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SBTS mourns death of new student


LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)–Timothy Bononi became a Christian in 2001 and soon sensed that God had orchestrated his life in a way that had prepared him to serve as a hospital chaplain.

But on Sept. 4, the 30-year-old student from Springfield, Ill., died of heart failure at the outset of his first semester as a student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Bononi collapsed while touring an apartment complex on the school’s campus and was rushed to nearby Baptist East Hospital where he died some hours later.

During a chapel service Sept. 9, seminary President R. Albert Mohler Jr. read Bononi’s words from an autobiographical essay he had submitted as part of the admissions requirements for Southern Seminary. Mohler said Bononi’s death should serve as a reminder to all of the brevity of life.

“I can imagine that some very close to Timothy, some looking back after his death, would say, ‘Well, isn’t it a shame that he picked up everything he had and went off to a distant place and began a program of study that he was able to fulfill with only a few days?'” Mohler said.

“There is no tragedy in that. When the Lord called him, the Lord found him pursuing the calling that He had planted in his heart. Life is a vapor. We know not the number of our days. But brothers and sisters, let us be determined to be found faithful when our day shall come, doing what the Lord has called us to do.”

Bononi was born with a congenital heart defect and had battled heart disease for much of his life. Doctors performed open heart surgery on him for the first time at 11 months of age and again at 14.

Bononi was in and out of the hospital with various complications over the years, but he wrote of how God had shown him grace through the heart condition and had used it ultimately to draw him to salvation.

He served as an altar boy in the Roman Catholic Church as a teen but began to see the errors of Catholicism by reading Scripture while in the hospital as a young adult. His brother-in-law, a devout Christian, helped him to a clearer understanding of the Gospel. At age 27, Bononi trusted Christ for his salvation.

In his essay, Bononi said that though his own physical heart was defective, God had given him a new spiritual heart. He believed God had called him to the hospital chaplaincy because he had spent so much time in the hospital as a patient. All that was missing was a theological education.

Bononi began at the seminary in late August. He was enrolled in the master of arts in Christian counseling program.

“The fact is that Timothy Bononi did not even finish the first few weeks of class,” Mohler said. “But brothers and sisters, his theological education is now complete. And [it is] complete in a way that none of us will know until we also meet our Lord face to face.”

Bononi graduated from the University of Illinois at Springfield in 1995 with a degree in history. Prior to his move to Louisville, he worked four years in the Kids Care program for the state of Illinois.

Bononi’s funeral was held the morning of Sept. 9 at Springfield Bible Church. He is survived by his father, David, and stepmother, Jan, of Springfield, along with sisters Debra Booker of Riverton, Ill., and Tracy Geist of Springfield.
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(BP) photo posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo title: TIMOTHY BONONI.

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  • Jeff Robinson

    Jeff Robinson is director of news and information at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

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