During his report to messengers at the 2024 SBC Annual Meeting, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College President Jamie Dew described his time of ministry at the institution as the “greatest honor” of his life.
“I just recently celebrated five years of service at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College,” Dew said during his address on Wednesday, June 12.
“I’ve got to tell you my friends, it has been the greatest honor and the greatest joy not of just my life, but my wife and my four beautiful children.
“We love you folks and we’re so grateful that we get to serve you and to work with the fine people down in the city of New Orleans doing what you put us there to do, which is train up the next generation of missionaries, pastors, preachers and teachers, and then also to teach what you gave us to teach via the Baptist Faith and Message. We’re very excited about doing that.”
Dew emphasized that while the mission of the seminary has not changed, the world surrounding the seminary has.
“The work that you’ve given us to do and the content that you have given us to teach in those confessions, those have not changed,” Dew said. “And yet at the same time, in the year 2024, the world around us, the world that we live in, has drastically changed.
“When we started that work five years ago, we knew that there was extensive work to be done by me, by my team, by our faculty, by our students, by our board of trustees and quite frankly by you all as well, to position our school in such a way that she was ready to train women and men to go into the darkness. To train men and women to go into the hardest places in all of the world and shine the light of Jesus Christ.
“We hit the ground running five years ago with great joy, great hope and great promise that the Lord was about to do something profound.”
Dew listed four different things the school has specifically focused on during his five years of service.
Those things include:
Dew noted progress in each of those four areas across his five years of service.
While speaking on denominational engagement, Dew said this emphasis has not only helped Southern Baptists around the country connect better with NOBTS, but the seminary has gotten to see the beauty of who Southern Baptists are in the process.
“I’ve got to tell you my friends, despite the fights, feuds, fusses and all of the things that sometimes can take place on social media; when I’m with you I am reminded that Southern Baptists are kind, gracious, hard-working, humble, they love Jesus and they want to make him known.
“It is with all of that in mind, after these five years of doing that work, that we recommit ourselves to the work that God put us there to do.”
