Gateway Seminary
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Former names
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Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary |
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| Established | 1944 |
| Affiliation | Southern Baptist Convention |
| President | Jeff Iorg |
| Location | Ontario, California |
| Website | www.gs.edu |
Gateway Seminary ("GS") [previously known as Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary ("GGBTS")] is a graduate school affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The theological seminary system has five physical campuses and one virtual location:
During the 2010–11 academic year, there were more than 2,000 enrolled, making it one of the largest seminaries in the United States. The seminary is accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
The desire to provide training for Christian workers to minister to the masses in California led Harvey Gilbert, a Southern Baptist home missionary, to establish the San Rafael Baptist Institute in 1859 in Marin County. Many people hoped the fledgling institute would soon become a Baptist theological school. This expectation, however, did not materialize and the school closed after a few years.
Soon after, the Southern Baptist Convention withdrew all support for California work and the churches and institutes it sponsored either disappeared or found other affiliations.
When Southern Baptists again began establishing churches in California, the first in 1936, the same need for a theological school was speedily recognized. It became apparent the Convention would soon have a growing work in all of the western states.
Harvey Gilbert's dream of 1859 had begun to live again in Baptist hearts, and no one carried that dream more intensely than Isam B. Hodges. While a student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, Hodges came to the conviction that it was God's will for him to begin a seminary in the West. In 1935, nine years after his graduation from seminary, he finally arrived in California. Two years later he became pastor of the Golden Gate Baptist Church in Oakland.
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.
The combined committee met on Friday evening, March 31, to formally organize Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Six deacons from each church served as members of the first board of trustees, and a few weeks later three additional members were added as representatives of the Golden Gate Baptist Association.
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