Baylor University’s George W. Truett Seminary offers ministry training for students in Waco, Texas.

ATLANTA – As two of the seminaries related to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship celebrate five- and 10-year anniversaries this year, they are experiencing the same problem – they can’t graduate enough students to fill the demand.

“All of our graduates have jobs unless they have chosen not to work,” said Scott Hudgins, director of admissions and student services at The Divinity School at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. “We can’t fill all of the requests that we have for graduates.”

“As large as Texas is, 11 percent of our churches are always looking for staff,” said René Maciel, assistant dean at George W. Truett Seminary at Baylor University.

Wake Forest celebrated its fifth anniversary as part of Fall Convocation activities in September. Truett celebrated its 10th anniversary earlier this year with a special Founders’ Day program that focused specifically on George W. Truett, the school’s namesake.

Both Truett and Wake Forest have found their own niche in the way they provide theological education.

“Our main emphasis is training students for ministry,” Maciel said. “The Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry are the only degrees we offer. Our students are primarily Baptists going into Baptist work.”

With a student population that is 65 percent Baptist on a large university campus where a seminarian could be living next door to a Muslim or a Jew, Wake Forest Divinity School is intentionally ecumenical in its approach, Hudgins said.

“Students will come here and encounter Moravians, Episcopalians and others, and see an alternative view of ministry,” Hudgins said. “This kind of interaction helps Baptist students discover the depths of our denomination. It energizes them to the larger church, and shows them that we’re not in this by ourselves. This ecumenism has been our biggest point of contention too. Some say that we’re not Baptist enough.”

Truett had 353 students enrolled last spring, graduated 65 M.Div. students and two D.Min. students last year, and anticipated a fall enrollment of 400, mostly full-time resident students. Graduates are finding work as pastors, chaplains, associates, youth ministers, and in missions, Maciel said. Graduates are serving in a number of states and around the world.

Truett was founded, Maciel said, because “people were looking for a different way to study. They were looking for a place that offered a strong sense of community and toleration, that offered seminar style classrooms instead of large lecture halls.”

Truett is funded by the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Fellowship, but the majority of funding comes from Baylor University, Maciel explained.

As Wake Forest began its sixth year, it welcomed 32 new M.Div. students to bring total enrollment to 94. Seventeen graduated in May, and like the 47 students in the two graduating classes before them, they are serving all kinds of churches all over the southeast. Seventy percent are serving Baptist churches; the rest are scattered among other Protestant denominations. One is a campus minister at Carson-Newman College. Several are in chaplain residencies at Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem.

Hudgins thinks CBF’s model for working with seminaries is “innovative and exciting.”

“From the very beginning CBF recognized that there are multiple ways to do theological education,” Hudgins said. “To have Baptist houses, divinity schools and seminaries working together is energizing and miraculous.”

More than 2,000 Baptist students are now preparing for ministry at one of the 13 seminaries, theology schools or Baptist studies programs in the Fellowship’s network of ministry partnerships. The Fellowship provides financial support for these schools through its Leadership Development initiative team. For more information, go to the Partner Schools Web page.

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.