The Why of Truett
British author Rudyard Kipling once composed the following lines at the outset of one of his poems:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
In this morning’s Convocation Address, as Truett begins its 32nd academic year (its 25th in this building), I will not need to employ all Kipling’s so-called “serving-men,” but I would like to borrow his Why for a while, if I may.
In late March of this year, Truett colleagues Jack Bodenhamer, Toby Osburn, Megan Peacock, and I participated in a Missional and Financial Vitality workshop in Chicago hosted by the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and led by our friend Chris Menzer, Senior Director and Chief Operating Officer for ATS. Chris began that gathering by inviting and challenging those present to ponder the why of their respective institutions. Jack, Toby, Megan, and I engaged in meaningful conversation about the why of Truett at that point in time. As it happens, the why of Truett is a matter with which I am perennially preoccupied, for it happens to be the heart of the matter.
With some regularity, as we encourage others, especially prospective students, to join our company and community, we will pose and respond to the question: “Why Truett?” A Truett faculty or staff person will often talk of our history, theology, university, faculty, facilities, curricula, scholarships, and the like. Each of these facets of our school are important and should by no means be diminished nor dismissed.
Indeed, as we were emerging from the cruel pandemic that we now simply call COVID, we asked our friends at Polymath Innovations to have conversations with people both inside and outside of our school to ascertain more clearly and fully what makes Truett, Truett. They came back to us with the following five characteristics: rigorous academic instruction, intentional spiritual formation, caring community, intellectual curiosity, and commitment to the Church.
Asking “Why Truett?” or even “What makes Truett, Truett?”, however, is not one and the same thing as asking about the why of Truett. To ask that question is to pose a question about mission and purpose, about the reason for and essence of our existence as a school. That is where I would like to focus our attention this morning.
To do so, to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop, if you will (my favorite flavor is cherry), we need a broader frame. To respond well to the question, “What is the purpose and mission of Truett?” or the why of Truett, we first need to consider the purpose and mission of Baylor into which Truett is embedded and of which Truett is a constitutive part.
George W. Truett Theological Seminary is one of the twelve schools and colleges that comprise Baylor University, which was founded in 1845 in Independence, Texas, by the Republic of Texas. This makes Baylor the oldest continually operating university in the Lone Star State.
Baylor did not move to Waco until 1886, the same year the Baptist General Convention of Texas was formed at the First Baptist Church of Waco. This year, then, 2026, marks the 140th anniversary of both.
In 1844, one of the three men credited with the founding of Baylor, Rev. James Huckins, a Brown University educated, American Baptist minister and missionary, envisioned that Baylor would not only be, and I quote, “an academical and theological institution” that would meet the “requirements of the existing conditions,” but that it would also be “susceptible to enlargement and development to meet the needs of all the ages to come.” We do well not to gloss over that bodacious vision. To appreciate it fully, you need to take a day trip one day to Independence, Texas, where Baylor was begun. It would take vision and much, much more to get from there to here.
Although Huckins and fellow founders Judge R.E.B. Baylor and Rev. William M. Tryon could never fully have imagined a sprawling Christian, Research-1 University in Waco, Texas, on the banks of the Brazos River with over 20,000 students and more than 160,000 living alumni, they would have both appreciated and resonated with, one imagines, Baylor’s mission statement, namely, “To educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community.”
We do well, in my opinion, to pair Baylor’s mission statement with Baylor’s recently amended motto: Pro Ecclesia. Pro Texana. Pro Mundo. “For the Church. For Texas. For the World.” Why does Baylor ultimately exist as a Baptist Christian institution of higher learning? Not for itself, but for the Church of which Christ is Head, for the state of which Baylor is part, and for the world which God loves and is in his providential care.
Having considered Baylor’s beginnings as well as its stated mission and motto, we are now better positioned to examine the why of Truett. To “get at” Truett’s purpose, I would like for us to explore Truett’s mission statement, which is congruent with but is more specific than the University’s writ large.
Following a comprehensive evaluation visit from Association of Theological Schools in 2017 (we will have another such visit in April 2027, about which you will hear much more over the course of this academic year), the Truett Seminary faculty unanimously endorsed the following mission statement (with one minor subsequent edit): “Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary exists to equip God-called men and women for gospel ministry in and alongside Christ’s Church by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Now let’s unpack Truett’s succinct, Trinitarian-shaped mission statement, for it economically expresses why Truett lives and moves and has its being (cf. Acts 17:29). Let us start at the beginning, for as The Sound of Music notes that is a very good place to start.
There are two basic seminary structures or models: freestanding (or independent) and embedded (or integrated). Our accreditor, the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada, ATS for short, currently has some 290 schools in its membership. Roughly one-half of these schools are embedded, including Truett.
Thus, when we begin our mission statement—and our identity and vision statements for that matter—with Baylor University in the possessive, we are doing far more than flinging green and gold and shouting “Sic’em Bears,” although as an alumnus of the school I can heartily endorse such activities. Rather, we are communicating that we are owned and operated by Baylor; we are joined at the hip, so to speak.
Occasionally, when people are upset with our Seminary or University for one reason or another, for something we have done or have failed to do, they suggest that we simply separate. That, my friends, is far easier said than done, even if one wanted to do so, which I, for one, do not.
Are there challenges of being a confessional seminary embedded into a Christian, R-1 university? Of course there are. Indeed, there are challenges of being embedded anywhere. Yet, whatever disadvantages there might be, these are more than eclipsed by the advantages.
Please allow me to put a fine point on the surpassing value of Truett’s embeddedness into Baylor: Truett Seminary has many generous friends and erstwhile supporters, but we have no greater friend or supporter than Baylor University herself. We are indebted to and grateful for the University’s Regents, administration, alumni, supporters, and friends for all they have done and continue to do for our school to make our work and witness possible and viable. Were it not for the University’s ongoing involvement and investment in our school, we simply could not exist, at least not as we currently do.
Our Seminary’s namesake is George Washington Truett, a Baylor alumnus who served as the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas from 1897-1944. During his forty-seven-year tenure at First Baptist Dallas, Truett also served, among many other things, as president of the Baptist World Alliance from 1934-1939.
This is neither the time nor the place to offer a thoroughgoing overview of the life and ministry of George W. Truett, as he was widely and fondly known. Over the span of my 60 years of life, and especially during my 23-year tenure at Truett Seminary, I have been regaled with various stories about Truett, including a number by those who knew him personally.
Up until now, my favorite story is the time when Truett was offered the presidency of Baylor University in 1897, the same year he graduated and began his pastorate of First Baptist Dallas. While understandably flattered and honored, he declined the offer saying, “I have sought and found the shepherd’s heart.” As they say, “The rest is history.” Truett went on to serve for almost a half-century as the pastor of First Baptist Dallas.
As it happens, when Baylor’s first seminary, which was founded in August 1905 within the University’s Department of Theology, became independent in 1908 and was subsequently named Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Truett wanted the seminary to relocate to Oak Cliff in South Dallas. His hopes were dashed when it was decided by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, who owned and operated the Southwestern until 1925, that the school would move to nearby Fort Worth.
Next fall, we will, God willing, open Truett Dallas at Park Cities Baptist Church on Northwest Highway. The church, on whose clock face is inscribed “Night Cometh” (sound familiar?), is located on the same street 1.2 miles away from Truett’s gravesite at the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery, which I visit at least once a year. Perhaps Truett would be pleased with the development of Truett Dallas.
Regardless, inscribed on Truett’s gravestone are the following words: “My greatest desire is to help the people and to magnify the Lord.” What a grand and glorious desire for one’s life! Even as you can give a dog a bad name, you can give a school a bad name. Thanks to the framers and founders of Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary for giving us a good name, one that we perpetually strive to live in to and up to. To be sure, Truett was not a perfect person or pastor, as even a cursory study of his life and ministry will readily reveal. Who is, though, spare Jesus himself? Truett was, however, a good and godly man, as they say, and we can name and claim him gladly and gratefully.
Why, then, does the George W. Truett Theological Seminary, which is of, by, and for Baylor University, exist? What is our purpose, end, aim, goal, telos? In short and in sum, it is to equip or to train ministers. That is who we are and what we do—we are a graduate professional school, a theological training school, a seedbed, a seminary. While we thoroughly study religion and the body of divinity in all its various facets and components, we are not purely or primarily a school of divinity or a department of religious studies. Rather, we exist to equip those who will “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). Our remit is to equip the equippers, to train the trainers, to mold the molders, to form the formers.
The students Truett is blessed and entrusted to train share much in common, including a common call. Not only have they been called by Christ to follow him personally in conversion and in mission, but they have also been grasped and gifted by God to pursue a vocational ministry calling. Recognizing that a call to ministry is a call to prepare for ministry, they enroll at Truett. Like Isaiah of old, they say to the LORD, “Here am I, send me” (Isa 6:8). As with Jeremiah, they say, “something like a burning fire is shut up in my bones” (Jer 20:9).
Believing that in Christ there is neither male and female (Gal 3:28), that in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman (1 Cor 11:11), and that in the last days God “will pour out [his] Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and daughters will prophesy” (Acts 2:17), at Truett we are currently training approximately 550 women and men from no less than 33 states, 25 different denominations, and 17 countries for any and all ministries, grounded in and animated by the gospel, in and alongside Christ’s Church. At Truett, women as well as men who are preparing for ministry are both wanted and welcomed. If in some traditions and denominations, women are set aside, sidelined, or subordinated, at Truett women are celebrated and treated as equal and mutual in Christ and in classrooms. This has been the case since Truett’s inception, and despite some claims from some circles at some times to the contrary, it remains so until now.
“The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord; she is a new creation by water and the word.” In writing to Corinthian Christ-followers, Paul instructs, “No one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 3:11). Ephesians envisions Christ as both the cornerstone (or keystone) of the Church as well as its head, the body of which he is Savior (2:20; 5:23).
Even as there are a variety of ministries in which Truett students, alumni, and friends are engaged and will be engaged in and alongside the Church, our school offers a variety of master’s and doctoral degrees in various locations and in multiple modalities to fit them for the same. One size clearly does not fit all. Additionally, we offer non-degree certificate programming in both English and Spanish, and beginning next year, through the good work and leadership of Josue Valerio, will offer a Doctor of Ministry in Spanish. Regardless of the degree, location, modality, or language, our aim is to prepare people well for ministry grounded in the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ heralded and the good news that is Jesus Christ.
Again, in writing to the church in Corinth, Paul places priority upon the gospel he preached and they received, namely, that Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor 15:1-4). In the Baptist tradition of which I am part, those who are licensed and ordained are licensed and ordained into the gospel ministry, and rightly so, for the gospel “is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Greek” (Rom 1:16).
The work of equipping that the faculty, staff, and administration of Baylor’s Truett Seminary is called to do in teaching and forming the called is for us a holy work, a sacred trust. While we work heartily and joyfully as unto the Lord, we also recognize the importance of what the LORD says to Zerubbabel in Zechariah 4:6: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit.” We are called both individually and collectively to live by and to be led by the Holy Spirit, God’s empowering presence, who enables us to offer a winsome witness for Jesus and to be conformed more fully into Christ’s character and likeness.
Arguably, the why of Truett, that is the school’s mission to “equip God-called men and women for gospel ministry in and alongside Christ’s Church by the power of the Holy Spirit” is a primary, if not the primary, reason people should want to work here and enroll here. Mission is foundational and should inform and infuse all we are and all we do.
For me, Truett’s mission and my own sense of vocation are interwoven. Last week in a conversation I was having with the dean of Baylor’s Law School, Jeremy Counsellor, I asked him if he missed practicing law. He, in turn, asked me if I missed pastoring. We both answered “no,” but in doing so I said that I still get to preach frequently and serve regularly as an interim pastor and that I regard the work that we are entrusted to do at Truett as, in essence, pastoring pastors and ministering to ministers.
Inextricably relatedly to mission (why one exists) is identity (who one is) and vision (where one is aiming and anticipates going). It is presently my intention to address Truett’s identity as an orthodox, evangelical, multi-denominational school embedded into a Christian, R-1 University and committed to the historic Baptist tradition and Truett’s vision to steward carefully and creatively the sacred trust of training thoughtful, faithful, hopeful, and joyful ministers for a twenty-first century Church and world in my Spring 2027 Convocation Address.
But, as our Good Lord in the Good Book says, “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt 6:34). Why it is still called today, then, we do well to ensure that our mission as a school maps well onto the mission of our University, and more importantly yet, onto the mission of God, namely and ultimately, to reconcile a wonderful, yet sinful, world to himself through the incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended, and coming Christ, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through whom God was pleased to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20). Amen.