Nathan Montgomery is the SWBTS seminary student & former employee who was fired this week for tweeting Ed Stetzer’s article critical of Paige Patterson. According to media reports, Montgomery will lose $40,000 in salary and $7,000 in tuition benefits per year as a result of not longer being employed as catering manager. Sarah Pulliam Bailey at the Washington Post has the background and latest.
One of the points of Stetzer’s article was that the slightest expression of criticism of Patterson brings a huge backlash. Irony noted. Montgomery says he he plans to appeal his termination to the SWBTS trustee board.
A former co-worker of Montgomery has set up a GoFundMe page for those who would like to support Nathan while he searches for new employment and continues his Ph.D. studies at Southwestern. The crowdfunding campaign “seeks to raise enough money for six weeks of expenses (in which time he can hopefully find a job) and one semester of tuition.”
Disgraceful-there is a better way through disagreements.
He should have been fired because what he did was not in the best interest of SWBTS. He has all the right to do so but must be willing to pay the cost of his actions.
Yes, perhaps. That’s one perspective. He’s taking his lumps….his friends are starting a gofundme Page to help him. There’s nothing wrong with that. Those who have sympathy for his plight can and probably will contribute… Those of you who do not have sympathy for his plight do not have to. I can see a case made that what he did was not in the “best interest” of Paige Patterson… But I’m not so sure that what he did in and of itself hurt Southwestern … I personally think that it’s Paige’s overreaction here that has hurt PP and SWBTS. Like… Read more »
All about perspective….it actually could have been in the best interest of SWBTS.
It’s true that he must risk the cost for his conscience, but the administration likewise will have to think about the cost of their actions in firing a guy for a tweet.
Again, it’s all about perspective.
It seems like the ones making the most ardent defense of Patterson are, largely, the same group that provided cover for Ergun Caner and Donald Trump.
I was beginning to notice the same thing. That was scary to me as I saw the pattern emerge. I didn’t want to make that observation for fear of being misunderstood. I concur with your assessment though, as I look @ who & the verbiage used in his defense. I yet support Patterson preaching @ the convention. But to hear his reporters classify those who want accountability for his unwise counsel as “social justice warriors” was disheartening.
Wow, I was somewhat on the fence about Patterson until this. But now I think he has absolutely got to go. This whole situation is an utter disgrace to the SBC.
Something needs to be done, as this is getting out of control.
No individual in any organization should have the power to dismiss someone because they’ve expressed their opinion, and no Christian denomination should ever allow someone to wield the kind of personal power that a few individuals have always been able to have in the SBC. It reflects poorly on the denomination and its spiritual atmosphere. Many of the problems the SBC is now experiencing, including churches jumping ship and a declining membership that is making the mainline denominations look stable, can be traced to the backwardness of the way denominational leadership is allowed to squelch dissent. If you look within… Read more »
I think some are being a little hypocritical here. Suppose there was a campaign to force you to either retire or be fired. Suppose they brought up, and condemned you for, bits and pieces of things you had said and done over the last 20 years. Now suppose your manager, associate pastor, youth director, worship leader, cook, etc., publicly jumped on the bandwagon saying he agreed with all this and you should be fired. He puts it on social media for all to see. Something tells me most, or all, of you would have a major problem with that. How… Read more »
Any corporate employer would have fired Patterson long ago for a 15 year decline by over a 1/3 in his customer base (Full Time Enrolled students from 2000 to 1300 today) and by 1/2 in his core clients (889 MDiv FTE students to 403 today). Firing a student employee for a simple tweet in the midst of a PR crisis currently covered by the national media centering on the credibility of the leadership of the “CEO” is ruthless and foolish by anyone’s standards, much less one at a Southern Baptist seminary. My guess is it was a signal to other… Read more »
Could someone explain FTE student to me? I’m a little slow on the uptake. One online explanation is “number of students enrolled if all students are full time.” Does this mean FTE counts only those taking at least 9 hours at an MDiv level?
I’ve been taking online classes at SWBTS for years, usually just one a semester. However sometimes I’ve taken 9 or 10. Does this make me an FTE student despite not being physically on campus?
According to the Association of Theological Schools, accreditation agency of all 6 SBC seminaries and 100s of others, FTE Enrollment is the number of students who would be enrolled if all students were attending full time. Here is a link to their reports since 2003: http://ats.edu/resources/institutional-data/annual-data-tables
So…does that mean I’m an FTE student?
Sorry – not being deliberately dense. I’m just not grasping the concept.
Ethan, there are two ways to calculate FTE. The first is to divide the total number of credit hours in a semester by the total number of students enrolled. This is a lazy man’s way of calculating and doesn’t (in my opinion) actually give an accurate count. The second, and better way, is to count the number of students who are enrolled fulltime (and each school defines what fulltime is for them) and then divide the number of credit hours of part-time students by the number of parttime students. In the first scenario, if the fulltime limit is 12 hours… Read more »
Thanks! That’s pretty clear.
Seminary programs do seem to attract a disproportionate number of part-time students, so I would bet the numbers get a little skewed.
There is a dimension to this that is missing. SWBTS’ historical FTE statistics were in the past enhanced by the perception before the Conservative Resurgence had cemented its gains that it was the “safe” seminary (I can assure you from personal experience that while it may have been somewhat safer, it wasn’t really all that “safe”). Now that confidence has been restored in some of the other seminaries, it is unnecessary for many theological students to inconvenience themselves with relocating to Texas for a “safe” education. Furthermore, while SWBTS is still a hugely great value, it is now much more… Read more »
Or, to check enrollment at the SBC seminaries, see the new post:
https://sbcvoices.com/the-demise-of-the-sbc-not-according-to-our-seminaries/
David R. Brumbelow
While I don’t agree with it there is an unwritten policy at Southwestern against criticizing any entity heads of the Southern Baptist convention. I first heard of this when a professor at Southwestern in his own words “suffered the consequences” for criticizing Russell Moore and was contrite for his actions. He had written something that was posted at the other Southern Baptist blog criticizing a tweet of Russell Moore. This took place back in early 2016 I think. Again, I don’t agree with this unwritten policy. But if someone works at Southwestern those are the “rules of the game” they’re… Read more »
Mr. Montgomery hopefully is learning a valuable lesson here. He certainly has a First Amendment right to attack the boss of an organization he works for in public. And he did so in a way plainly calculated to bring scurrilous disapprobation upon both the boss and his employer. But the long-standing legal doctrine of employment at-will does not insulate him from the obvious and foreseeable consequences of his improvidence and poor judgement. Had Mr. Montgomery properly addressed his apparent conflicts that he had with the leader of his former employer, he would have done it privately and in accordance with… Read more »