Tennessee Temple University Closing

Indeed: everything rises and falls on leadership!

This is heartbreaking news.

[Jim]

It’s kind of stunning when you think:

• Pillsbury (2008)
• Northland (2014)
• TTU (2015)

Atlantic Coast Baptist College
Spurgeon Baptist Bible College
Pacific Coast Baptist College
I read a prediction by a well-known Christian educator a decade ago that this would happen. Sadly, he was correct. I can name at least a half a dozen others who will be gone in the next decade (if not more and sooner.)

[DLCreed]

Jim wrote:

It’s kind of stunning when you think:

• Pillsbury (2008)
• Northland (2014)
• TTU (2015)

Atlantic Coast Baptist College
Spurgeon Baptist Bible College
Pacific Coast Baptist College

I read a prediction by a well-known Christian educator a decade ago that this would happen. Sadly, he was correct. I can name at least a half a dozen others who will be gone in the next decade (if not more and sooner.)

I graduated from Temple 25 years ago and I am terribly saddened by the news.

I graduated from TTU 53 years ago. Things were on the rise then, and no one could possibly have envisioned such an ending. However, over the years since, many of us graduates began to worry about the seeds of failure that were there from the beginning. Many of us had been led to believe that TTU’s existence was a result of rejection by Dr. Roberson of the Southern Baptist Convention, when it was probably the other way around. Slowly, as the years progressed, one could see the re-approachement that was taking place, which finally resulted in the SBC influence finally taking it over. TTU’s early associations seemed to put it in the camp of separatists like John R. Rice, Jack Hyles, Clarence Sexton, and others whose influence among Bible believers waned and became almost rejected. Administrations that were subsequent to the Roberson leadership began to move in the direction of new-evangelicalism. There was an acceptance of the “spiritual formation movement” with the invitation of men like Dallas Willard to give theological lectures. Music at TTU went from conservative to contemporary. The Alumni Association found it increasingly difficult to merit support among it graduates, whose loyalty waned as alumni began to embrace other leaders within the fundamentalist movement. The seeds of interdenominational Missions began to diminish the Baptist philosophy of missions. Strangely, the original philosophy of the schools, of being under the leadership of the HPBC pastor, failed. The division and demise of the Church under pastors who were successors to Roberson led to a similar diminishing of TTU. Dr. Roberson’s famed quote — “Everything rises and falls on leadership” — seemed to be coming true. The attempt to restore it to its former influence by joining with the Southern Baptist Convention has failedl, notwithstanding the similar experience of Liberty University that has proven to be successful.

Who didn’t see this coming? I graduated from there in ‘93 and ‘97. As I see it, Temple made 3 mistakes:

1. They stayed in their present location. When the school was strong, it should have relocated. The neighborhood was a ghetto.

2. They never got SACS accreditation. This was started in the mid 90’s, but it never came to fruition. I’m sure there were other attempts since then, but it never got done.

3. Horrible leadership by David Bouler. In his tenure, the church shrunk by 90% and the school by 2/3. He didn’t know anything about running a university, yet he wasn’t the kind of person who would come to terms with his weaknesses. Not being an alumni, he didn’t understand, nor did he try to understand the graduates who supported the school. He plowed ahead with change after change that only alienated Temple’s base.

[Jonathan Charles]

Who didn’t see this coming? I graduated from there in ‘93 and ‘97. As I see it, Temple made 3 mistakes:

1. They stayed in their present location. When the school was strong, it should have relocated. The neighborhood was a ghetto.

2. They never got SACS accreditation. This was started in the mid 90’s, but it never came to fruition. I’m sure there were other attempts since then, but it never got done.

3. Horrible leadership by David Bouler. In his tenure, the church shrunk by 90% and the school by 2/3. He didn’t know anything about running a university, yet he wasn’t the kind of person who would come to terms with his weaknesses. Not being an alumni, he didn’t understand, nor did he try to understand the graduates who supported the school. He plowed ahead with change after change that only alienated Temple’s base.

Jonathan, you nailed it. The seeds of defeat are usually sown many years before it occurs.

[Jonathan Charles]

3. Horrible leadership by David Bouler. In his tenure, the church shrunk by 90% and the school by 2/3. He didn’t know anything about running a university, yet he wasn’t the kind of person who would come to terms with his weaknesses. Not being an alumni, he didn’t understand, nor did he try to understand the graduates who supported the school. He plowed ahead with change after change that only alienated Temple’s base.

Did he have free-rein over all decisions? Was he accountable to no one? As a college, was there no “Board of Directors” (or whatever their designation) ultimately in authority?

I visited the campus one time in my life back in the late 1990s. I recall from that visit the observations expressed above, that there were competing interests, decline in progress, and no clear sense of direction. I remember all the shuttered buildings that used to have purpose; I recall the ghetto neighborhood…the bars on windows, the sounds of sirens throughout the night (we stayed on campus). I recall a conversation with the librarian who assured me that the “old TTU” was coming back strong. He also affirmed that they had no plan to move to a computerized card catalog, as he motioned affectionately toward the chest of small drawers stuffed with 3x5 cards. I recalled the church service in that huge auditorium, but had someone fired a shotgun through there, they wouldn’t have likely hit anyone. I also remember in the student center a small cluster of arcade video games, one featuring a cartoonish image that was so immodest, I cannot imagine why no one had yet removed this game, or how it got there in the first place. I recall the seminary there at the time was a better part of my tour, but they were obviously holding on for dear life, trying to make a go of it. So that one glimpse from an outsider, years ago, left me with the impression that someday this once large and influential school might close.

I too graduated from TTU (‘82). While there, I noticed a vast schism between the teaching of some of the professors who encouraged biblical exposition and what was coming from the pulpit on a weekly basis. Messages were almost always topical, and became so predictable that a friend and I wrote down six topics that would be mentioned in a sermon one Sunday morning and the sixth one was mentioned just prior to the end of the message. I know that many people almost worship Dr. Roberson, and that this will perhaps anger them, but as with many other places in fundamentalism, the church and school were built more on the personality of a man than on the Word of God. I cannot tell you how refreshing it was to many when a man like Warren Wiersbe would speak at the school and would exposit the Word. I would not want to completely denigrate leadership in the life of a church or Christian college, but the truth is that “Everything rises or falls on whether or not there is a solid biblical foundation that is continually being laid beneath the superstructure of the church or school.” Churches and schools that depend primarily on the personality of their leadership are in deep trouble. The foundation is the Word of God laid down by the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ as our cornerstone (Eph. 2:20).

Am reading the comments with interest, and would like to make a simple “double dog dare”; contemplate the places where we have blind spots today. The testimony here indicates that for TTU, the blind spots were “my way or the highway” leadership, legalism, at least a hint of racism, a bad neighborhood, topical preaching that hits on only a few topics (the sins we’re not committing? Or would like others to believe we’re not committing?), and the like.

I’ve been on campus at Bible colleges, so I really don’t have an insider’s view, and apart from what I can learn for the sake of institutions I’m affiliated with, this really isn’t “my” fight. That said, the comment I see here is not something I haven’t heard about any number of other places, sad to say. If we’re not careful, we might learn something here.

One criticism that comes to mind; a friend who went to Moody commented that in his opinion, he was learning what to think, not how to think Biblically. Now the friend is opinionated at times (like me), but it’s something to watch out for.