CBTS President Emeritus E. R. Jordan passed into eternity on Wednesday, November 18, 2009. A memorial service at Calvary Baptist Church is planned for 7 pm, Tuesday evening, November 23.

Dr. Jordan, known affectionately to the seminary community as "Chief," was the founding pastor of Calvary Baptist Church and later went on to found Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary in 1976. Dr. Jordan fought a battle with Parkinson's disease for more than a decade; the disease advanced quickly over the course of the past two years.

Calvary Baptist Theological Seminary's administration and faculty have begun planning for the 2011 successor to the long-standing National Leadership Conference. No conference will be held in February of 2010.

The National Leadership Conference, originally planned for a three-year track with a potential run of 10 years, exceeded expectations by running annually for 15 years. Conference attendance ranged between 400 and 700 annually and brought together pastors and teachers from across the nation to present point/counterpoint views and to challenge and encourage colleagues in ministry.

Calvary will host its first online courses in Fall 2009, launching TH501 Prolegomena/Bibliology (Prof. George Coon) and CH503 American Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism (Prof. Mark Farnham) as pilot courses. Contact the seminary office for more information on registering for these courses.

The course format will be entirely online and will feature required weekly video content found in the seminary's successful video studies program. The course schedule will closely follow the semester's live classes in content and sequence, and Prof. Coon's course will integrate both online and resident students in the same virtual classroom, allowing the two groups to interact around course content and comment on each other's work.

The courses will be hosted in the Sakai (pronounced "sa-KAI") learning environment, an online learning tool used widely by universities around the world. The development of an online environment marks a significant milestone in Calvary's multi-faceted approach to bringing quality education to local church leaders, bringing together the best qualities of its existing video studies program with the interactive dynamic found in the videoconferencing approach used at its Canadian outreach.

From Calvary's president, Sam Harbin:

This summer, CBTS is embarking on a new partnership initiative that will be exciting news for all of our constituents. We are seeking to build on the vision of our founder, Dr. E. Robert Jordan, whose dream of one hundred new churches was realized through the graduates of CBTS. We’re asking the Lord to enable us to train one hundred new church planters by the year 2020. We're calling this our "20/20 Vision" for the future.

More information will be made available over the course of the summer.