As the Bible says, we see through a glass darkly. At our best, we simply do not know enough to predict the future reliably. At the same time, we have no choice but to look ahead as best we can, trying to understand the challenges and opportunities that the future will bring. This is true for all of us, and it is true for Southern Seminary. Our task is to look ahead in order to be ready for what God will call us to do — and we are living in some of the most challenging days imaginable.

The young people who graduate from this campus will minister in a world that is secularizing at an unprecedented rate, even as it undergoes a massive moral revolution. It is as if the world is being turned upside-down before our eyes. We are facing threats to religious liberty and the freedom of ministry. We have to prepare a generation of ministers and missionaries who are ready to go to the churches and to the mission fields — and to go to jail if necessary.

For most of our graduates and alumni, imprisonment is not a direct threat. But their ministries will require no less courage. The gospel of Jesus Christ is our message, a message that throughout the centuries has landed many Christians in trouble with the world.

This puts Southern Seminary in a strange predicament, and it underlines something we must ever keep in mind. We are not just a professional school. We are not just an academic institution. We are a school for the training of those called and willing to be troublemakers for the cause of Christ.

Twenty years ago, when I was elected Southern Seminary’s president, I would not have defined our task in that way. But this is not 1993, and the students who are now coming to Southern Seminary and Boyce College know that the world they will face is a mission field from top to bottom. They are energized by this knowledge, and they are determined to face whatever challenges the world may put before them.

In other words, this is an exciting era for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Boyce College. The young people studying at Southern now are in training for a ministry of bold, courageous and undiluted Christian witness. In order to get them ready for the tasks of ministry ahead, we must get Southern Seminary and Boyce College ready. That means making sure that this institution stays on the front lines of theological scholarship, cultural engagement, evangelistic faithfulness, missiological strategy and local church ministry.

Thankfully, that is not only where Southern Seminary belongs, but where this school and its faculty are founded. I am so honored to serve with a faculty of scholars so committed to the faith and to the local church. I am honored to look out on a student body comprised of the most committed young Christians to be found anywhere on earth. I am thankful for a denomination of churches so tethered to the total truthfulness of the Bible and to the Great Commission given by our Lord.

We may not know exactly what the future will hold, but we do know what is required of us: to be ready to train, educate and prepare the next generation of faithful God-called ministers and missionaries. We expect that task to be harder in the future, but also more important.

We are not here by accident. God not only knows the past and the present, he has perfect knowledge of the future and he is Lord of all dimensions of time. So if we trust God, we trust that we have all arrived on the scene just in time. And so we would not trade our challenges for those of any other generation.

Now is the time to face the future with the boldness of Christian conviction and the assurance of Christian hope. The task assigned to Southern Seminary has never been more urgent. So let’s get to it.