Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Today on the podcast, we have Walter Strickland II.

Dr. Strickland serves as an associate professor of systematic and contextual theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He also serves as the pastor at Imago Dei church.

Dr. Strickland has written extensively in a variety of different theological topics, but today we have him on the podcast to talk about his vision of ecclesiology, the work that he's done on African-American ecclesial traditions, and also to preview his presence with us at the Center for Pastor-Theologians Conference this October in Oak Park, Illinois.

The fact is that God has spoken and he has a word for his people today.

And when I realized that, I was thinking, I was like, wow, this is actually, this is amazing.

And so I changed my emphasis from counseling to pastoral ministry as I was going into seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where I now teach.

And then I kind of started that pastoral journey there.

She's the founder of She Shall Be Called Incorporated, a nonprofit ministry dedicated to promoting biblical literacy among women.

She holds a certificate in Christian ministry from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Portia lives in Greenwood, Mississippi with her husband, Mikhail, and their daughter, where they are active members of Westminster Presbyterian Church.

The topic of today's conversation is freedom in Christ versus living in bondage.

The word insidious means a destructive harm that spreads secretly and slowly with disastrous long-term effects.

Now, I told you before, that I went to Southeastern Seminary when I was first called into the ministry.

And Southeastern Seminary had been the worst of the Southern Baptist Seminary, six Southern Baptist Seminaries.

And in the 50s, the seminaries started to embrace liberalism, even before that, but they started, you know, liberalism, you just kinda keep drifting.

You drift more and more to the left.

That's why it's a big deal.

And so once you start that way, you just pretty much, you see how you can drift so far.

So I'm at Southeastern Seminary.

I have a lot of seminary friends who don't like this description.

I found when I got to Southeastern Baptist Seminary, there's another Southeastern seminary that's different.

When I got to seminary, I was surrounded by folks who had something of what struck me as a scholastic orientation to theology.

And they just wanted to drill down into the theological principles and vocabulary.

All right, so first I should probably mention that I am on the board of trustees for the ERLC, full disclosure, and I'm a big fan of yours, as your book, Ethics as Worship, is one of my favorites.

So, of course, you co-authored that with Mark Liederbach from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, which is right down the road from here in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

And you've mentioned that when it was announced that you were the new ERLC president, people called to congratulate you.

And then their next question was, what is the ERLC? So let's start there.

My name is Ken Kiefle.

I teach systematic theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

I have been teaching here for 20 years.

I started here in 2006.

Glad to be of help.

And, you know, maybe a final question here for you as we come to the end of this conversation is just, you know, how do you hope A conversation like the one we've had here would bring more light than heat and more unity rather than division in the biblical counseling movement today.

Well, I am on the faculty at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And the counseling faculty here at Southeastern, we have a great counseling faculty.

this is real truth for today podcasts of the program are available on the podcast page at afr.net

now back to pastor jeff shreve welcome back to real truth for today pastor jeff shreve here on american family radio i'm talking to one of my good friends and one of my mentors dr paige patterson he was my president at southeastern seminary when i was there as a student he finished up his presidency of southwestern baptist theological seminary uh written many books he's a just a well-known theologian evangelist i love that about him he's got the heart of an evangelist former president of the southern baptist convention he has been the uh the whipping boy for many many people that don't like his stands on things and uh And many have publicly said ugly things about you, accused you of things you didn't do, sued you about things you didn't do.

And so I was asking you right before the break, Dr. Patterson, how do you do when you have to encounter these people at the Southern Baptist Convention or a meeting or something like that? Because it's one thing to forgive a person from a distance, but then to be in their presence can be very uncomfortable.

It can, but it could also be a lot of fun.

I mean, you have such a heart for that.

Not everybody has that, but I know you emphasize it.

When I was a student at Southeastern Seminary, when we had that first president's discussion, you emphasize that, keep witnessing.

Preaching from the pulpit is not witnessing.

or at least difficult to apply passages in our post-everything world.

So yeah, to give a brief intro on Brad Vaughn, he has a master's in philosophy from Texas A&M, an MDiv from Gordon-Conwell, and a PhD in theology from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He specializes in biblical contextualization, missiologies, and like I said, the Bible's theology of honor and shame.

And he's authored five, count them, five books, including the one that we end up talking about a little bit today, which is Reading Romans Through Eastern Eyes, and I cannot more highly recommend it.