Tennessee Temple University of Chattanooga, Tennessee, has announced that it is closing after almost 70 years of operation and will merge with Piedmont International University of Winston-Salem, NC, thus reaching the end of the death spiral it has been on since the 1990s. My wife and I graduated from Temple the 1970s. In those days there were over 3,000 students in the Bible school, college and seminary (2,200 in the dorms), and the average Sunday School attendance at Highland Park Baptist Church was about 4,500. The founding vision to reach the world for Christ permeated everything. Half of the church’s income was given to church planting and world missions. The annual missions conferences featured 80-100 missionaries. Hundreds of Temple graduates dedicated their lives to world missions and preached the gospel in the far-flung corners of the earth. Great changes came in the 1990s, with the introduction of rock music and a “broader” evangelical philosophy. By April 2005, Highland Park and Tennessee Temple were rocking out, no holds barred, with a concert featuring the ecumenical Bebo Norman, Fernando Ortega, and Sara Groves, held in Highland Park’s main auditorium. In about 2006 emerging church leader Dallas Willard taught the Spring Lecture Series at Temple. Willard believes that “it is possible for someone who does not know Jesus to be saved” (“Apologetics in Action,” Cutting Edge magazine, Winter 2001). He rejects the infallible inspiration of Scripture, saying, “Jesus and his words have never belonged to the categories of dogma or law, and to read them as if they did is simply to miss the point” (The Divine Conspiracy, p. xiii) By 2008, Highland Park had joined the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2012, Highland Park Baptist Church became the Church of the Highlands to reflect a location change as well as its new generic contemporary philosophy. Jeremy Roberts, Highland Park’s 28-year-old Southern Baptist pastor, said, “It’ll be the funnest church around” (“Chattanooga’s Iconic Highland Park,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, Sept. 10, 2012). In the book The Old Highland Park Baptist Church, we have documented some of the reasons for the downfall of this institution as a warning to others. It is available in print or as a free eBook from www.wayoflife.org. Pastor Terry Coomer, who attended Temple in the 1970s, commented to me as follows: “It is a sad time for all those who have attended and received degrees. New Evangelicalism leads people to destruction a little bit at a time and they do not even realize it is happening. As you know, when people go down this path they are defiant. They will not listen to correction. How many warnings did they receive? They have defied themselves into destruction!” (Friday Church News Notes, February 27, 2015, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) Comments are closed.
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