Is Bob Jones Facing Closure? President says “no,” but some alumni not sure

I am not sure this alumni group is helping the current situation in my opinion.

So this new alumni group wants Dr. Bob Jones III fired and the entire board to be replaced. LOL

That's not helpful or serious.

I'm not sure how Crocket can expect to be pastor at Morningside and be "campus pastor" at BJU. To me, those seem like full-time jobs. I haven't noticed any conservative shift since Pettit left. Instead chapel has become less formal and the evening prayer groups (I guess they are called d-groups now) have been reduced. It was also surreal listening to Ken Ham last night bemoaning the lost influence of Billy Graham in our culture.

Crockett mentioned in his chapel message that he sat down with Pettit after he took job and talked about the time demands of the job. If I remember correctly, Pettit told Crockett that sometimes he had 40 hours in by the end of Tuesday.

Why didn’t Crockett get a good understanding of what doing the job demanded BEFORE he took it? He should have counted the cost FIRST.

I don't think the school is facing imminent closure. Like Andy said, I have also been a bit confused this last year. There seems to have been concerns with Pettit's approach in a few areas, as going outside of the historical school norms. Even though the board renewed his contract, it fell apart post contract. It was clear that there was not a healthy relationship between the President and the Board at that time. The FBFI had concerns, Dr. BJ III had concerns.... So they sought out a new leader. And brought someone in that was firmly in the camp. Fairly quickly it was clear that this job was beyond the capabilities of the new President. Rumors floated around about this, and obviously those rumors were founded, because that is exactly what Crockett conveyed publicly. I don't think the school in the past year to any steps to shift back to traditional BJU orb. While Crockett didn't have some of the highly visible snafus that happened under the previous president, there were still a number of things that took place that further took it out of the BJU traditional model, like Andy said above.

I think the BJU New Contract FB group is not very helpful, but I do think there are some problems. The fact that the Board was not able to clearly identify the challenges that Crockett would have in fulfilling this role, continues to highlight challenges at the board level. No slight on Josh Crockett. I have a lot of respect for him, but this was a very difficult job to begin with. I do like the idea of splitting the roles up, but also scratch my head on how Josh can fill both roles, although there is precedence for this elsewhere.

The school itself has so much promise. It is such a shame to see it where it is today. I especially feel sorry for the current students there.

>>I’m not sure how Crocket can expect to be pastor at Morningside and be “campus pastor” at BJU. To me, those seem like full-time jobs.<<

Yeah, that was a surprising part of his chapel announcement. I don’t really see how those roles will give him that much more time than being both president and CEO. One of the main reasons he gave for wanting to split the job is to not be an absentee father/husband while he does this job.

That said, assuming both positions can be afforded, it makes some sense to me to split the position in that way, and not just because other major Christian colleges do the same thing. Being the leader who directs the spiritual and theological direction of the school is quite different from the financial, legal and other aspects of running a university. If you were disappointed that the school’s theological direction seemed to be a secondary consideration, then putting the day-to-day CEO aspects of the job under another man seems wise to me.

No man out there is going to be able to satisfy both the old-school board members who are unhappy with the recent direction of the school and the ones who were happy with Pettit’s leadership. Crockett had almost an impossible job before he even started. I still believe Northland closed because they modernized too much and too quickly. However, given that the number of students at BJU is now quite a bit smaller than the last numbers under Pettit, I suspect the school will have to learn to deal with a much smaller population of students if they waffle about the way they want to go forward. In my opinion, they still need to change while remaining true to the Bible, if they can figure out how to do both.

Since my kids graduated years ago (under Pettit), I haven’t interacted as much with the school in recent years, so I don’t know how things are going under Crockett. I would guess the shakeup in leadership is really responsible for the reduction in numbers, particularly since Pettit was a known quantity to potential students, and Crockett much less so, and the school’s chances of survival also is a factor for those considering attending. However, it seems from what Andy is saying that there hasn’t really been a noticeably more conservative direction under Crockett. If so, that means that making the change and forcing out Pettit was akin to shooting themselves in the foot. They reduced the numbers and really didn’t change direction much. If they really do try to go back to 1950’s fundamentalism with all of its baggage (in addition to what was good about that version), I don’t foresee the school surviving in its present form. It may just become one of those really small schools serving a very specific clientele. I’m not sure how long they will last doing that.

Honestly, I’m not sure what the right answer is. With a few major exceptions, I was happy with many of the changes under Pettit, and the fact that the school was growing. True Christianity hasn’t changed, but how it interacts with and impacts the world has. I’m not sure if doing something similar but more conservative will work, but at this point, both changing too much and staying the same as 50 years ago are guaranteed to fail, IMHO, either because of closure, or becoming something much the same as other schools that have compromised on biblical principles.