Carroll, Scarborough award recipients recognized for partnership with Southwestern

The generosity of Southwestern Seminary’s ministry partners plays an important role in fulfilling the mission to “Preach the Word” and “Reach the World.” Southwestern honored two such partners with the B.H. Carroll and L.R. Scarborough awards at a luncheon, March 9.  President Paige Patterson recognized the recipients for their contributions to Southwestern, investing in generations of students who will take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

This year’s recipients of the B.H. Carroll award are Jim and Dorothy Merritt, who currently reside in Easley, S.C., and are active members of Rock Springs Baptist Church. Jim served for a time as a deacon of the church, and together they have taught a class for married couples.

The Merritts’ devotion to promoting the biblical teaching of manhood and womanhood eventually led them to partner with Southwestern Seminary. Impressed with the faculty’s commitment to such biblical teachings, they were led to become involved through the establishment and endowment of the Dorothy Kelley Patterson Chair of Women’s Studies, the first of its kind in the evangelical world, in fall 2015. They also established and endowed scholarships for students who desire to study the biblical teaching of manhood and womanhood.

“Our prayer is that God will continue to use us in some way for the Kingdom through Southwestern to help reach a lost world for Christ,” Jim says. “We also pray that the mission of Southwestern will always be to prepare anyone to go where God has called them and to preach the Word and reach the world. Our main focus is to point people to the cross.”

Judy Stone of Austin, Texas, was the recipient of the L.R. Scarborough award. A member of Great Hills Baptist Church, she has served there in various capacities including choir member and children’s Sunday School teacher, and she has also served twice on the Great Hills Christian School Board.

After her husband’s death, Stone helped organize and oversee the widows ministry at her church. Eventually crossing paths with First Lady of Southwestern Dorothy Patterson, she was asked by Patterson to assist in landscaping the grounds of the new Horner Homemaking House. Stone spent days consulting and working with the Southwestern landscaping department to implement a design that would be welcoming to all guests. “On my first visit, I immediately fell in love with Southwestern,” Stone says.

Stone’s connection and partnership with Southwestern only continued to grow. She was later invited to partner with and support Southwestern’s Women’s Auxiliary, including the Widows’ Might prayer ministry.

Stone gives each year to the Dressed for Service ministry, which provides select women—wives of graduating students and graduating female students—an outfit appropriate for search committee interviews, graduation, and church services. She also established a church music scholarship in memory of her husband and contributed funds to purchase a new Steinway piano in memory of her mother.

“It has been and is my privilege to be a small part of what Southwestern is doing for eternity,” Stone says. “To God be the glory.”