FORT WORTH—Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary will not knowingly endorse contemporary charismatic practices such as a private prayer language nor hire professors who advocate the practice, according to a statement issued by trustees Oct. 17 during their regularly scheduled meeting on the Fort Worth campus.

In what was described as a “trajectory for the future,” the statement said the school would fix “its focus on historic New Testament and Baptist doctrine to guide students in the tasks of world missions and evangelism.”

The statement was a response to controversy stemming from a chapel sermon Aug. 29 in which trustee and Arlington pastor Dwight McKissic Sr. noted his practice of a private prayer language. In the sermon McKissic said that tongues “is a valid [spiritual] gift for today” and took issue with the International Mission Board policy refusing missionary candidates who engage in the contemporary neo-charismatic practice. 

Amid what he told the Southern Baptist TEXAN would be a report on “exciting evidence of the blessings of the hand of God” on the school, SWBTS President Paige Patterson expressed as “unfortunate” the need to address an action that was “ill-timed, inappropriate, unhelpful, unnecessarily divisive, and contrary to the generally accepted understandings and practices of Southern Baptists.”

Consequently, at the president’s encouragement in the Oct. 16 forum, trustees adopted a statement unanimously recommended by the board’s executive committee clarifying the school’s perspective on private prayer language by a vote of 36-1, McKissic being the only trustee voting in opposition. 

The statement referenced the school’s affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention for the sole purpose of “training men and women to understand the Bible in all its ramifications in order to facilitate the assignment of Christ as provided in the Great Commission,” citing Matthew 28:18-20. 

“We wish to remain faithful to the biblical witness and its emphases, taking into careful account the historic positions of Baptists in general and Southern Baptists in particular,” he insisted.

The statement reads: “As it concerns private practices of devotion, these practices, if genuinely private, remain unknown to the general public and are, therefore, beyond the purview of Southwestern Seminary. Southwestern will not knowingly endorse in any way, advertise, or commend the conclusions of the contemporary charismatic movement including ‘private prayer language.’ Neither will Southwestern knowingly employ professors or administrators who promote such practices.”

Southwestern’s board expressed a resolve to devote the school’s energies to “the twin tasks of world missions and evangelism,” emphases which “were characteristic of our founders, B. H. Carroll, L. R. Scarborough, and George W. Truett.”

Patterson told the TEXAN he expressed in the trustee’s closed session forum Oct. 16 a desire to be “true to biblical instruction as understood by our best efforts to interpret the message of the Bible, while taking into account the positions of Baptists from the past.” 

Most Southern Baptists both acknowledge and advocate the practice of spiritual gifts as described in the New Testament, he explained. However, faithfulness to the entirety of the New Testament requires the need to “test the spirits” to see if they are of God, he insisted.

Patterson said “sincere misunderstandings and misreadings of Scripture, excesses, and sometimes apparent deliberate deception” sometimes occur. He pledged that the school would resist such errors in an effort to be both a lighthouse for the gospel and a stronghold for biblical theology.

“Southern Baptists have always recognized true brothers and sisters in Christ within various charismatic groups and denominations,” Patterson told the TEXAN. “In keeping with our historic Baptist convictions, we affirm the right of all to believe and to promote the convictions of their hearts.” Based on “best efforts” to interpret Scripture, Patterson added, “Neither in the past nor in the present have many Baptists believed that the Pentecostal or charismatic movements represented an accurate repr