the end I believe a lot of these men, especially [Sam] Harbin and [Charles] McLain, whether they realized it or not, saw the seminary as serving them instead of the other way around. They remade it in their image and the outcome was a small group of relatives and yes men organized in a mutual admiration society. No one will pay good money to be trained under that system- where insiders get preferred treatment and outsiders get shunned or made to feel inferior. This is a tragedy and a direct result of losing focus on what the seminary was supposed to be.

Chief, with all of his eccentricities, loved people and was passionate about training young men for the ministry and about leading people to Christ. Unfortunately the men who followed him thought they were smarter and could do it better, but clearly they were wrong.

Originally appeared June 15, 2014
Read the additional commentary posted by the author.  He says, “I’m only offering my comments here as a warning to other men in ministry so they can hopefully stay the course without making the same mistakes that were made by these men.”

Site Publisher’s Admonition

BJU president Dr. Steve Pettit, Sam Horn and the board would do well to heed that warning. They are making many of the same mistakes made by the men at Calvary, Northland, Clearwater, TTU and Pillsbury. BJU has been put on a new course that, if history is our teacher, will in all likelihood lead to its eventual demise. Steve Pettit and the board will be accountable for that failure.

In our next article- We will be reviewing some of the “same mistakes,” which have taken BJU far off course.

Footnotes:

1) The Closure of Calvary Baptist Seminary: Predictable and Repeatable

2) They are Accountable for Failure and Won’t own Up to It

3) Haddon Robinson