Within the shifting panorama of upper schooling, the place enrollment pressures, cultural modifications, and technological disruptions press in, a faculty’s core values can perform as a compass. For Christian establishments, they’re not simply guiding rules. They’re expressions of identification and mission earlier than God. However values solely make a distinction once they transfer from posters on the wall to habits of the guts.
At Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Value, Texas, President David Dockery has led a campus-wide effort to make clear and embed the seminary’s core values—not as slogans, however as day by day practices. The outcome: a renewed sense of unity, missional readability, and a shared language for decision-making.
Listed here are three key actions Southwestern’s management took to reset the seminary’s mission and identification, each internally and externally.
1. Re-establish core values
When Dockery turned Southwestern’s president in 2022, the establishment was rising from a interval of great challenges. Whereas a set of ten core values existed, few college or employees may identify a couple of: “Christ-centered.” “Central to establishments like Southwestern is honoring Christ—placing him on the heart of all the pieces,” Dockery stated. “However past that, our folks didn’t share a transparent reminiscence of the remainder of the values.”
He knew the seminary wanted a unifying framework that might honor its theological commitments and serve its various neighborhood. After months of collaborative conversations—together with city halls, small-group discussions, and cross-department brainstorming—Southwestern adopted six core values, paired to replicate their complementary nature:
- Grace-filled and Christ-centered: A neighborhood marked by the grace of Jesus and the centrality of Christ (Col 1:13–20).
- Scripturally grounded and confessionally guided: A dedication to the truthfulness of God’s Phrase and to historic Baptist and Christian confessions.
- Scholar-focused and globally engaged: Serving college students at each degree whereas getting ready them for ministry in a worldwide context.
Now, Dockery says, “You possibly can stroll throughout campus and virtually each worker—and lots of college students—can identify these values. We carry them up in convocations, particular occasions, and on a regular basis conversations.”
2. Construct a strategic plan anchored on the mission
These values aren’t a separate initiative. They’re woven into Southwestern’s strategic imaginative and prescient, Advance Southwestern 2030. Each main determination, together with finances allocations, is examined in opposition to the mission and values. This ensures that sources gasoline priorities that strengthen Southwestern’s identification and long-term affect.
Each main determination is examined in opposition to the mission and values.
One a part of Advance Southwestern 2030 included a brand new partnership with Logos to equip college students, college, and employees with Bible examine instruments that facilitate not solely deeper examine throughout seminary, but additionally lifelong ministry to God’s folks.
3. Make the values a part of everybody’s day by day life
Dockery and his management group knew that for the values to matter, they needed to form day by day operations and accountability. That meant modifications to core processes, together with college and employees evaluations. “This 12 months, we even revised college and employees evaluations to incorporate questions on how their work displays the values,” Dockery stated. “Folks should give particular examples: How did you resolve to do one thing—or not do one thing—based mostly on these values? How did these values form a mission or determination?”
Symbolically, the values are additionally bolstered in neighborhood life. Every college assembly and trustee gathering begins with the group standing to affirm the mission assertion and core values earlier than turning to any agenda objects. This easy act retains the seminary’s theological and academic commitments entrance and heart. The result’s greater than symbolic: School, employees, and college students can identify and clarify the values. They’ve turn out to be a part of Southwestern’s shared vocabulary and tradition.
Advancing a 120-year heritage
For Dockery, this course of isn’t about turning Southwestern into one thing new. He stated, “We’re not attempting to reinvent Southwestern. We need to advance the very best of its 120-year heritage.”
“From the beginning, Southwestern was contextualized for the American Southwest within the early twentieth century—not only a copy of one other seminary,” he stated. “Our intention is to carry quick to our mission, identification, and values, strengthening neighborhood for college, employees, and college students alike.”
By rooting strategic plans, day by day operations, and neighborhood rhythms in its core values, Southwestern is positioning itself to stay devoted for generations to return. In an period when many establishments are drifting from their founding mission, this intentionality stands as a mannequin for others.
As Dockery put it, “Christian greater schooling is a excessive calling. When you’ve got the chance to serve on this house, make investments deeply for the lengthy haul. Keep Christ-centered, scripturally grounded, and centered on enabling college students to observe God’s name.”
David Dockery’s accessible works on Christian greater schooling
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