Piedmont/TTU: A Predictable Pattern of Mergers With Only One Survivor

Tragic, isn’t it? It has not been a delight to report on a pattern of the predictable demise of once fine, not perfect, schools. That’s right, “demise.”  One survives and the other goes away.

“…but the merger effectively means that come May 1, Tennessee Temple University will no longer exist.” (The End of Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga, Times Free Press, March 3, 2015).

Last time we considered Tennessee Temple’s demise, being folded into Piedmont International University.1 Look at the schools that already have or may be near to folding.  Is there common denominator?  There are, in my opinion, two factors, to be considered.  First, and foremost, was these schools becoming in practice like, and aligning with the non-separatism of so-called “conservative” evangelicalism.

Second, while possibly less of a negative impact than the former, these schools also drifted into allowing for and tolerating two major doctrinal errors.  Those errors are: 1) Reformed Theology, which includes Calvinism and Covenant theology. 2) Lordship Salvation (LS), which is a works based, man-centered message that corrupts the simplicity that is in Christ (2 Cor. 11:3) and frustrates grace (Gal. 2:21).2 That said, some of our schools have been or lean toward Calvinism and enjoyed relative health.

Schools that get dislodged from their biblical separatist roots, and veer away from their constituencies cannot survive. Pillsbury, Northland, Central Seminary and TTU learned this the hard way. On the theological grid, I think many of our separatists are regrettably willing to endure Calvinism and even LS more so than they are willing to endure a false eschatology and hermeneutic (“the church is Israel” – “Historic Premill,” etc.).

Consider the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC), formerly known as NANC, and their link to Jay Adams. That marriage paved the way for Reformed Theology to make deep inroads into our own ranks.


I would, furthermore, offer and repeat a serious caution: When it comes to the star personalities of the so-called “conservative” evangelicalism, including cooperative ministry, Drs. Kevin Bauder and Dave Doran are willing to tolerate, allow for, ignore and excuse all sorts of aberrant theology (including Reformed, Covenant theology) ecumenical compromises, cultural relativism and worldliness.  Those men (Bauder, Doran, et., al.) through casting aside authentic biblical separatism, paved the way for Covenant Theology to make deep inroads into our circles, and essentially ruin nearly an entire generation of young preachers.  Dr. Ernest Pickering wrote,

“Some leaders operate on the principle that they will use speakers who are well-known even though they may be shaky in their convictions in some areas-because they have special abilities that are helpful and thus can be a blessing to their congregations. The wisdom, however, of following this course of action is very doubtful…. But a man is more than his pulpit message. He brings to the pulpit a lifetime of associations, actions and perhaps writings. He comes as a total person. Is he in his total ministry the type of person you would want the young people at the separatist college to emulate? If he is a compromiser, his example would be harmful, and the college president would be at fault for setting him up as such. The separatist cause is not advanced by featuring non-separatists.”3 (Biblical Separation: The Struggle for a Pure Church, Implementing Separatist Convictions, Whom to Invite to Your Platform, p. 229.)

Predictions:
Where we stand today gone are Pillsbury Baptist Bible College, Northland Baptist Bible College (NIU), Calvary Baptist Seminary and Tennessee Temple.  As for my personal opinion of other schools traditionally in our circles: I suspect Central Seminary will soon join the others in closing. How Bob Jones University fares will in part depend upon how new president Steve Pettit aligns with some of the drifting churches in Greenville, i.e. Heritage Bible, Hampton Park, etc.

Maranatha Baptist University, I believe, and am hopeful will be with us well into the future.  Ambassador Baptist College is debt free, and I believe is being lead well by Ron Comfort’s successor, Alton Beal. The Baptist College of Ministry & Theological Seminary is on sure footing for a long term future.  It seems to me that Pensacola Christian, West Coast and Crown College will around for many years to come.

In all of these closures I wondered where does Piedmont fit it.  TTU is not the first to be absorbed by Piedmont.  Previous to TTU Piedmont absorbed Spurgeon Baptist Bible College of FL., and Atlantic Bible College, VA.  Piedmont also got libraries from other sources. While Piedmont claims to keep the schools alive they have simply digested them.  These were not, “unlike most mergers,” “[un]like a marriage,” because only one entity (Piedmont) has, thus far, survived and the other(s) have gone away.


LM

Related Reading:
Discussion…the Closing of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College

“Although Pillsbury struggled for a number of years to recover itself [from its slide into evangelical compromise], it never really dealt with, in any real tangible way, its ruined reputation. Although this was repeatedly brought before them by many people, they never really did what was necessary to regain the trust of the Gatekeepers who send students.” (11/06/2008)

Northland…Culmination of a Modern Day Tragedy

“For the many fine former NBBC faculty, staff and graduates this is indeed a tragic and closing chapter for their alma mater.  Northland once was unique and unwavering in its fidelity to the whole counsel of God.  Under Matt Olson’s tenure as president the school was steadily lead into compromise and ultimately ruined for the cause of Christ.” (10/15/2014)

Closure of Calvary Baptist Seminary: Predictable & Repeatable

“Calvary joins Pillsbury in its demise. I…believe we will see the closure of NIU and Central Baptist Seminary (MN). For drifting far from their original markers as fundamental Baptist separatist schools NIU and Central will not survive. NIU and Central will not survive having become non-separatist, evangelical schools. They will not survive having alienated their base and alumni!” (8/20/2013)

CBS is Accountable for Failure & Won’t Own Up to It

“My opinion is that these men fell prey to the desire to be somebody and became very 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.” (6/15/2014)


Footnotes:

1) What Do NIU, Pillsbury and (NOW) TTU Have in Common?

2) See, Summarizing Lordship Salvation From a Single Page of John MacArthur's books

3) For Dr. Pickering’s complete comment see, The Separatist Cause is Not Advanced by Featuring Non-Separatists

Non-Fundamentalists to Critique Fundamentalism: Could This Be Another Round of Revisionist History?

Today the Central Baptist Seminary (MN) will be open its two day Fall Conference. The theme of the conference is, Fundamentalism & Higher Education: The Influence of Central Seminary at Pillsbury College.1

A title like that has several possibilities for where the discussion might go.  Who are some of the conference speakers?  Larry Pettegrew, Doug Bookman and Alan Potter all of whom hired on at John MacArthur’s school.  Larry Pettegrew is now at Shepherd’s Seminary. Ed Glenny teaches at Northwestern. Ray Pratt went to BBC, Springfield after the Pillsbury blow-up of 1983. As for the speakers: Why does Central BAPTIST Seminary host primarily non-Baptist, non-Fundamentalists to speak on issues of Fundamentalism?  Granted the speakers were among those who were at Pillsbury during the tumultuous years.  The majority of this speaker line up, however, presently reflects the kind of Fundamentalism that Dr. Kevin Bauder thinks is worth saving.

Kevin Bauder has a track record of heaping “lavish praise” on so-called conservative evangelicals and joining them in cooperative ministry while “castigating” Fundamentalism. It is, therefore, entirely possible this conference will be a continuation of revisionist history and/or besmirching Fundamentalism.

Jon Pratt wrote an interesting assessment of Pillsbury’s demise (Jon’s father, Ray Pratt, is speaking at the conference). The paper is titled, A Legacy of Serving the Lord’s Church: The Story of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College (1957-2008).2  For our purposes I want to excerpt an extended portion.

“Dr. Clearwaters assumed the presidency for the next seven years (1968-1975), but in 1970 the Board asked Dr. Joseph Rammel to come as the new Executive Vice-President. Dr. Rammel possessed excellent administrative skills, and the Board eventually promoted him to the office of President in 1975 at which time Dr. Clearwaters was made the President Emeritus. Dr. Rammel’s presidency was marked by an expansion of course offerings and educational programs, an improvement in faculty quality, and a steady increase in enrollment culminating with a high of 726 in 1980. But the latter years of Rammel’s tenure (he served through 1986) saw decreasing enrollment and some significant personnel issues. Paramount among these issues was the upheaval of the 1983/1984 school year when 25 faculty members departed at the end of the spring semester. This number constituted more than half of the teaching faculty and included the department heads of Bible, math, history, English, industrial science, philosophy, Christian education, secretarial science, education, and business. Those departing also included several key administrators such as the Academic Dean, Registrar, and Dean of Students. To be sure not all of these people left because of a conflict with the president, for some were going on to different ministries and would have left regardless of the situation. However, at least 75% were either fired by the president or resigned out of protest to the president’s actions. The reason for the decision to dismiss some of these faculty members still remains a mystery, and since Dr. Rammel has since died (in 2006), we can never know for certain.”

Later Brother Pratt writes,

“Regardless of the reasons for this large number of departing faculty, the constituency of the college began to question what was happening at the school and the enrollment began to descend even more rapidly, reaching a low point of 347 in the fall semester of 1986. Eventually the Board of Trustees lost faith in Rammel’s ability to lead, and they accepted his resignation as 1986 came to an end. Soon after this in the spring semester of 1987 the Board announced that Pastor Alan Potter, a Pillsbury graduate and pastor of a vibrant church in Lancaster, PA, would be assuming the presidency in April of that year. Potter’s dynamic personality and progressive vision for the college greatly encouraged the faculty and students. Enrollment numbers increased to a high of 369 (in the 89/90 school year) during his 7 year tenure. One of the great discouragements of Potter’s presidency was the failure to attain full accreditation with the North Central regional accrediting agency. This was an unexpected disappointment especially because Pillsbury’s main competitor, Maranatha, achieved accreditation during this time. Sadly, Potter found himself at odds with the Board over certain initiatives he wanted to advance, and he chose to resign in 1994. By 1994 the enrollment had declined to 245 as the Board hired Dr. Gerald Carlson, an alumnus of Pillsbury and Vice President at Maranatha. But Carlson’s tenure lasted only one year as he experienced great frustration with the faculty who did not want to head in the same philosophical direction that he felt the school should go.”

Would I like to attend this conference? Sure!  I like to keep my file current on what others think sank Pillsbury.  For what it’s worth, Pillsbury’s demise was very unfortunate, but it appears that Northland International University is on a trajectory toward its own ultimate demise. See, What Do Pillsbury, Tennessee Temple and NIU have in Common? 

LM

For a continued discussion of CBTS please continue to, What Does Central Seminary& John Piper’s Desiring God Have in Common?

Footnotes:

1) Fundamentalism & Higher Education: The Influence of Central Seminary at Pillsbury College

2) A Legacy of Serving the Lord’s Church: The Story of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College (1957-2008).

Site Publisher Commentary:
One individual, with knowledge of the 1983 blow up, noted that Dr. Rammel’s leadership was compromised because of the compromise in his family, which Jon Pratt noted.  Dr. Rammel, furthermore, was allegedly building the school on under-the-table scholarships for football, and not enforcing the disciplinary standards (kids came back to the dorms drunk and were not expelled).

Related Reading:

The Closure of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College

Kevin Bauder, “It Won't Fly With Us Who Know...”

A Letter From Dr. Richard V. Clearwaters to Kevin Bauder

Continuation of Discussion over the Closing of Pillsbury Baptist Bible College

Many of you aware that I participate in various discussions at the pseudo-fundamentalist Sharper Iron blog. [Resigned from SI June 2009]  Last week I was involved in a discussion at Sharper Iron in regard to the unfortunate announced closure of the Pillsbury Baptist Bible College (PBBC) scheduled for the end of this semester. Various reasons, many of which valid, were offered for what lead to PBBC’s announcement. Among them was my referencing Dr. Alan Potter’s tenure as college President (beginning in 1987) during which he began to incrementally shift the school away from its Fundamentalist heritage. The SI thread was closed by SI moderators short of their normal 20 page standard. In any event it is sad that PBBC is closing.

Dr. Alan Potter introduced changes at PBBC that were a move toward the philosophy of Chuck Swindoll’s The Grace Awakening mindset, which Potter had stated his fondness of to a personal friend of mine. In the SI thread one of SI’s moderators did not appreciate the serious implications of Potter’s shifting PBBC toward The Grace Awakening mindset.

The suddenness and clearly new direction that Potter steered the school toward was for many Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) men an indication that PBBC had just set foot on a path away from its Fundamentalist heritage for non-separatist Evangelical tendencies. I frequently noted that PBBC tried to recover its heritage and perception as solidly Fundamentalist, but the damage was done.

Following is an observation from a man close to PBBC. Certain individuals in IFB circles, who are fond of pointing our young Fundamentalists toward the Evangelical camp, will not appreciate it, but this is what the feeling was among many after Potter initiated his changes at Pillsbury.

“Although it (PBBC) struggled for a number of years to recover itself, it never really dealt with (in any real tangible way) its ruined reputation. Although this was repeatedly brought before them by many people, they never really did what was necessary to regain the trust of the Gatekeepers who send students.”

Some men in the SI discussion thread aggressively tried to dismiss or negate the chilling effects of Dr. Potter’s Grace Awakening inspired changes at Pillsbury. To them I suggested reading Dr. Ernest Pickering’s review of The Grace Awakening, titled, Are Fundamentalists Legalists? Here is a sample from page one,

Furthermore, the viewpoint espoused in his [Swindoll’s] book finds a sympathetic audience with some fundamentalists who have become “bent out of shape” with what they view as the pettiness of certain segments of fundamentalist thinking. We are afraid that, given the impetus by the writing of Swindoll, some are about to “throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Reflect on that in light of Potter’s stated fondness for Chuck Swindoll’s The Grace Awakening philosophy and his introduction of Swindoll’s Evangelical mindset into PBBC. It is irrefutable that Potter’s actions triggered events that lead to the ultimate demise of PBBC. In light of Pickering’s booklet one might also begin to appreciate that cautions and warnings about strengthening ties and endorsing Evangelicals like John MacArthur, John Piper, Al Mohler, Mark Dever and Mark Driscoll, with only rare and/or muted cautions, are not new or unique to me.

The potentially devastating effects of introducing Evangelical philosophy into a biblical Fundamentalist setting are no more stark than the demise of PBBC.

In conclusion I am posting an unedited note I received from an IFB preacher who was viewing the discussion at SI. He shared the following remarks and critique with me and I will share it with you on his behalf. I will follow with some closing remarks.

Looks like the “discussion” about what causes might have really led to PBBC’s demise has abruptly been ended by SI’s leadership saying as they did that they had allowed enough “disparaging” comments about the college. I noticed in those same thoughts any lack of equal concern for the real disparaging remarks made against much larger Fundamentalism. It appears that over and over again historic Fundamentalism can be disparaged all day long without any of the empathy that they so quickly want to show toward those individuals or institutions who march off decidedly to embrace the new “mood” of Evangelicalism.

Even the McCunes and Shepherd, while acknowledging Dr. Potter’s role in the demise, declare themselves openly to be “irritated” in one of their own words concerning any discussion about a shift at PBBC toward Evangelicalism during Dr. Potter’s watch, but remarked only that they do not believe that PBBC’s closing is any indication of a “collapse” in Fundamentalism. While they claim to be tied close enough to better discern the cause and effect better than others, it appears that they are not understanding what else comes from such close proximity, and that is emotion. They seem to be allowing their close emotional ties to PBBC to cloud their close perceptions of the cause and effect. I believe that their specific verbiage confirms as much. This is not unique to them as it clouds our perspectives in other situations to which we are very close.

The comments by the dissenters to the issues raised about Dr. Potter’s actions during his tenure as president on the one hand confirm that there was indeed some “fault” at Dr. Potter’s hands; however, they adamantly desire to dispute what was at the heart of those faulty actions. They want to characterize the heart of the matter as mere “relaxing rules.”

As they see it, however, Potter’s relaxing the rules was faulty only because it happened too fast and that it happened without involving more people first. They specifically deny that in his rules relaxation there is to be found any vestige or tincture of Evangelicalism because Evangelicalism according to them is evidenced only by some overt ecclesiastical compromises.

These men are willingly ignorant of the true nature of Evangelicalism. It would serve them well to read more of the past pastor of Fourth Baptist Church and past president of CBTS, Dr. Ernest Pickering, rather than the current musings of Dr. Kevin Bauder.

Dr. Pickering’s book *The Tragedy of Compromise: The Origin and Impact of the New Evangelicalism defines the movement more as a mood than anything thing else. A mood can be hard to specifically define, and its effects can impact much further and broader than most Fundamentalist can even begin to appreciate. If one doesn’t understand what the mood is, he won’t see it at work and many claiming the moniker of Fundamentalist especially those at SI don’t see it in CCM, the new worship, contextualization in mission, etc. Dr. Pickering covers how this mood of Evangelicalism has affected believers’ attitudes and actions.

The Evangelical mood desires to loosen restrictions, blur lines, and blend a Christ/cultural mixture as the new balanced Christian way of life. That is what self-identifying Evangelical Chuck Swindoll advocates in his book The Grace Awakening, a redefinition of Biblical grace-living in light of this new mood, and that redefinition is exactly what Dr. Potter read about, agreed in principle with, and then sought to implement at PBBC according to his own testimony. End of story!

It is sad that the discussion at SI never moved even remotely close to really evaluating Dr. Potter’s action in light of the knowns of Evangelicalism. Could it be because many there are affected to a degree with that same mood?

In private conversations (following the thread's closure) I encouraged men in the SI discussion thread to reflect on Dr. Pickering’s critique of Swindoll’s philosophy in light of Potter’s stated fondness for the philosophy of The Grace Awakening and how he obviously began to introduce Swindoll’s Evangelical mindset into PBBC. I am hopeful they can now better understand why Potter’s actions triggered events that lead to the ultimate demise of PBBC. They might also begin to appreciate that my cautions and warnings about fawning over the stars of Evangelicalism, with very few warnings about the obvious associations and methods of ministry these same IFB men would never condone or tolerate in their own ministries, are not new or unique to me.

I also suggested reading Dr. Pickering’s booklet, Should Fundamentalists and Evangelicals Seek Closer Ties? In that booklet Pickering’s concerns are primarily about the “New” Evangelicals.  IMO, the so-called conservative wing of Evangelicalism (Mohler, Piper, Duncan, MacArthur, Dever, et.al.,) is the bridge to New Evangelicalism.


LM