ROBERTS LIBRARY history

Southwestern Seminary alumni from 1908 to the present day have gained wide reputation for effectiveness and faithfulness as preachers, missionaries, church staff ministers, and denominational servants.

Southwestern Seminary moved from Waco to Fort Worth in 1910.

B.H. Carroll, the first president, served from the embryonic stages of the school until his death in November 1914.

In 1915, two departments were created in addition to the School of Theology—the Department of Religious Education, led by J.M. Price, and the Department of Gospel Music, led by I.E. Reynolds.

All faculty pledged their agreement with the New Hampshire Confession and, after 1925, with the Baptist Faith and Message.

In 1935, nine years after his graduation from seminary, he finally arrived in California.

When Southern Baptists again began establishing churches in California, the first in 1936, the same need for a theological school was speedily recognized.

Following the organization of the Southern Baptist General Convention of California in 1940, Hodges determined that the time was ripe to launch the enterprise that had been in his heart for so many years.

In the spring of 1944, the congregation of Golden Gate Baptist Church authorized its deacons to meet with a committee from the First Southern Baptist Church of San Francisco to formulate plans to establish a theological seminary.

In November 1945, the Southern Baptist General Convention of California gained ownership of the school and elected a new board of trustees.

He also was instrumental in guiding the Southern Baptist Convention to accept ownership of the school in 1950.

The beautiful park-like campus was opened in 1959, and classes were held for the first time on Strawberry Point—just 11 miles from where Harvey Gilbert attempted to begin a theological school 100 years before.

Russell H. Dilday was elected sixth president of Southwestern Seminary by the board of trustees on November 22, 1977.

They were completed before Pinson became executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1982.

Doctor Franklin D. Pollard, pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Antonio, Texas, was inaugurated as the fifth president of Golden Gate in 1983.

During his three-year administration, the Seminary experienced the largest enrollment gain in its history, a 20 percent increase in the fall of 1984 over the previous fall.

Kenneth S. Hemphill was elected as the seventh president of Southwestern Seminary by the board of trustees on July 28, 1994.

2001 W. Seminary Drive

L. Paige Patterson was elected as the eight president of Southwestern Seminary by the board of trustees on June 24, 2003.

Doctor Jeff Iorg assumed the presidency in the fall of 2004, after previously serving as a pastor in Missouri, Texas, and Oregon and as the executive director-treasurer of the Northwest Baptist Convention.

In 2005, seminary trustees established the seminary’s fourth graduate school, the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, as well as the seminary’s undergraduate school, the L.R. Scarborough College, now Texas Baptist College.

Renamed in 2009 in honor of former dean Jack D. Terry Jr., it is now the Jack D. Terry School of Educational Ministries.

In April 2014, the board of trustees voted to move the Seminary’s main campus from Mill Valley 400 miles south to Ontario, Calif.

Messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention voted their final approval in June 2016 to rename the school Gateway Seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention.