Dear Editor:
The School of Church Music and Worship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary had, by the time I stepped down as dean of the school, five endowed professorships as well as a $10 million endowment for the ongoing operation of the school.
These professorships, referred to as “chairs,” were funded by donors who named each chair in honor of an individual whose ministry and/or teaching was extraordinary by every metric. It is high honor for a professor to occupy one of these academic chairs. The earliest ones were endowed with gifts of $500,000, the later ones with gifts of $1 million.
Established to underwrite salary, benefits and provide a professional stipend above and beyond that which the school annually provided to faculty, the chair would, over time, be occupied by various individuals and, were the seminary’s sources of revenue to be diminished (such as a decline in Cooperative Program giving), these endowments would fund the salaries of the chairholders in perpetuity.
The five chairs in the School of Church Music and Worship each hold personal significance for me.
The Dick Baker Chair was funded with gifts from Prestonwood Baptist Church. I was Dick’s first associate at the birth of Prestonwood. He and his wife, Ann, were two of the most Christlike individuals I’ve ever known.
Thad Roberts was the beloved, legendary minister of music at South Main Baptist Church in Houston. The Thad Roberts Chair was funded by David and Charis Smith, members of South Main. When my wife and I returned to New Orleans in August 2005, we experienced catastrophic, uninsured losses from Hurricane Katrina. Within days and, having no further official ties to Southwestern, a letter arrived in the mail from David and Charis with a check for $10,000.
Kathryn Sullivan Bowld funded three chairs as well as the multi-million-dollar endowment to provide for scholarships, instrument purchase and ongoing capital needs. The Bowld Music Library is named in her honor.
The Robert L. Burton Chair of Conducting honored a legendary faculty member. Burton was a pilot during the Korean War, a master woodworker and a professor whose teaching and music-making inspired countless students. He demanded and received the best from his charges. And, I might add to those who studied under him, “Woe to the unprepared!”
The James McKinney Chair honored an extraordinary statesman, one of Southern Baptists’ greatest. Under Dean McKinney’s guidance, the school grew in size, influence and respect worldwide. To paraphrase Robert Naylor, “The sun never set on Southwestern’s School of Church Music and Worship” as music graduates, on any given day, could be found in all corners of the globe.
The Albert L. Travis Chair was named for the brilliant organist, improvisationist, teacher and mentor to countless students. If you’ve never sung a hymn with Al’s leadership from the organ, you’ve missed something that is a prelude to heaven itself — beauty beyond description.
So, you see, my interest in these chairs and the school’s endowment is deep and personal. As trustees and administration are accountable to the Southern Baptist Convention, there are questions, given the dire financial conditions that President David Dockery inherited, which must be answered if trust and support of the school is to continue.
These questions would include:
- What were the five chairs and the capital needs endowment funds worth at the end of the Ken Hemphill administration?
- What were the five chairs and the capital needs endowment funds worth at the end of the Paige Patterson administration?
- If an endowed fund was used for anything other than its stated purpose, what was it used for?
- What would those endowments be worth today after years of compounded earnings?
- If those endowments were used contrary to the donor’s explicit intent, is there criminal liablity?
- If laws have been broken, what recourse does the school have to recoup some of that which has been squandered?
Bear in mind that there were large endowments in the schools of theology and education as well.
Benjamin Harlan
Dean, SWBTS School of Church Music (1995–2003)
Associate Professor (1995 – 2005)