MILL VALLEY, Calif. (BP)–Trustees of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary approved a $10.1 million budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year and dedicated a renovated and renamed residence hall during their spring meeting in Mill Valley, Calif.
The budget represents an increase of $500,000 over the current year to provide for much-needed additional faculty, facility upgrades and a 25 percent increase in healthcare costs for fulltime employees which the seminary is facing in the next fiscal year.
Trustees also elected new officers. The new chairman, E.W. McCall Sr., pastor of St. Stephen Missionary Baptist Church in La Puente, Calif., is believed to be the first African American elected chairman of a trustee board at a Southern Baptist institution.
Randy Adams, team leader for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s church outreach team and member of Quail Springs Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, was elected vice chairman. Janie Finlay, a member of First Baptist Church in Houston, was elected secretary.
Trustees were present for the opening of the new Elizabeth Wicker Mahon Residence Hall at the Northern California campus. The apartment building, which offers four one-bedroom units for married couples, was renamed after Elizabeth Wicker Mahon, a donor whose husband, G. Heyward Mahon, is a former trustee. The building was recently renovated and will be available for residents this fall.
The board’s April 23-24 sessions also included reports on academic programs, enrollment, the Partners for the Future capital campaign, and the reorganization of the David & Faith Kim School of Intercultural Studies.
Partners for the Future has a goal of $13 million by 2010, which will be used for additional faculty, additional academic schools and chairs, and new and upgraded facilities. More than $4.9 million has been raised in the first 18 months of the initiative.
The David & Faith Kim School of Intercultural Studies has been renamed and reorganized as the David & Faith Kim School of Global Missions.
“This will enable the Kim School to focus more on the outcome we desire it to produce -– global advancement of the Kingdom –- rather than on one of its processes, intercultural studies,” GGBTS President Jeff Iorg said. “We will be better organizationally prepared to comprehensively address key disciplines related to missions. But in no way are we diminishing our commitment to intercultural education and to modeling multicultural and intercultural ministry effectiveness.”
The new Kim School of Global Missions will be organized into two departments: missions studies, which will soon offer a master of missions degree, and intercultural studies, which will soon offer a master of intercultural ministry degree.
Faculty reported to the board of trustees about the new Ph.D. program beginning in the fall, which will offer degrees in Old and New Testament, and an archaeological dig at Tel-Gezer in Israel in which the seminary is participating. Regional campus directors also brought reports to the trustees from Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, Arizona and Colorado.
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