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BMA Theological Seminary
Charley Holmes, D. Min, President
1530 East Pine St.
Jacksonville, TX 75766
Fax: 903/586-0378 Tel. 903/586-2501
E-Mail: bmatsem@flash.net Web: http://www.bmats.edu
July 5, 2000
Summer at the Seminary is off to a fast start. Several new developments are making this summer an exciting time for all on campus such as: a new dean, new trustees, and new students
New personnel in the Seminary administration always, creates excitement and change. Dr. Philip Attebery is our new dean. Dr. Attebery is no stranger to our national association or the Seminary. He is a native of the Magnolia area where he graduated from Southern Arkansas University. He also holds a Master of Divinity from the BMA Seminary and a Doctorate from Southwestern Seminary. Dr. Attebery's ministry background includes the pastorate, several years as the National Galilean promoter, several years as an ABS director, and part-time professor at the Tyler Junior College and the BMA Seminary. Aside from his personal achievements, his family's connection to the BMA is unusually deep.
The Attebery family's connection to the BMAA is well known, particularly concerning Christian education. Dr. Attebery's family connection to the Seminary extends back two generations. Dr. John Duggar, who served in the BMA as president of our association, as Secretary of Missions, and president of the Seminary, was a great-uncle of Dr. Attebery. Brother Charles Attebery, president of Central Baptist College, is an uncle. Harry Attebery, another uncle, is a faithful BMA pastor and has served as chairman of the Seminary trustees. Dr. Attebery is married to the former Stephanie Williams whose family have been active members of BMA churches in Arkansas and Louisiana for many years. A stronger natural affiliation with our association would be hard to imagine. Besides a new dean we are glad to welcome three new trustees to the Seminary Board.
Our trustees are an invaluable asset to the Seminary. Trustees are entrusted with the responsibility of hiring the president, approving faculty, and promoting the financial stability of the institution. We are glad to have a new trustee, Brother Grady Higgs, a respected denominational leader, BMA Seminary alumnus, and pastor of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Texas. We also are delighted to have two faithful laymen joining the board, Steve Crawley and Randy Veach. Brother Crawley is a Mississippi native and is the controller of the Coastal Paper Company in Wiggins. He is a faithful Sunday School teacher at the Vardaman Street Baptist Church where his father, LaVay Crawley, is pastor. Brother Randy Veach is a farmer from Manila, Arkansas. He is very active in the Little River Baptist Church and is a highly respected civic and business leader. In addition to our new trustees and new dean, we are attracting new students.
Students are naturally the primary focus of the Seminary's ministry. I am glad to report that our ministry is growing with new students. Our new Master's in Motion program has been a great help in attracting new students who are not able to leave their fields of ministry. Students in the program can attend concentrated (one week) classes in the Winter and Summer and complete a masters degree in approximately three years. Combining our inexpensive temporary housing and low tuition has helped make higher education a possibility for several new students. We also are looking forward to several new resident students. In recent weeks new families from Arkansas and Africa have moved on campus. We are also seeing an increase in serious enquiries about on campus housing which indicates that the Seminary apartments will near capacity in the fall. This week lead your church in praying for our New Dean, New Trustees, and New Students.
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March 22, 2000
A university professor once boasted, "One of my callings in life is to shatter the faith of naive fundamentalists as they come to my class. Just give me a room of young, naive evangelicals and let me at 'em. You can just watch them drop like flies hit with Raid when I challenge their faith in a deliberate, consistent manner."
When I read the preceding quote, I recalled a strikingly similar experience from my college days. At one of the largest Baptist supported universities in the world, I heard my Old Testament professor deny all the miracles involved in the Israelite escape from Egypt and conquest of the Promised Land. Thankfully, I had a solid scriptural grounding in a conservative Baptist home and conservative home church. One generation of such teaching is enough to destroy a denomination or association of churches. Isn't it wonderful that the BMA doesn't tolerate such apostasy in our schools?!
Your BMA Seminary faculty and administration annually affirm the BMA doctrinal statement. Your Seminary stresses to young pastors and missionaries what you believe:
1. The infallibility of the Scriptures
2. The training of soul-winners
3. The importance of the local church
4. Missions at home and around the world.
BMA churches support this ministry of training our next generation of BMA preachers through monthly offerings. The regular church support keeps our tuition low. However, most of your BMA students still must have help. If you had to work your way through school while feeding a family, you understand the importance of scholarships. The national association has annually observed the months of May and June as a time to pray for and receive a special love offering to support our students. There are two specific days our churches are asked to observe in May:
A. Wednesday, May 17, An Evening of Prayer. In your Wednesday night prayer meeting have a special prayer with different leaders each praying for:
1. the students
2. the faculty
3. our trustees and administration.
B. Sunday, May 21, Scholarship Sunday. Receive a love offering for the scholarships dedicated to BMA pastors and missionaries. Please suggest a church goal of $2 per member.
If every BMA church has special prayer for their Seminary Wednesday, May 17 and receives a love offering on May 21, every BMA student will receive a wonderful scholarship! Please call me (903 586 2501) for a specific BMA student's name and a Seminary staff member's name to pray for Wednesday, May 17. Several Seminary speakers are available to come to your church on May 17th or Sunday May 21st. Call my office soon to make arrangements.
The Seminary Dean, Dr. W. K. Benningfield, will be retiring at the end of this school year (July 31.) The Benningfield's have some extensive travel plans for the coming year and we all wish them the best for their retirement years. We hope to have Dr. Benningfield back teaching part-time in a year or so. The Seminary Breakfast during the meeting of the BMAA in Little Rock will honor Dr. Benningfield with a "nice" roast. The breakfast will be on Wednesday, April 19, at 7:00 a.m. and the cost is $12.00. We invite all of Dr. Benningfield's friends and former students to share this special occasion with him. Call my office by April 7, to reserve your place.
January 7, 2000
The first of the Master's in Motion classes began on January 3. Bro Jeff Swart and Dr. Larry Silvey directed a class of 20 in a missions class that focused on the church planting model of our BMA National Missions Department. On January 10, Dr. Philip Bryan will start a basic theology class with about a dozen students. We are glad to see students in these classes from several states: Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas.
November 1, 1999
C. S. Lewis was a well known British English professor and Christian writer. During a class near the end of WWII he asked, "How can you go to college and study literature, when London is under siege?" He answered himself later in an essay entitled, "Learning in Wartime." The thesis was, "We are always under siege. The real question, then, is: 'Will you spend your life dealing with the immediate or the eternal?'"
The same question is pertinent to the field of Christian education. Those who are called to preach often struggle with the question of why spend time in Seminary while our society sinks into the morass of hedonism and thousands perish without Christ every day. A young scholar of the sixteenth century, John Wycliffe had to face a similar situation. England faced problems more dire than ours. The bubonic plague was sweeping over Europe, leaving many communities with more corpses than survivors. The French and English had been at war for more than fifty years, draining England economically and promoting political corruption. Organized religion of the day was often more corrupt than politics with many bishops' appointments coming as a reward for support of power hungry kings. England was also engulfed in overwhelming ignorance. Illiterate peasants made up 90 percent of the population. Latin was the official language of religion and the educational establishment. The language of polite society was French, and only the very poor spoke English exclusively. Even when surrounded by this sad state of society, Wycliffe decided to forgo a ministry of immediately confronting current evil to launch a campaign to translate the Bible into the language of the common man.
Wycliffe's campaign was considered by many a waste of time. How could a man spend years furthering his education in ancient Biblical languages and theology and later spend more years in translating? How could a young talented minister spend his time translating the Scriptures to an inferior language when his country was drowning in a cesspool of evil? However, the passing of time vindicated his efforts in Christian education. The Christian world now recognizes that his work was used of God as a spark for revival and a turning point for good in history.
I see a definite corollary between Wycliffe's times and ours. As preachers we can rush headlong into the harvest, ill-equipped with dull tools, or we can spend a few years preparing and enter the task with a razor-edged sickle. I believe that the past has proven the superiority of the latter strategy. That is why I constantly urge young men to take only a few years to prepare for a lifetime of a ministry and constantly urge individuals and churches to support Christian education.
Warning a sinful world of the wrath of God on sin, and sharing the love of Jesus that removes it is a challenge of eternal proportions. A calling that crucial deserves a well-prepared messenger. "Should I deal with the immediate or the eternal?" is a perennial dilemma for us all. The world's immediate needs of confronting pornography, abortion, government corruption, etc., is overshadowed by the eternal need of well-prepared men, ready for future decades of gospel ministry.
The BMA Seminary's new "Master's in Motion" degree offers an excellent option for those
ministers wishing to further their training. This is a legitimate masters degree that can be earned
by attending only fourteen one week classes in the summer and winter and completing a few
intern type classes on your field of ministry. Can you afford to spend a few vacation or revival
weeks a year to hone your ministry skills? The current, tremendous drop out rate of pastors and
missionaries might suggest that you can't afford not to. In the first class being offered in January
of 2000, Jeff Swart, BMAA assistant director of foreign mission (BMA Seminary grad), will be
covering the highly successful church planting model of our national missions department. Dr.
Larry Silvey, director of the BMAA's Publications Department, will also be teaching on
discovering potential leaders in new congregations. This January class could be a good starting
point for someone willing to forgo the immediate and began addressing the eternal.
September 13, 1999
Baptist Missionary Association Theological Seminary
"Ye shall be witnesses unto me . . . "
Making Christ's last command the 1st priority!
Most of us have heard or seen excerpts from the famous sermon "I have a dream." While not adhering to that preacher's theology, I will borrow his sermonic device. Since assuming the office in May many people have asked, "What is your "Dream" for the BMA Seminary?" I do have a dream for your Seminary.
I have a dream of a Seminary whose graduates are the best soul winners the world has ever seen. We have already begun to make Christ's last command of Acts 1:8 our first priority. Every graduate of your Seminary will be trained in the field by a qualified instructor with the program of Evangelism Explosion (the best witnessing program ever devised). Our graduates have not only been trained, they are also required to take a new student to the streets and teach him how to effectively present the gospel. Your graduates have no excuse not to win the lost and teach others to do the same when they reach a local church or mission field.
I have a dream of a Seminary whose graduates believe in the primacy of the pulpit. Paul commanded Timothy to Preach the word and to be instant in season and out of season. To be instant means to have an explosive readiness. We want men who don't just feel a duty to preach but absolutely love it. We want them to love it because ". . . it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." When a man realizes that at any service God can use a sermon to reach out and grab a man's heart and change him forever the pulpit will always have his heart. Church organization is always evolving. In one era Sunday School has a preeminent spot, in another it may be a small group ministry. Tastes in church music seem to change with the seasons as well as by locality. The minister who marries the fad of the day soon becomes a widower. However, the man who anchors himself to a Bible-based pulpit will never lack for opportunities of service in the Kingdom.
I have a dream of a Seminary where any BMA minister can be trained no matter his finances or location. A lack of finances has prevented many from attending ministry training. The past several years the Seminary has worked hard on raising scholarship funds. The new scholarships combined with a balanced budget this past year enables me to say to any BMA preacher, "Come to school, we will help." If a man will come and show himself to be a dedicated student we will get him through school! However, at times other things get in the way.
Often a pastor who wants more training, feels it is impossible to leave his field of service. To meet this need, we are implementing the Master's in Motion degree program. This new program will allow a minister to complete to his master's program by taking one week intensive classes. Ideally the minister could finish his program by being on campus two weeks in the winter, two weeks in the spring, and two weeks during the summer. The old problems of "I can't afford an education" or "I can't leave my field" have been demolished. Any BMA minister who really wants an education can have it.
A dream of a school that produces vibrant soul winners who love the pulpit and makes it possible for any BMA preacher who wants to better his ministry to come, ought to be your dream also. Support your Seminary with your prayers and your finances. Every church ought to support the school that is training its future pastor. If the Seminary isn't in your church and local association budget, begin praying now that God will use you to lead the way and bring the matter before your church and association. I would like to help you get started. Call and invite a Seminary speaker to come to your church to preach and share the ministry of training your ministers with your church or association. This is an easy way to start a new scholarship for a pastor from your area. When you provide a scholarship for a young missionary or pastor, you will have a part in every church he plants and every soul that is won during his ministry. Call today.