Greenways share about ‘divinely ordained’ courtship and marriage

“Marriage is the greatest return on investment you could ever get, but you have to be very intentional,” said Adam W. Greenway, president of The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, at the Feb. 24 “Sweetheart Banquet,” hosted by Metochai.

Derived from the Greek word meaning “partners,” Metochai is an organization that seeks to prepare student wives to be partners in ministry with their husbands. The Sweetheart Banquet is an annual opportunity for husbands to accompany their wives to the organization’s monthly meetings, and this year, they had a question-and-answer session with Greenway and his wife, Carla.

Terri Stovall, dean of women, said the wives had been eager to learn more about the Greenways’ courtship, marriage, and personal lives. “They have been where you are now,” Stovall said, introducing the Greenways.

The Greenways were asked why they initially decided to attend Southwestern Seminary. Carla Greenway, a native of Georgia, said a professor recommended the seminary to her when she was an undergraduate student at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia. “I wanted to prepare for ministry,” she said.

Adam Greenway said he had been drawn to ministry at age 16 and decided that “you needed to go as far as you can go in education.” He first attended Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. When his college pastor brought him to his first Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in 1997 in Dallas, he attended a luncheon on the Southwestern Seminary campus, and he knew he would extend his education here. God’s direction was not an “audible voice,” he said. “But it was obvious that I would be coming here.”

Regarding how they met, Greenway said, “The circumstances by which she and I met were providential.” He accompanied a friend on a hospital visit and started a conversation there with a woman who thought that he and Carla might “hit it off.”

Mutual friends invited them both to an Easter lunch, and they talked at length, learning that they had similarities. “It was divinely ordained,” he said.

Carla Greenway recalls her first impression: “Wow, this guy can carry on a conversation.” She says she could tell he was called to serve God “and had a purpose, had a goal.”

The Greenways shared about their first date, when they ate at a pizza restaurant and visited friends afterward. Carla lived in student housing and was “cautious,” she said, requesting that Adam pick her up at the curb. Future dates involved going for walks, and she recalled “the day he held my hand for the first time” at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. Since she hailed from Georgia, they attended a Texas Rangers-Atlanta Braves baseball game together.

Adam Greenway said he knew that he would pursue marriage with Carla after talking to Southwestern Seminary professor Malcolm McDow about her. “She’s the one!” McDow said. He leaned in and told Greenway, “You know, don’t you?”

“I’ve never forgotten that,” Greenway said.

A bit later, while taking a class, she suddenly realized, “Carla, Adam is God’s grace gift to you.”

“That was my burning bush moment,” she says.

While visiting Carla’s family in Atlanta, Adam and Carla’s father decided during a hand of the card game gin that if Adam won, he could ask for Carla’s hand in marriage. “I lost,” he laughed, “but I still got her hand in marriage.”

In Savanah, Georgia, the two “went for a long walk on the beach,” she said. “That’s where he proposed.”

The Greenways’ courtship and marriage “was a journey that has taken us where we never could have predicted,” he said. Now, after 17 years of marriage, “I don’t even recall what it was like being single.”