[1]SWBTS community honors Dockery during portrait unveiling
By Michelle Workman
FORTH WORTH, Texas – President David S. Dockery was honored with the unveiling of his presidential portrait in the B. H. Carroll Memorial Building Rotunda at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary on March 12, an event held in conjunction with Founder’s Day, celebrating 118 years since the seminary was chartered.
The Rotunda filled with students, alumni, friends, trustees, faculty, and staff attending the event, including seventh president Ken Hemphill, Board Chairman Robert Brown, and Chancellor O. S. Hawkins, who was honored with the L. R. Scarborough Award at a luncheon later in the day.
Brown noted that while celebrating Founder’s Day, which is a time to recall the vision and courage of the founders and early leaders of the seminary, the Southwestern community also wanted to celebrate the current president, who himself graduated from Southwestern in 1981 and for almost four years has led the institution out of a tumultuous season.
“Since 2022, the seminary has taken major steps toward overall health with a renewed commitment to prayer and institutional stewardship,” Brown said. “Building upon the best of the Southwestern tradition and guided by our six core values, the entire Southwestern community has committed themselves anew to Christian faithfulness, to the love of God and others, to Christian unity and cooperation, as well as to academic seriousness in order to prepare men and women from all over the world to serve the churches, to engage our cultures, and to take the Gospel to the neighborhoods and the nations. During this time, the seminary has experienced a remarkable turnaround with a renewed dedication to the Southwestern mission and to our confessional convictions.
“This has come by God’s grace through the steady and capable leadership of President David Dockery.”
Despite his accomplished resume in his more than 30 years of experience in Christian education, Brown said Dockery would never ask to be celebrated, but would rather “celebrate the faithfulness of God to the Southwestern greater community.”
[2]Hawkins said what he considers the “secret to the rebirth of Southwestern” in the past 42 months is the times of prayer led by Dockery in the Rotunda each Monday during the academic year, when faculty, staff, and students gather to pray for the institution.
Just as Israel was encouraged in the Old Testament to remember the works of God, Hawkins encouraged the audience to remember earlier Southwestern presidents used by God in the life of the institution: B. H. Carroll, first president and founder; L. R. Scarborough, the second president, who Hawkins said branded the seminary with a focus on evangelism and missions during his leadership; and fifth president Robert Naylor, who led the seminary into a time of growth while remaining faithful to the founder’s intent.
But Hawkins said he now adds Dockery’s name to that list of Southwestern greats.
“He saved this seminary from financial collapse, a multitude of years of deficit spending, from enrollment decline, from faculty and trustee relations that were tattered and frayed, from reputational ruin, and on and on I could go,” Hawkins said.
SWBTS Founder’s Day chapel focuses on J.B. Gambrell
By Karen Garcia
FORT WORTH – Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary celebrated Founder’s Day with a March 12 chapel service focused on J. B. Gambrell, a renowned Baptist leader known as the “Greater Commoner” who played key roles in the beginning and early years of the seminary.
The chapel service is held annually on the day closest to the chartering of the seminary on March 14, 1908.
In leading the invocation, Provost W. Madison Grace noted that for more than 100 years, God has called people to Southwestern to be equipped for their calling. “We are thankful for this place,” he said.
Seminary President David S. Dockery welcomed the audience to “this special day in the life of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary” and highlighted special guests including seminary trustees, members of the Southwestern Advisory Council, and alumni. He introduced Jim Spivey, guest speaker for the chapel service, as “an amazing Baptist historian” and a friend to both himself and Southwestern Seminary. Dockery noted that Spivey, pastor of Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth, is a former Southwestern faculty member and served as dean of the seminary’s Houston campus.
SWBTS presents Lees, Hawkinses with Carroll, Scarborough awards
By Remington Cook
FORT WORTH – Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary recognized Wayne and Berna Dean Lee with the B. H. Carroll Award and O. S. and Susie Hawkins with the L. R. Scarborough Award, March 12. The honors are given annually on Founder’s Day to recognize those who have financially supported the institution.
The awards were presented during a luncheon following the Founder’s Day chapel during which Jim Spivey, pastor at Gambrell Street Baptist Church in Fort Worth and former Southwestern professor of church history, gave an address on the life of early seminary leader James Bruton Gambrell.
Chandler Snyder, vice president for institutional relations and instructor of missions, welcomed the gathering of roughly 120 people to the luncheon, before leading them in prayer. The guests consisted of distinguished Southwestern alumni, staff, donors, as well as friends and family of the award recipients.
“Today, we have the distinct privilege of honoring those who have invested purposefully, meaningfully, and very deeply into the life of this institution,” Snyder said.
President David S. Dockery, who was honored earlier in the day with the unveiling of a presidential portrait, further welcomed the attendees and explained the history of the awards to be presented to “two couples who have made quite a difference in the life” of the seminary.
“The B. H. Carroll Award is given to a person or to a couple for their investment in Southwestern Seminary and their friendship and support in many other ways,” he said. “The Scarborough Award is similar in that it recognizes those who not only invest in the seminary, but also encourage others to do so, as Scarborough himself always did.”
Seminary Hill Press releases expanded edition of The B. H. Carroll Pulpit
“The B. H. Carroll Pulpit, Revised and Expanded,” the most recent publication by the Seminary Hill Press (SHP), the publishing arm of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, provides an updated collection of some of the first president’s most influential sermons and addresses.
The B. H. Carroll Pulpitwas first released in 2021 as the second volume in SHP’s Legacy Series. The updated edition contains 44 sermons, addresses, and articles by the founder and first president of Southwestern, who pastored for decades before transitioning to roles in higher education. The revised edition includes a foreword by President David S. Dockery and additional sermons from Carroll.
“Carroll’s convictions related to Holy Scripture, to the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the local church, to the primacy of preaching, to the necessity of evangelism and missions, to the importance of Christian cooperation, to the significance of personal piety, and to the high calling of ministerial preparation and theological education remain the markers that characterize the Southwestern community nearly twelve decades after the visionary work of B. H. Carroll that brought about its founding,” Dockery said of Carroll’s influence on Southwestern in his foreword to the book.
The volume is organized into three sections: Key Sermons, Addresses, and Articles; Evangelistic Sermons; and Baptists and their Doctrines, with the latter two being sermons or lectures previously published as books. New chapters included in the expanded edition include The Case of Job and Lessons from the Case of Job, among others.
“We encourage you to read these sermons with thanksgiving to God, recognizing how applicable so many of them continue to be for our contemporary context,” Dockery said. “Our prayer is that the Lord will use this volume for good to strengthen the work of churches as well as those who are called to take the Gospel to the nations.”
The book can be purchased at the SHP website [6] for $24.99. In 2025, a revised and expanded edition of “The L.R. Scarborough Treasury [7]” of the Legacy Series was also released. It is available for purchase at the SHP website [8] for $24.99.
“I want to express my deep appreciation to Jim Smith, Ashley Allen, Michelle Workman, Emil Handke, and the entire team at Seminary Hill Press for their dedicated efforts to produce this remarkable resource for the good of many,” Dockery said.
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