| CENTRAL BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY OF MINNEAPOLIS | |
|---|---|
| Established | September 11, 1956 |
| Type | Fundamentalist Christian Seminary |
| Chancellor | Dr. Douglas R. McLachlan |
| President | Dr. Samuel E. Horn |
| Dean | Dr. Jonathan R. Pratt |
| Students | 100 |
| Location | Plymouth, Minnesota, USA |
| Affiliations | Independent Baptist |
| Website | http://www.centralseminary.edu |
Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis is one of the oldest fundamentalist Christian seminaries in the United States. The school is located in Plymouth, Minnesota, and has a branch campus in Arad, Romania. Its student body numbers close to one hundred enrolled in graduate (M.A.T., M.Div.) and postgraduate (Th.M., Ph.D./Th.D., D.Min.) programs. The seminary is distinctively Baptist, separatist, dispensationalist, and cessationist.
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Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a member of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS)] having been awarded Accredited status as a Category IV institution by the TRACS Accreditation Commission on November 4, 2008; this status is effective for a period of five years. TRACS is recognized by the United States Department of Education (USDE), the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE).
Membership – American Association of Christian Colleges and Seminaries (AACCS)
Approval – (1) United States Citizenship and Immigration Services for Enrollment of Foreign Students (2) Minnesota State Approving Agency for Veterans Training Benefits (3) Armed Forces Chaplains Board for Military Services
Chartered – By the State of Minnesota in 1957
The founding of Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis grew out of the need to fill a vacuum created when Northwestern Theological Seminary closed. Northwestern Seminary, an auxiliary of Northwestern College (Minnesota), was founded in 1935 by Dr. William Bell Riley, noted fundamentalist leader and pastor of First Baptist Church of Minneapolis. Within a decade of Dr. Riley’s passing, financial pressures forced Northwestern’s board of trustees to close Northwestern Seminary after twenty years of service training ministers in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region. Students, seminary faculty, and other supporters urged Dr. Richard V. Clearwaters, pastor of Fourth Baptist Church of Minneapolis, to fill this void through the establishment of a new fundamentalist Baptist seminary. With the knowledge and encouragement of the administration of Northwestern Schools, Dr. Clearwaters set in motion the founding of a new seminary. Fourth Baptist Church agreed to provide accommodations for the fledgling school within the church’s own facilities. A board of trustees and an administrative structure were formulated. The seminary’s doctrinal statement, central points of purpose, and school hymn were articulated. Articles of Incorporation were filed with the State of Minnesota, and an initial faculty was recruited. Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis officially began classes on September 11, 1956, with a group of thirty-one students from ten states and a faculty of seven.
Within its first decade, Central Seminary grew to a student body of over 100 students. As Fourth Baptist Church grew numerically under the leadership of Dr. Clearwaters, the seminary enjoyed expanded facilities on the near-north side of downtown Minneapolis. Central Seminary’s radio station, WCTS, began in 1965 as a service of witness and praise benefiting its upper mid-west listening audience. In 1986 the seminary instituted a postgraduate degree program, and inaugurated an extension campus in Arad, Romania, in 1993.
In 1982 Dr. Douglas R. McLachlan succeeded Dr. Clearwaters as pastor of Fourth Baptist Church[1] and, during the 1986-87 school year, McLachlan began his tenure as president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. At the end of that school term, Dr. McLachlan was called of God to serve at Northland Baptist Bible College. He remained at Northland for four consecutive school years. From 1988 to 1993, Dr. Ernest Pickering served as president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary and pastor of Fourth Baptist Church.[2] Dr. Pickering was not a newcomer to Central Seminary. During the formative years of the school, Dr. Pickering had served both as Dean and as Professor of Theology while he pastored elsewhere in the Twin Cities area (1959–1965). After returning to serve as president of Central Seminary for five years, Dr. Pickering accepted a leadership position with Baptist World Mission as Director of Deputation. With the departure of Dr. Pickering, God providentially called Dr. Douglas R. McLachlan back to the pastorate of Fourth Baptist Church and the presidency of Central Baptist Seminary. In 1998 under Dr. McLachlan’s leadership, Fourth Baptist Church and Central Baptist Theological Seminary relocated to a newly constructed facility in the Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth.
Because of the close relationship between Fourth Baptist Church and Central Baptist Theological Seminary, and out of a desire to foster seminary training in the context of local church ministry, the original administrative structure of the school named the pastor of Fourth Baptist Church as the President of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. By the middle of the 1990s, the complexities in the duties of these two offices grew, particularly the responsibilities of a seminary president in the areas of student recruitment and fundraising increased. Thus, discussions began among the board, administration, and faculty regarding the separation of the two offices: pastor and president. In 1999 the board of trustees, in official action, created a committee for the revision of the seminary constitution with regard to the office of seminary President, among other items. The following year, the board of trustees unanimously approved the constitutional revision. In the fall of 2001, a presidential search committee was formed and in May 2003 Dr. Kevin T. Bauder became, by unanimous board action, the first full-time president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary.[3] Samuel E. Horn succeeded Bauder on July 1, 2011, also by unanimous action of the board.[4]
Since its official inception in 1956, Central Baptist Theological Seminary of Minneapolis has graduated nearly 800 students. More than 300 of these graduates have ministered as pastors of local churches in the United States. Over 100 have labored as church planters, home and foreign missionaries, national pastors in foreign lands, or administrative leaders in missionary agencies. More than 70 graduates have served as educators in over 50 Christian schools, colleges, and seminaries in the United States and abroad.
The mission of Central Baptist Theological Seminary is to assist New Testament churches in equipping spiritual leaders for Christ-exalting biblical ministry.
Assisting New Testament churches
Assisting - Since God has established the local church as the body of Christ in which and through which he accomplishes his work in this age, and since the equipping of saints for ministry is the task of pastors and churches, CBTS purposes to function as a service agency for New Testament churches both at home and abroad.
New Testament churches - CBTS purposes to accept as students those men and women who are recommended by New Testament churches as certifiable, spiritually and mentally qualified candidates for advanced biblical training and who are serving in their churches under the leadership and mentorship of pastors with whom the seminary will partner throughout the training process.
Equipping spiritual leaders
Equipping - As an educational institution in graduate and postgraduate studies, CBTS purposes to train the mind of each student, and to do so with excellence through the agency of each program, department, and course, and through the instruction and mentorship of each member of the faculty.
Spiritual - CBTS equally purposes to train the heart of each student, molding each student’s affections by precept and example to love God and to love his Word in heart, soul, and mind, translating biblical faith into a model of Christian works, grace, maturity, humility, and spiritual disciplines, in order both to please God and to attract others to follow in faith and good works.
Leaders - CBTS purposes to produce men and women who are able to serve in various and appropriate biblical roles of leadership as a ministry to their churches individually and to other churches collectively; various roles include leadership as a church member, as a missionary church planter, as a pastor, as an educator, or as a service agency administrator.
Christ-exalting biblical ministry
Christ-exalting - CBTS purposes to produce genuine Christian servants who are driven by deepest affection for Christ, who are growing in Christ’s likeness, who serve in and through Christ’s church in the power of his Spirit for his glory, and who long to see people from all tribes and nations find their only hope and greatest joy in Christ.
Biblical - CBTS purposes to perpetuate in the students the true and singular faith that was once for all delivered to the saints through the Holy Scriptures and to promote among the students the practice of that faith through the separatist Baptist witness of New Testament churches which are the pillar and ground of the truth.
Ministry - CBTS purposes to generate highly competent and deeply spiritual graduates who involve themselves in lifelong and worldwide local church ministry, effectively communicating biblical truth in love across spiritual and cultural barriers, leading souls to Christ and edifying the saints through the skillful investigation and faithful proclamation of the whole counsel of God.
This mission and these goals are founded upon and are in agreement with the seminary’s original “Points of Purpose” which were established at its founding in 1956 and which are intended to remain in perpetuity as characteristic of this institution:
• Education. We are committed in Christian education to the direct method of presentation of divine truth from the Bible, an authoritative and exclusive revelation, rather than to the indirect method so common in secular education today, where relative truth and standards prevail.
• The Local Church. We are geared to local church ideology and individual cooperation in spiritual unity rather than geared to eccumenical cooperation in organizational study.
• Scholarship. We emphasize scholarship of the highest order as a means to an end of "rightly dividing the Word of Truth," and we disdain the type of scholarship that indulges in mind worshipping.
• Curriculum. In curriculum, we emphasize biblical rather than philosophic content.
• Denominational. We are Baptistic and evangelistic in approach rather than merely conservative and evangelical.
• Polity. We are separatistic rather than inclusivistic, rejecting efforts to infiltrate unsound organizations and fellowships rather than separating from them.
• Theology. In theology we are dispensational rather than reformed and covenant.
• Eschatology. In eschatology we hold the view of premillennialism which makes the pretribulation rapture the blessed hope for the church.
• Hermeneutics. We are committed to the grammatico-historical method of interpretation, the fundamental principle of which is to gather from the Scriptures themselves the precise meaning which the writers intended to convey. This applies to the sacred books the same principles, the same grammatical processes and exercises of common sense and reason, which apply to other books. The born-again exegete, furnished with suitable qualifications, intellectual, educational and moral, and using the grammatico-historical method of interpretation, will accept the claims of the Bible.
• Apologetics. In our systematic argumentative defense of the divine origin and authority of Christianity, we follow the Biblical pattern of being both positive and negative.