April 21, 2003

FROM LEFT: Paige Patterson and Richard Land, both considered likely candidates for the Southwestern Seminary presidency; outgoing President Ken Hemphill; trustee Chairman David Allen, who is a pastor and professor at Criswell College in Dallas. Both Patterson and Land are former professors at Criswell, where Patterson once was president. Ironically, Criswell College was founded, at least in part, to provide a more conservative alternative to Southwestern, which even at the time was considered the most conservative of the six Southern Baptist Convention seminaries. The Southwestern faculty today includes several professors who have either studied at or taught at Criswell College.

Patterson speaks about Southwestern;
chairman denies Hemphill was ousted
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___Could Paige Patterson be headed to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary?
___Since the abrupt "retirement" announcement of President Ken Hemphill April 8, speculation has run rampant in both Texas and North Carolina that Patterson might return home to Texas to do for the Southern Baptist Convention's largest seminary what he has done for Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he currently is president.
___Such speculation is so strong that one of Southeastern's trustees asked Patterson about it during the seminary's board meeting in Wake Forest, N.C., April 14.
___Patterson's response: "I have not been approached by anyone on the committee at all about it."
___He later added: "I would be the most surprised man in the world, from several aspects, if that should happen."
___The presidential search committee at Southwestern had been appointed just one week earlier, when Hemphill announced he was moving to a newly created position in Nashville as strategist for the SBC's Empowering Kingdom Growth initiative.
___By most insider accounts, Hemphill was urged to leave the Southwestern presidency by a small group of SBC leaders. Sources both in Fort Worth and in North Carolina told the Baptist Standard Hemphill had been called to a meeting in North Carolina a few years ago in which he was told either to resign or be fired.
___Some SBC leaders reportedly helped broker a deal to allow Hemphill to stay until now and then to be moved to the specially created position in Nashville--where he will continue to be paid for the next year by Southwestern. The most far-right segment of Southwestern's trustees has criticized Hemphill for not cleaning house at Southwestern and for allowing too much leeway for non-fundamentalist faculty members to stay on.
___Patterson acknowledged to his board that Hemphill had shared with him about three years ago that he was considering a career change because, in Patterson's words, "he still had a heart for the pastorate." Patterson further explained that Hemphill contacted him and some other friends several weeks ago to let them know he could be available. Shortly afterward, SBC Executive Committee President Morris Chapman invited Hemphill to become the national spokesperson for Empowering Kingdom Growth.
___That corresponds with the chain of events understood by some sources on campus and away. Lorin Cranford, a former professor at Southwestern who now lives in North Carolina, told the Standard about a half-dozen sources closely related to the seminary have confirmed that Hemphill had been to a meeting a few years ago in which he was given ultimatums to find another post, fire David Crutchley as dean of the School of Theology and hire Craig Blaising as provost and executive vice president.
___Hemphill removed Crutchley as dean in December 2001. Blaising arrived shortly thereafter, given sweeping powers by the trustees. Faculty sources report that for the past 16 months, it has appeared to them that Hemphill reported to Blaising rather than vice versa.
___Cranford's understanding was corroborated by several Fort Worth sources who cannot be named because of their current relation to the seminary and fears of reprisal.
___However, the seminary's new board chairman, David Allen of Irving, flatly denied assertions that Hemphill's departure was coerced.
___"That's patently false," he said in an interview last week. "I was on the board when he was brought in, ... and I served on the board while he has been president. I can tell you unequivocally that he was not forced out."
___For his part, Hemphill has kept a low profile and downplayed talk of his departure being forced, even though those close to him report he and his wife, Paula, have been deeply hurt by the ordeal.
___The day he announced his departure, talk of "God's will" permeated the statements of both Hemphill and seminary trustees.
___"For several years, we have been praying about our gifts, about how we could best advance the kingdom of God," Hemphill tearfully told students, faculty and staff in a packed chapel service.
___He later told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the move to Nashville was "a simple call of God on my life" and that he has "no animosity toward anybody--Dr. Blaising, the trustees or anybody."
___Blaising likewise told the Star-Telegram it is "simply not true" that he was brought in to get rid of unwanted faculty.
___However, that contradicts the published statements of former trustee Chairman Miles Seaborn, a retired Fort Worth pastor and one of the most influential voices on the board in the last decade. In the December 2001 issue of the Southern Baptist Texan, published by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, Seaborn predicted Blaising would help fill the faculty with his kind of conservatives.
___"We've been working toward this ever since the firing of Dr. Dilday," he said, referencing the 1994 trustee ouster of President Russell Dilday.
___"It was a very tragic, traumatic event for all of us that were involved in it, but it's also been a process," Seaborn said. "There have been folks deeply entrenched here at the seminary that are moderates. Some of them have gotten so uncomfortable that they've left and are irritated, but others have kind of hunkered down and gone underground."
___When asked April 8 his reaction to Hemphill's departure, Seaborn declined comment except to say, "This is God's will."
___Terms of Hemphill's financial compensation from the seminary were not disclosed. Trustees met in executive session April 8 to iron out those details.
___However, sources close to the seminary have said Hemphill was given a deal similar to that offered other faculty members who have quietly left the seminary in recent years. Under this precedent, Hemphill could remain on the seminary payroll as a faculty member on sabbatical for one more year. That would bring the total of his age and years of service to 65. According to the faculty handbook, that is the point at which a seminary employee may retire with full benefits. Those benefits include health insurance for life and a Christmas bonus.
___Southwestern trustee Chairman Allen, a professor at Criswell College in Dallas and pastor of MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church in Irving, confirmed Hemphill will be paid by the seminary through July 31, 2004, when his retirement goes into effect.
___Trustees also reportedly voted to give seminary employees no pay increases in the coming budget year. Details of the budget were not discussed in open session and not released to the media.
___Technically, Hemphill will remain a seminary employee, although officially he will work in Nashville with the SBC Executive Committee and LifeWay Christian Resources, heading the Empowering Kingdom Growth emphasis.
___Allen also confirmed he appointed Michael Dean, outgoing trustee chairman and pastor of Travis Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Worth, to fill the final slot on the presidential search committee. At the April 8 trustee meeting, Dean announced nine members of the committee, with a 10th position left for the incoming chairman to name.
___Hemphill will remain president at Southwestern through the end of July, the end of the current academic year. No provision has been announced for an interim president after that, signaling to some that trustees expect to name a new president before the fall semester.
___Patterson has topped the list of rumored successors to Hemphill for several years. The native Texan is considered one of two masterminds behind the fundamentalist movement to control the SBC that began in 1979. He is a former president of Criswell College in Dallas and has led Southeastern Seminary into an era of rebuilding and renewed influence.
___Another often-mentioned candidate for the Southwestern presidency is Richard Land, also a native Texan, who currently heads the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
___The irony, according to Cranford and other seminary sources, is that if a strong personality like Patterson or Land takes the presidency at Southwestern, Blaising's enhanced role as chief academic officer could be greatly diminished.

___With additional reporting by Editor Marv Knox and Tony Cartledge of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder, who covered the Southeastern Seminary trustee meeting
___

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