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Summer 2009 | Volume 67, No. 4
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It's a New Day
by Benjamin Hawkins
Southwestern Seminary’s Riley Center hosted a stewardship conference for seminary students and ministers in the region, April 23. More than 250 students and ministers attended the conference.
The conference was organized through the cooperation of Southwestern’s Center for Biblical Stewardship, Crown Financial Ministries, and “It’s A New Day,” a national stewardship initiative of the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) executive committee.
The conference was the first seminary-wide program offered by Southwestern’s stewardship center, which is the first center of its kind among Southern Baptist seminaries. The center is authorized by The International Association for Continuing Education and Training to provide continuing education units (CEU’s) in stewardship.
Scott Preissler, director for Southwestern’s stewardship center, said he hopes this event will encourage better management of God-given resources among seminary students and that it will promote the need for good stewardship in the SBC. He added that, by informing seminary students how to develop stewardship skills, this conference would help them graduate without debt and with the freedom to serve wherever God might lead them.
“I am excited to see pastors being challenged to be good stewards of God’s resources,” said Jonathan Gray, the executive director of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Foundation, who attended the stewardship conference.
According to Bob Rodgers, the SBC’s vice-president for the Cooperative Program and stewardship and a conference speaker, “the average American is in bondage to debt.” The average American, for example, spends $1.26 for every dollar earned. The stewardship programs organized by Southwestern Seminary and the SBC help liberate people from the bondage of debt so that they may freely serve God.
“We could only put a Band-aid on the Cooperative Program unless there is a coherent stewardship campaign at the same time,” Rodgers said.
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