Women represent Southwestern at SBC through teaching, gatherings

NASHVILLE – Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary was represented at women’s events related to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting as female faculty, students, and seminary officials participated in teaching, academic networking, and the encouragement of ministry wives during the June 14-15 meetings.

McCoy speaks to biblical love

More than 2,000 women listened as Katie McCoy, assistant professor of theology in women’s studies at Texas Baptist College and Southwestern Seminary, addressed the topic of understanding biblical love and loving people like Jesus during the women’s track of the North American Mission Board’s Send Conference held June 14 prior to the Southern Baptist Convention. Kim Hardy, an author and pastor’s wife from Marietta, Georgia, and Christi Haag, a child advocate with One More Child of Florida, joined McCoy on a panel that examined biblical love based on Romans 12.

“We all know that love isn’t a feeling, but we tend to kind of slip into that and one of the ways that culture defines love, it tends to make it equal approval,” said McCoy. “And, to love someone means that you approve of everything that they think and do and feel and to disagree would somehow be unloving.”

McCoy said Christians tend to respond in two extremes. One is to try to “make that kind of work and baptize it in Christian terms” while the second response is “a little more subtle and it is to so rebuff it and so go against it that we just become hardened and we speak the truth in a way that no one would want anything to do with it,” she said.

Love is “about seeing everything in one’s life, about serving someone else” and preferring others with a posture of humility, said McCoy.

While reminding attendees of the biblical characteristics of love as provided in 1 Corinthians 13, McCoy noted “one of the things that we can miss in that passage is that Paul is talking about spiritual gifts. What Paul is telling us is none of those things matter if we do not have love.”

“You can have all the right words, all the truth, all the degrees, all the Bible studies under your belt, and not have love,” said McCoy. “And, it’s completely impossible for us to love people the way that Jesus loves people. That’s the whole point, too. It’s the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit.”

Noting the original panel topic changed from a discussion on gender and issues related to gender, McCoy said the principles of love are still applicable.

“Whether we are talking about gender or any other cultural issue, what people are hungering for is true love,” said McCoy. “Love that sees you at your worst and still believes everything that God says about you is true.” 

“And I think to really do that contrary to the way we see the world expressing love, it means loving them enough to tell them what is true, but telling them what is true in a way that attracts them to the Lord Jesus, not makes it seem like it is so impossible they could never get there,” she said.

Society for Women in Scholarship provides networking opportunities

Southwestern Seminary’s Society for Women in Scholarship gathered with counterpart societies from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on June 14 to allow female faculty, doctoral, and advanced master’s level students an opportunity to network and learn from each other.

The event, which drew almost 30 women from all three seminaries, was the first time the societies have met together.

Terri Stovall, dean of women at Southwestern Seminary, said the gathering did her “heart good” because she “started at Southwestern when schools were just starting the women’s ministry certificate program, so look how far we have come.”

“We have a lot of strong, called, gifted women who really need some spaces for dialogue not just about women’s stuff, but about theology,” said Stovall. 

Gayla Parker, a PhD student in systematic theology at Southwestern Seminary, has served over 40 years in ministry, including as a missionary with the International Mission Board and in various women’s ministry roles at state and national levels.

Parker said the gathering was “a great opportunity to network” and “to see other women who are trying to do what I am trying to do and to hear their stories.” 

The meeting of fellow advanced level students provided encouragement which Parker said “is so important when you are at this level to have somebody cheering you on. We need that great cloud of witnesses to cheer us on.”

Stovall added, “We just want women who have stepped into these higher levels of theological education in preparation to steward the seat God has given them well. We want them to have a voice and we want to provide opportunities to do that.”

The Southwestern society assembled a leadership team in the fall of 2019 and hosted their first gathering in late-February 2020. David Dockery, interim provost and distinguished professor of theology at Southwestern Seminary, was their first guest. However, the COVID-19 pandemic began two weeks later and the society was unable to meet. The gathering at the SBC allowed the society to relaunch and prepare for the upcoming academic year.

Ministers’ wives encouraged in steadfastness

Southwestern Seminary female faculty, trustees, faculty wives, staff, and students were part of the 2,000 women who attended the Ministers’ Wives Luncheon on June 15 to gather for fellowship and hear from author and women’s Bible teacher Jen Wilkin as she spoke about steadfastness through trials.

Recognizing the difficulties the COVID-19 pandemic brought to ministry families, Wilkin, a staff member at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, told attendees that they should strive for spiritual maturity, but also remember spiritual maturity often comes through trials.

Jamie Green, a retired speech-language pathologist from Katy, Texas, who attended the luncheon, said the event allows ministers’ wives to “breathe a sigh of relief that the people in the room know their burdens and their struggles.”

The event allows “the Southern Baptist Convention to tell these women, ‘You are loved. You are seen. You are appreciated and we honor you,’” said Green, who serves as secretary of the Southwestern Seminary board of trustees.

Southwestern Seminary’s ties with the ministers’ wives begin when the women are in seminary either as students or student wives and Green is “thankful for those women to see that Southwestern is there as a resource and a support for them.”

“Southwestern has a beautiful legacy and I am really looking forward to what is in the days ahead,” said Green.