BEAUTIFUL NOBTS CAMPUS MIRRORS GOD’S HOPE AND FAVOR

hen I first stepped onto campus as the then candidate for the role of President of NOBTS and Leavell College, I saw the beauty of the place. I immediately recognized the iconic Leavell Chapel silhouetted against the evening sky. There is a timelessness that is given off by the distinctive New Orleans feel of the buildings on the Quad and aged oaks that line the streets of campus. While there is a fresh look to the campus today as buildings are remodeled, our alumni and friends will still recognize the place. That old charm remains.

Even as I walk around campus and see construction crews busy at their work, I am reminded that the beauty of this great school isn’t just found in a newly remodeled Luter Student Center, or in fresh paint and new furnishings. The real beauty is found in something more significant and lasting—God’s favor to this school through His people.

The NOBTS and Leavell College story is a long history marked with trials and blessings, challenges as well as achievements. God has faithfully worked His will to bless this school using those simply willing to follow and do as He led. When I describe to others what God is doing here at NOBTS and Leavell College, two words come to mind: hope and favor.

I have hope because I see with my own eyes what God is doing here. I sense His favor to us as an institution in the provisions He brings and the people He calls here to serve and prepare. As I look across this seminary family, I see them flourishing and thriving. Each semester I watch as students I have come to know and love walk the graduation stage and take their place in service to the Lord around the world. I have hope because of God’s favor. I see every day what our first president meant when he called us the School of Providence and Prayer.

We invite you to come and see. We ask also that you pray that God will grant us the ability to see what He wants us to do and that He will provide us the resources and the opportunity to accomplish it. God has been faithful. Pray that all we do here will bring glory only to Him.

Dr. Jamie Dew President New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College

From the first-ever Crossover evangelism event in Las Vegas in 1989, Dr. Preston Nix has been a staple of the initiative that shares the gospel prior to the SBC annual meetings, in the host cities.

Pastors may wonder if they have influence in a shifting, unstable culture. Long-time pastors share here to show that the pastor still matters and his influence can be “limitless.”

Human hearts around the world share the same needs. NOBTS counseling students saw hearts open in a hard place as they counseled others in an international setting.

SPRING 2023

Volume 79, Number 1

DR. JAMIE DEW President

DR. LARRY W. LYON

Vice President for Business Administration

DR. CHRIS SHAFFER

Associate Vice President of Institutional Strategy

CLAY CARROLL

Director of Alumni Engagement

JOSEPH DUKE

Director of Communications

MARILYN STEWART

Editor

MADELYNN DUKE

Art Director and Photographer

GARY D. MYERS

Contributing Writer

BRANDON ELROD

Contributing Writer

JONATHAN SKINNER

Additional Photography

VISION MAGAZINE is published two times a year by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College.

3939 Gentilly Blvd. New Orleans, LA 70126 (800) 662-8701 | (504) 282-4455 contact@nobts.edu www.nobts.edu | www.leavellcollege.com

All contents © 2023 New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. All rights reserved.

Please send address changes and alumni updates to the office of Alumni Relations at alumni@nobts.edu. NOTE: Alumni updates will be used for the publication of the VISION magazine and on the Alumni website.

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is a Cooperative Program ministry, supported by the gifts of Southern Baptists.

On the cover: Photo Illustration by Madelynn Duke

C. S. Lewis once wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” The light of God’s hope and favor is shining on this city of “charms and challenges,” and by that light, all things become clear. In His light, we see His hand, His unflinching faithfulness, and a boundless love that compels us to take up the towel and basin and serve others in His name.

Long before our inception in 1917, Southern Baptists recognized the need for a seminary in New Orleans. In 1946, our school received a new name and soon moved to a new campus. A transition from the Baptist Bible Institute in the Garden District to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary at 3939 Gentilly Blvd. may have ushered in a new era, but it did not change our mission. Today, we hold firm to the commission Southern Baptists gave us more than a hundred years ago, a commission that continues @3939.

By Marilyn Stewart

Mark Johnson, Assistant Professor of Evangelism and Pastoral Ministry, goes to the busy, franchised grocery store next door to the seminary every day. On purpose.

“Anybody need toothpaste?” Johnson asks his wife and four children. “Somebody’s got a headache? Okay. I’m going.”

Johnson has been making the daily trip for three years, almost from the day he joined the NOBTS and Leavell College faculty in 2019. His daily ventures in “shopping evangelism,” as he calls it, have paid off. The store managers and employees call him “Pastor” as he ministers and shares the gospel.

“I’m broke, but …” Johnson quips. “I know everybody there. I know the store.”

The six-foot-five former international pro basketball player knows the store layout so well that one day when an employee couldn’t locate an item for a shopper, Johnson chimed in. “Aisle Five,” he offered.

Each trip begins with prayer that God will use him in whatever way He wants, knowing some days no opportunity may come. “He may call you just to go get bananas,” Johnson explained. “It’s that simple.”

One day, Johnson decided his trip to the store was simply to buy a new pair of socks for his son. God had other plans.

“It turned into a 15 to 20 minute conversation with someone who was contemplating suicide,” Johnson explained. “If I hadn’t gone to get socks that day, it could have been a different outcome.”

A Pastor To The Pastorless

At first, Johnson went alone on his “shopping evangelism” trips next door, drawing from a previous ministry he had led when he served as senior pastor at Liberty Hill Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio. There, a rapid transit line outside the church door went directly to the mall and church members’ “shopping evangelism” sprees were easy and saw fruit.

In New Orleans, students frequently join Johnson to pray, minister and share the gospel.

Johnson feels free to pray inside the store with individuals, but when students join him, they defer to the store’s wishes and pray outside. As the team prayer walks the “four corners” of the parking lot, they stop at each corner and pray for one of four groups: neighborhood children, mothers, fathers, and store employees.

Often, as Johnson’s teams walk from one corner to the next, they find opportunities to listen, comfort, and share the gospel with others. During Covid, as many experienced isolation and anxiety, the prayer walkers continued to share.

“We found ourselves hugging, holding, and saying, ‘It’s going to be all right,’” Johnson said.

Relationship is key to the open doors Johnson has found.

On Johnson’s birthday, his wife Heather was shopping at the store when an employee recognized her. Knowing it was Johnson’s birthday, the employee took Heather to the card aisle, picked out a card and insisted she buy it.

The next day, Johnson found the employee. “You couldn’t even buy a card for me? You made my wife buy it?” Johnson teased. “That’s the kind of relationship we have.”

While some employees have a church home, many do not. Tragedy struck two years ago when a targeted shooting left one person dead inside the store. Johnson arrived to find the store cordoned off.

“He’s Pastor,” the employees told police, and Johnson was welcomed inside. As Johnson ministered to hurting family members and employees processing grief, God opened many doors for Johnson to share the gospel.

An Easy Mission Field

“Shopping Evangelism” is easy, Johnson said.

The biggest change for students is their fear of evangelism is dropping,” Johnson said. “When they do this, they say, ‘Oh, that was easy. We prayed and waited on God.’”

While spiritual warfare is real and the people he meets have pressing needs, Johnson sees that God is at work despite the challenges around them.

Johnson stressed that God will open doors as believers allow Him to work.

“God has given us an easy mission field that doesn’t take a plane ticket. You don’t have to catch a bus to get there,” Johnson said. With the engaging smile he is known for, he added, “He’s not asking you to do anything but shop. Just go get socks. Be a willing vessel for Him.”

Originally named the Baptist Bible Institute, the seminary began with a ready-made campus when it purchased a women’s college in New Orleans’ Garden District in 1918. But before it was a campus, the main building had been the extravagant, antebellum Robb Mansion. Today, the Robb Mansion gates adorn the entrance to the NOBTS “Quad” at 3939 Gentilly.

Bunyan Chapel

After the move to 3939 Gentilly (1953) and before Leavell Chapel was completed (1959), chapel and graduation were held on the second floor of Bunyan in a room with a vaulted ceiling, 700 opera seats, and a slightly elevated stage.

NOBTS launches a fully accredited undergraduate program, later named Leavell College.

MISSISSIPPI BAPTISTS, A CLOSE FRIEND

P. I. Lipsey, editor of Mississippi’s paper The Baptist Record, helped ignite the movement that brought the dream of a New Orleans seminary to life with his 1914 editorial calling for the school. Lipsey, and others, kept Mississippi Baptists engaged with this new school to provide support, guidance, and direction. Perhaps symbolic of this close friendship, the fountain between the Frost Administration building and the library was donated by alumni from Mississippi.

How Vision Came To Be

First, it was The Baptist Bible Institute News. Then it became The B.B.Eye, a play on the school’s initials. By 1946, the magazine that brought news and items of interest to students became Vision, in a nod to its former self, The B.B. Eye.