FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Friends:

Here at ABSW we are passionately and unapologetically Christ-centered! How do we know what that means? What are the sources of authority that offer interpretation to our Christ-centered commitment?

We can examine what it means to be committed to Jesus from a historical perspective. How have Christian communities understood discipleship over the centuries? This is an important question that must be asked. We can also examine the nature of Christian belief and practice from a theological perspective by understanding and contrasting the several and varying competing theological views, past and present, about what it means to be faithful to Jesus. A well-trained minister needs to understand both history and theology in order to give faithful leadership in the 21st century church. Our faith cannot be a-historical. We believe that God has acted and continues to act in the messy history of humanity just as God acted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. One of the heresies practiced in today’s church is to discount the God of yesterday in favor of the God of the moment. Our experience of the God of today will be distorted and trivialized without reference to and knowledge of the God of yesterday. To be Christ-centered is to know God yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

While history and theology are important disciplines for understanding our commitment to Christ, the central authority for belief and practice is the Word of God. The Bible is the inspired authority for the Christian community and is the faithful and sufficient witness to the work of God. The primary source of revelation for knowing what it means to be Christ-centered is scripture itself.

We want students not just to “know about” the Bible but also to “know” the Bible. We want them to experience the power of God in the texts of the Word. When I teach preaching, I counsel the students not to engage in a "shotgun" approach to scripture that quotes as many verses as you can find about a particular understanding or thought. I want students to engage a text, a whole text, and let God speak in that text to our context. Surely, I want them to understand the context of the passage they are studying and the history of interpretation related to that passage, but I also want them to experience the passage as a vehicle for God’s voice to be heard in the here and now. I want students to “live in the word.” Sometimes you need to take your shoes off and sit down in a text until God delivers a word in that text for our time.

As the Bible is the primary source of revelation for knowing about Christ, we want students to go "deep" into the structure and meaning of texts. We are not trying to teach them answers to play “trivial pursuits” but to teach them patience and skill to allow the Holy Spirit to interpret stories, parables, teachings, and letters so that the community of faithful can in common affirm “thus says the Lord.”

We approach the Bible as a lived and living word that needs to be studied, honored, and interpreted. John Jaspers, an 18th Century slave preacher, defined his role in proclamation as “I reads myself full, thinks myself clear, and prays myself hot.” Living in the Word involves all those steps—study, thought, and prayer. Helping students to develop skills to interpret the texts of the Bible is at the heart of how we approach scripture. We want students to engage in a lifelong discipline of study so that more and more of the Word of God becomes part of what the student knows and treasures.

What does it mean to follow Jesus? We take that ancient text, open it in today’s context, and wait for the God of Jesus to speak. I believe that preaching—interpreting the Bible—is the closest thing to a sacrament that we Baptists have. At least for me, when I open the Bible I expect God to speak, to be present, to have a word. Even if it seems audacious to speak for God, that is exactly what we are preparing students to do. You have no hope for that kind of revelation apart from “living in the Word.”

Power to your life in the Word of God.

Faithfully yours,

Keith A. Russell
President