Career
He served as President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary starting in 1978. During his sixteen-year tenure, the seminary annual enrollment exceeded 5000 students, making it the largest in American theological education history. In 1990, Christianity Today released a poll of its readers ranking the effectiveness of American seminaries. Southwestern Seminary was ranked “number one among the top 33 graduate theological schools in the nation. (Columns:Glimpses of a Seminary Under Assaultp.6, 99) He was fired in March 1994 by what had become majority conservative-leaning board of trustees in a 26-7 vote during the Southern Baptist Convention Conservative Resurgence/Fundamentalist Takeover. Dilday described the resurgence as having fragmented Southern Baptist fellowship and as being "far more serious than a controversy". Dilday described it as being "a self-destructive, contentious, one-sided feud that at times took on combative characteristics". Since 1979, Southern Baptists had become polarized into two major groups: moderates and conservatives. Dilday has been labeled a moderate, but prefers the term "constructive conservative." ( Higher Ground: A Call for Christian Civility, p. 142) Reflecting the hyper-conservative majority votes of delegates at the 1979 annual meeting of the SBC, the new national organization officers and committees replaced all leaders of Southern Baptist agencies with presumably more conservative people (often dubbed "fundamentalists" by dissenters)who would carry out the takeover agenda.
In August 1994, Dilday was hired by Baylor University to serve as a distinguished professor of homiletics at the George W. Truett Theological Seminary and to be a special assistant to Baylor President Herbert Reynolds.He also served as Acting Dean of Truett Seminary. He served as interim President of Howard Payne University from 2002-2003.
He was pastor of Texas Baptist churches including, First Church in Antelope, Texas, a rural congregation, First Church in Clifton; and he led Tallowood Church in Houston "from a mission to one of the strongest missions churches in Texas Baptist life." His only non-Texas pastorate was at Second-Ponce de Leon Baptist Church in Atlanta, a large urban congregation.
Dr. Dilday has received honorary degrees from Baylor University (L.L.D), Mercer University (D.D.), William Jewell College (L.H.D.) and Dallas Baptist University (D. Hum.).
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