[Note: One of my duties as archivist at Southeastern is to develop an historical exhibit every semester for a display case in the Library’s lobby. For the fall semester, the exhibit focuses on the life and ministry of Lewis A. Drummond, the fourth president of Southeastern Seminary. There is much that I could have said about Dr. Drummond, but this display focuses on his tenure at SEBTS. Below is a revised version of the text I used for the exhibit].
Dr. Lewis A. Drummond (1927–2004) was one of the most influential evangelists and theological educators in Southern Baptist life during the last half of the twentieth century. His legacy touched several pastorates, four seminaries and theological schools and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Dr. Drummond served from 1988–1992 as the President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Drummond’s tenure at Southeastern encompassed a time of great controversy and transition, making his administration one of the most significant in the seminary’s fifty-five year history.
A native of Illinois, Lewis Drummond earned the B.A. from Howard College (now Samford University), the M.Div. and Th.M. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Ph.D. from King’s College at the University of London. From 1949–1961, Dr. Drummond pastored churches in Alabama and Texas. From 1961–1964, he was a doctoral student in London, UK. Following his graduation from King’s College in 1964, Dr. Drummond was called as the pastor of the Ninth and O Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, where he served until 1968. A growing congregation then-located in downtown Louisville, Dr. Drummond was the church’s first full-time pastor.
From 1968–1973, Dr. Drummond taught evangelism at Spurgeon’s Theological College in London, UK. In 1973 he became the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a position he held until 1988. He also served as the director of Southern’s Billy Graham Center for Evangelism. From 1988 –1992, Dr. Drummond served as president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Following his retirement in 1992, Dr. Drummond became the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at the Beeson Divinity School of Samford University, his college alma mater. He remained at Beeson until the summer of 2003, when he retired from formal theological education.
Dr. Drummond was both a scholar and an evangelist. He was a prolific author, penning numerous evangelism textbooks, biographies and chronicles of revivals and spiritual awakenings. Among his notable works are Leading Your Church in Evangelism (1976), The Awakening That Must Come (1978), The Word of the Cross: A Contemporary Theology of Evangelism (1992), Women of Awakenings: The Historic Contribution of Women to Revival Movements (1996), The Spiritual Woman: Principles of Spirituality and the Women Who Have Lived Them (1999) and The Canvas Cathedral: Billy Graham’s Ministry Seen Through the History of Evangelism (2003). Dr. Drummond also authored biographies of Charles Finney (1985), Charles Spurgeon (1992), Southern Baptist missionary Bertha Smith (1996), and Billy Graham (2001).
Throughout his career, Dr. Drummond enjoyed close ties to the famed evangelist Billy Graham. For many years Dr. Drummond was active in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), speaking at numerous Crusades and serving as a faculty member at the Billy Graham Schools of Evangelism. He occupied two endowed chairs named in honor of Graham. He was even a biographer of Graham. During his later years, Dr. Drummond was closely affiliated with the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove in Asheville, North Carolina. In the final months of his life, Dr. Drummond served as the evangelism professor in residence at The Cove and chancellor of the schools of evangelism for the BGEA.
The Southern Baptist Convention experienced enormous growth during the 20th century. Following World War I, the power within the convention shifted from the local churches to a more centralized denominational bureaucracy. At the same time, Neo-orthodox theology and biblical higher criticism became increasingly prominent in the convention’s six seminaries. Many grassroots Southern Baptists felt like the convention’s leadership was out of touch with the denomination’s conservative base. This was especially true of the seminaries. Many Southern Baptists left the SBC to become Independent Baptists, but others chose to stay in the convention and try to bring about change. Among those who decided to stay in were then-Criswell College president Paige Patterson and Houston appellate court judge Paul Pressler. Under the leadership of these two men, SBC conservatives began to organize in the late 1970’s.
By 1979 conservatives were fighting to return the SBC back to its theological roots. Despite the efforts of SBC moderates and liberals to prevent a conservative takeover, a string of conservative SBC presidents were elected. Conservatives also began to occupy vacant seats on the trustee boards of the convention’s agencies. Southeastern became the first seminary to have a majority of conservatives on its trustee board. In the fall of 1987, Southeastern president W. Randall Lolley and academic dean Morris Ashcraft resigned. Both were outspoken moderates who were opposed to the conservative resurgence in the denomination.
In the spring of 1988, Southeastern’s trustees elected Dr. Lewis Drummond to serve as the seminary’s fourth president. Dr. Drummond already had a solid reputation as a strong theological conservative and a passionate soul winner. Both of these traits became increasingly characteristic of Southeastern Seminary itself. One of the first decisions Dr. Drummond made was to recommend L. Russ Bush, III to serve as Southeastern’s academic dean and vice president of academic administration. Dr. Bush was an outspoken inerrantist scholar and Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Southwestern Seminary. He was also the co-author of the influential Baptists and the Bible (1980), a book arguing that most Baptists had historically believed in the full trustworthiness of Scripture.
Southeastern’s enrollment had decreased throughout the 1980’s, and numerous students left Southeastern in the year following Dr. Lolley’s resignation. These were challenging days in the life of the seminary. But by 1990 things were beginning to turn around. Applications for admissions were up by almost 50% and new student enrollment was up 28% over the previous year. Dr. Drummond announced numerous plans for the seminary, including the development of a Ph.D. program and the launching of a global missions center. Both dreams were realized; the Center for Great Commission Studies began in 1990 and was eventually named in honor of Dr. Drummond, while a research doctoral program was established in 1995.
Dr. Drummond’s tenure also shifted faculty hiring policies to focus upon scholars who held to the inerrancy of Scripture. Following Paige Patterson’s election to the Southeastern presidency in 1992, the seminary continued to hire inerrantist scholars who could affirm the seminary’s Abstract of Principles, the Baptist Faith & Message (2000), the Danvers Statement and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Today, Southeastern has one of finest seminary faculties in America. This legacy owes no small debt of gratitude to Dr. Lewis Drummond for weathering early storms and beginning a theological renewal movement that has continued and blossomed through the subsequent presidencies of Paige Patterson and Daniel Akin.
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