MBTS receives $1.25M grant from Lilly Endowment to establish Institute for Preaching and Preachers
By Michaela Classen/MBTS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP) — Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (MBTS) has received a grant of $1.25 million from Lilly Endowment Inc., to help establish the Midwestern Institute for Preaching and Preachers.
The effort is being funded through Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. The aim of the initiative is to foster and support preaching that better inspires, encourages and guides people to come to know and love God and to live out their Christian faith more fully.
The goal for the Midwestern Institute for Preaching and Preachers is to provide an array of resources to equip, support and encourage preachers of God’s Word. The resources will include workshops, hosted both on Midwestern Seminary’s campus and in the surrounding regions, where current and aspiring preachers will gather for training and mutual sharpening. In addition, Midwestern Seminary’s For the Church resource site and For the Church Institute video course platform will offer expanded content on the subject of expository preaching.
“I am very grateful to announce the new Midwestern Institute for Preaching and Preachers,” said President Jason Allen. “Thanks to the generosity of Lilly Endowment, we will be able to equip and encourage even more pastors and preachers. The church needs more faithful expository preaching, and I am excited to see how the Lord uses this new institute for the church’s good for years to come.”
Jordan Wilbanks, MBTS vice president of church partnerships, will serve as director of the institute.
“The people of our day and culture are bombarded by a host of messages, many of which are confusing and fear-inducing,” Wilbanks said. “We need a clear presentation of the unchanging, powerful, saving, inerrant, authoritative, sufficient Word of God with perceptive application for trying and volatile times. And we need preachers who do so from a scriptural foundation: one of love for the eternal triune God, a pattern of godly living and Christlike compassion, and a primacy of mission.”
Wilbanks added, “We want to see preachers grow not only in right interpretation and skillful communication of the message of God’s revealed Word, but we also want to see them grow in their love for the God of the Word. Additionally, we want to see them refreshed and encouraged by a community of co-laborers in the preaching task. And we want to see more godly men raised up who desire that task.”
Midwestern Seminary is one of 142 organizations that are receiving grants through Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative. Reflecting the diversity of Christianity in the United States, the organizations are affiliated with mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Pentecostal faith communities. Many of the organizations are rooted in Black church, Hispanic and Asian Christian traditions.
Midwestern Journal of Theology covers personhood, baptism, other topics
By Michaela Classen/MBTS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (BP) — From church governance to cultural engagement, the Spring 2024 edition of the Midwestern Journal of Theology (MJT) addresses several relevant questions for the church today. The new edition features contributions from scholars and pastors including Midwestern Seminary faculty and doctoral students.
“I want to congratulate Drs. Michael McMullen and Blake Hearson for putting together another great edition of the Midwestern Journal of Theology,” said President Jason Allen. “With every edition of the MJT that we produce, I am reminded anew that scholarship should primarily serve the church. And, as you’ll see in the articles and book reviews in this recent edition, that is precisely what has been accomplished.”
Michael McMullen, who serves as editor of the MJT and professor of church history at Midwestern Seminary, shared, “I am very encouraged to be able to bring this issue to print, as it really is a vehicle to showcase some of the wonderful research and teaching that happens on a daily basis here at Midwestern.”
He went on to say, “The articles we publish do not come from professors in ivory towers, but from scholar-practitioners: those who write, teach, preach, pastor and evangelize for the church.”
The Midwestern Journal of Theology is a scholarly publication of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. With two editions published each year, the MJT focuses on equipping the church for global discipleship.
The new edition opens with the Spring 2024 faculty address given at Midwestern Seminary by Rustin Umstattd, assistant dean of doctoral studies and professor of theology and ministry.
In his article, Umstattd notes several pastoral concerns raised by evangelistic presentations that fail to prescribe baptism. He argues, “Baptism should be included in the evangelistic presentation as the prescribed manner for a person to confess faith in Christ by calling on the name of the Lord.”
Jason S. DeRouchie, research professor of Old Testament and biblical theology at Midwestern Seminary, contributed the second article. DeRouchie’s article proposes a new understanding of Zephaniah’s structure to serve preachers in communicating the prophet’s message.
DeRouchie shows how other proposed structures fail to convey Zephaniah’s message because they lack sufficient attention “to the grammatical and rhetorical signals” in Zephaniah’s argument. By applying such attention to Zephaniah, DeRouchie’s proposal reveals how the book extends an invitation to salvation.
