Daniel L. Akin | |
---|---|
President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary | |
In office January 2004 –present | |
Preceded by | Paige Patterson |
Personal details | |
Born | Forest Park,Georgia | January 2,1957
Spouse | Charlotte Tammy Bourne |
Children | Nathan,Jonathan,Paul,Timothy |
Alma mater | University of Texas at Arlington |
Profession | Theological seminary president and author |
Website | www |
Daniel Lowell "Danny" Akin (born January 2,1957) is the sixth president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and the College at Southeastern in Wake Forest,North Carolina,United States. A leader in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC),he has authored and edited numerous books and journal articles and is best known for his commitment to expository preaching and to the Great Commission.
Akin was born and spent his early years in Forest Park,Georgia,outside of Atlanta. In high school,he was a multi-sport athlete in baseball,basketball and football,intending to try to pitch as a walk-on in college. After an injury,Akin abandoned those plans. On a mission trip to Sells,Arizona in 1977,Akin committed his life to full-time Christian ministry and decided to attend Criswell College in Dallas,Texas before attending seminary. [1]
Akin married Charlotte Bourne on May 27,1978,and together they have four sons:Nathan,Jonathan,Paul,and Timothy. All four sons are involved in pastoral ministry,several having lived and served overseas. Akin has 14 grandchildren. [2]
Akin is a 1980 graduate of Criswell College with a B.A. in Biblical Studies and a 1983 graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree. He also earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1989. [2]
Akin's first teaching post was at Criswell College,where he taught New Testament,theology,and Church history from 1988 to 1992. He also served as the dean of students during that time. In 1992,after Paige Patterson became president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest,North Carolina, [3] Akin joined the Southeastern faculty as associate professor of theology and dean of students. He then transitioned to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,Kentucky. From 1996 to 2004 Akin served as theology professor,preaching professor,dean of the School of Theology,and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration. [2] Akin then returned to Wake Forest as Southeastern Seminary's 6th president,a post he currently still holds. [2]
Akin's presidency of Southeastern Seminary and the College at Southeastern began in 2004. [3] During his tenure,enrollment has grown from 2,407 to over 3,600 students. In addition,under Akin's leadership Southeastern has added multiple endowed professorship chairs. [4]
Akin has led Southeastern to establish the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture,which "seeks to bring the Christian faith to bear upon all areas of life through helping others to think and to act Christianly in both private and public discourse." [5] Other initiatives that have also begun under Akin's leadership include the Lewis A. Drummond Center for Great Commission Studies (focuses on missions and church planting in North America and internationally), [6] the Great Commission Equipping Network (EQUIP,focuses on providing theological education at a local church level), [7] the Global Theological Initiative (GTI,focuses on using "the resources of Southeastern to benefit theological education through strategic partnerships around the world"), [8] and Kingdom Diversity (seeking "to recruit and equip students from every corner of the Kingdom,to serve in every context of the Kingdom"). [9]
Akin has led Southeastern to produce yearly conferences aimed at equipping students and churches in various facets of theology and the Christian life. One recurring conference is the 20/20 Conference for area college students,which addresses central theological and apologetic aspects of the Christian life that college students are likely to encounter on university campuses. [10]
Akin is well known for his emphasis on Jesus' Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) and the responsibility of churches and Christians to go to all the nations of the world and make disciples.
Frequently,international missions is the topic of Akin's sermons. In a series of chapel messages at Southeastern Seminary from 2007 to 2012,Akin preached a biblical text and illustrated it with the life story of a missionary. This series eventually made its way into publication as 10 Who Changed the World. [11]
Akin began to call for a "Great Commission Resurgence" in his preaching at the November 2007 Building Bridges Conference held at Ridgecrest Conference Center in western North Carolina. [12] However,it was Akin's April 2009 chapel sermon entitled "Axiom's for a Great Commission Resurgence" that fueled a widespread effort in the Southern Baptist Convention to build upon the "Conservative Resurgence" of the 1970s and 80s with a unifying effort to streamline SBC structures in order to more effectively fulfill Jesus' Great Commission. [13] This effort culminated in the forming of a Great Commission Resurgence Task Force by then SBC president Johnny Hunt in 2009 [14] and the adopting of the Task Force's report at the SBC annual meeting in 2010. [15]
Akin has also regularly participated in international mission trips to various countries around the world. [2]
Akin is widely regarded as a skilled preacher and teacher. He has co-authored and edited several books on preaching [16] [17] as well several journal articles focusing on Bible exposition. [18] Akin's book Engaging Exposition,co-authored with Bill Curtis and Stephen Rummage,was named Book of the Year for "Enhancing the Preacher's Skill" by Preaching Today. [19] He has also recorded curriculum for training of Bible study leaders and Sunday School teachers, [20] and his hermeneutics (Bible interpretation) course is offered free as a Southeastern massive open online course (MOOC) as of 2013. [21]
In 2019,Akin labelled prominent 20th century German theologians Karl Barth,Emil Brunner,Dietrich Bonhoeffer,Rudolf Bultmann,Paul Tillich,Adolf von Harnack and Friedrich Schleiermacher as theological enemies. [22]
Akin travels widely to do marriage and family conferences at churches around the country,in which he teaches on the roles of men and women in a marriage and gives practical and biblical advice for raising children. [23] In addition,he has published several journal articles on the topics of marriage,intimacy,and gender roles. [18]
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. In 1845 the Southern Baptists separated from the Triennial Convention in order to support slavery, which the southern churches regarded as "an institution of heaven". During the 19th and most of the 20th century, it played a central role in Southern racial attitudes, supporting racial segregation and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy while opposing interracial marriage. In 1995, the organization apologized for its history. Since the 1940s, it has spread across the U.S. states, having member churches across the country and 41 affiliated state conventions.
The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) is an association of conservative Baptist churches in Texas, supportive of the Southern Baptist Convention and its entities. The Southern Baptists of Texas were formed by churches within the Baptist General Convention of Texas so that they might partner more closely with the national body in a fellowship based on a common, conservative commitment to the inerrancy of Scripture. As of 2011, it had approximately 2,300 affiliated churches.
Richard Albert Mohler Jr. is an American evangelical theologian, the ninth president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and host of the podcast The Briefing, where he daily analyzes the news and recent events from an evangelical perspective.
L. Paige Patterson served as the fifth president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., from 1992 to 2003, as president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) from 1998 to 2000, and as the eighth president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, from 2003 until his firing in 2018. He played a major role in the Southern Baptist "conservative resurgence", called "Fundamentalist Takeover" by opponents. He has been alternately described as a fundamentalist and a conservative evangelical.
Dr. Jerry Sutton is a Southern Baptist pastor, historian, and administrator. His theology is best described as conservative and evangelical.
Criswell College is a private Baptist Christian college and divinity school in Dallas, Texas. The college's stated mission is to provide ministerial and professional higher education for men and women preparing to serve as Christian leaders throughout society, while maintaining an institutional commitment to biblical inerrancy.
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Wake Forest, North Carolina. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. in Wake Forest, North Carolina. It was created in 1950 to meet a need in the SBC's East Coast region. It was voted into existence on May 19, 1950, at the SBC annual meeting and began offering classes in the fall of 1951 on the original campus of Wake Forest University in Wake Forest, North Carolina. The undergraduate program is called The College at Southeastern. The current president is Daniel L. Akin.
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Wallie Amos Criswell, was an American pastor, author, and a two-term elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1968 to 1970. As senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas for five decades he became widely known for expository biblical preaching at a popular level, and is regarded as a key figure in the late 1970s "Conservative Resurgence" within the Southern Baptist Convention.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
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