MINISTRY SPOTLIGHT: Southern Evangelical Seminary
Debts, declining enrollment spur decision to move to Lenoir-Rhyne University
After more than a century in Columbia, South Carolina, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary will close its historic campus and move to Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina.
The school received pushback after firing an employee who refused to sign a statement affirming biblical sexuality
In January, a salaried employee since 2020 was fired from her senior director position after declining to sign Fuller’s statement of faith.
The new language would add that a church ‘affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.’
After lengthy debate, Southern Baptists voted on new language for their constitution that would state only men can be pastors of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.
The Rev. Jack Hayford, a popular Pentecostal leader and pioneer of the megachurch movement, often regarded as a “pastor to pastors,” died Sunday (Jan. 8) at age 88.
At some evangelical seminaries, enrollment declines have worsened financial pressures, leading to cuts in budgets, faculty numbers, course offerings, and/or physical campuses.