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DALLAS Marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of Criswell College, 10 denominational leaders, ministers, and Southern Baptist seminary and college personnel paid tribute to the legacy of the school’s founder, W.A. Criswell, in a lecture series Jan. 19-21 on the college campus.
Speakers shared from the heart concerning the late pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas; many of them served under Criswell’s leadership at the college or during his nearly 60-year tenure at the church. Speakers included Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS), Richard Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), and David Allen, SWBTS dean of theology.
Other speakers included Lanny Elmore, former minister of missions at FBC Dallas, who presented a biographical and anecdotal sketch of the former pastor, and Criswell alum and Bible study teacher Susie Hawkins.
Participating Criswell College personnel included Lamar Cooper Sr., interim president, James W. Bryant, senior professor of pastoral theology, Alan Streett, professor of evangelism and pastoral ministries, Jim Sibley, director of the Pasche Institute for Jewish Studies, and Andrew Hebert, director of the office of enrollment services.
BAPTIST ICON
James Bryant, Criswell’s senior professor of pastoral theology, hailed Criswell as a Baptist icon?an assessment rooted in his preaching abilities and denominational leadership.
Bryant said Criswell belongs alongside history’s great men of Christendom such as Charles Haddon Spurgeon. But Criswell exceeded Spurgeon in scholarship, Bryant argued.
“Like Spurgeon, Criswell had a photographic memory. He was known to quote Scripture for 15 minutes during his sermons without missing a word. He wrote out his sermons in long hand, memorized them, and then preached them from memory,” Bryant said, noting that Criswell’s pastoral skills were also legendary. “He was venerated by rich and poor, educated and uneducated, elite and common and by Jews and Catholics as well as Baptists and other evangelicals.”
In addition to his preaching, Criswell’s legacy lives on through his denominational service, Bryant added.
“Through his preaching at various conferences and conventions, Criswell helped shape the future of the [SBC]. He was often the unwitting helmsman who turned the Southern Baptist ship of Zion back to the right, an almost unheard of thing among denominations in modern times. His great address at the Southern Baptist Pastors’ Conference when the [SBC] met in Dallas in 1985 was said by the late W.O. Vaught to have ‘saved the Southern Baptist Convention’.”
Yet, perceiving that change was not likely to come to the convention, Bryant said, Criswell followed Spurgeon’s lead by founding a school in which to train preachers in doctrine and exposition. Bryant remembered the day he first learned of Criswell’s plan.
“?[D]uring the sermon at the 8:15 A.M. service, [Criswell] said, ‘We are going to establish a Bible Institute.’ Then he turned toward me on the platform and added, ‘And Dr. Bryant is going to organize it.’ Over Dr. Criswell’s strenuous objection ? I led the organizing committee to insist that it be named The Criswell Bible Institute, for two reasons. One, if it were named after him, Criswell would be bound to stay interested in it. Two, the name would immediately convey a doctrinal stance, conservative to the core.”
In addition to the institute, Criswell College also stands as a legacy to the man who founded the school, which began in 1970.
“It is stamped with his love for the Bible, his love for the lost, and his love for Israel,” Bryant said. “The little school which Criswell founded has barely 2,000 alumni, but among them are many gr
