First-Person: Remembering the Life and Legacy of Bob Agee

This article was originally written by David Dockery and published to the Baptist Press. Feature image courtesy of Union University.

On Saturday evening, Sept. 26, I received word from several sources that longtime Baptist educator Bob Agee had been called to his heavenly home at the age of 87. I encountered Bob Agee for the first time more than 35 years ago when he was serving with distinction as the president of Oklahoma Baptist University.

When I served as a faculty member and administrator at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the late-1980s and early-1990s, Larry Adams, a noted leader in Oklahoma Baptist life, was an officer on the Southern Seminary Board of Trustees. Larry greatly admired Bob Agee and told me that I must get to know him. I have always been grateful to Larry for pointing me in Bob’s direction.

Bob Agee graduated with honors from Union University in 1960 where he also was a medal-winning runner on the track and cross-country teams. After earning his M.Div. and D.Min. from Southern Seminary, Agee served key churches in West Tennessee before being named Vice President for Religious Affairs and Special Assistant to the President for Institutional Planning at Union.

During the 1970s, for large segments of the institution’s constituency, Agee became the face of Union University, an institution that he dearly and deeply loved until the day that he died. His influence on students on the Union campus was legendary, especially on young preachers like Steve Gaines and young biblical scholars like George Guthrie, along with many others, who sensed a call to vocational ministry. During these years, he also completed a PhD in higher education leadership at Vanderbilt University.

In 1982, Bob was called as the thirteenth president of OBU, where he and his wife, Nelle, also a Union graduate, made an incredible difference during a sixteen-year tenure that concluded for health reasons in 1998. During these years, the enrollment at OBU increased by more than 70 percent and eleven new buildings were constructed and a dozen more were renovated. Known as a student-focused president, Agee led OBU to start new international programs, among other new initiatives, leading to new recognitions for the institution.

Agee, who never wandered far from the Landmarkist influence of his early years in West Tennessee, was always a preacher and churchman at heart. He loved to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. He had a remarkable ability to relate constructively and with integrity to both conservatives and moderates across Baptist life. During the final decades of the twentieth century, Bob Agee was one of the most admired Baptists in the state of Oklahoma. Agee’s reputation continued to be honored on the OBU campus for almost three decades after his service there came to an end.

In the early 1990s, following the announcement from Roy Honeycutt of his plans to retire from the presidency at Southern Seminary, Larry Adams and others championed Agee’s name as a possible replacement. When it was announced publicly in the Western Recorder that Agee was one of the four finalists, he withdrew his name prior to the interviews with the candidates, choosing to make known his recommitment to his presidential service at OBU.

Agee led OBU to become a member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), one of the first two Southern Baptist-related universities (along with Union) to do so. Doing so made a statement that Agee wanted OBU to be more than merely a church-related institution, but one that was thoroughly mission driven and Christ centered. While there are now more than 20 institutions across Southern Baptist life that echo these missional commitments, it was certainly not the norm in Baptist higher education in the 1980s and 1990s. Agee never tired of calling for Baptist educational institutions to be academically excellent, unapologetically Christian, and unashamedly Baptist.

Bob and Nelle Agee happily moved back to Jackson, Tennessee, after their decision to leave OBU in 1998; Bob believed West Tennessee to be God’s country. At that time, Agee was named the Executive Director for what was then called the Association of Southern Baptist Colleges and Universities. During his nearly decade-long tenure, which extended to 2007, he led the organization to adopt its current name, the International Association of Baptist Colleges and Universities (IABCU).

I had the honor of serving on the IABCU Board of Directors during his years of leadership. He invited me to speak at the annual meeting in Williamsburg, Va., in 2000 on the importance of Christian scholarship and worldview formation. At the 2004 IABCU gathering in Nashville, he asked me to deliver the highly regarded Hester Lectures, which I was delighted to do.

I was given the privilege to work carefully and closely with him and Carolyn Bishop to distinguish the work of the Consortium of Global Education (CGE) as an entity distinct from IABCU. I served alongside Bob on the CGE Board to support Carolyn’s work as Executive Director of CGE.

Agee’s move back to Jackson took place not long after I had been named president of his beloved Union University in December of 1995. He became a good friend, encourager, counselor, and cheerleader for our work. This was especially true when his grandchildren began to make their way to study at Union. During our many lunch meetings together, I was blessed to learn from his experience and wisdom, and to hear his stories and repeated exhortations to continue to display a generous and largess spirit when relating to various groups represented across Baptist life. He influenced other younger presidents in similar ways including Heath Thomas at OBU and Dub Oliver at Union.

We also served together on the Board of Directors of the CCCU. I was given the opportunity to write endorsements for his books, “Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation”(Eerdmans, 2003) and “Reason for the Season”(Founders, 2010). His wide-ranging service included involvement with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities as well as the Baptist World Alliance, among others.

Our opportunities to visit became less frequent over the past decade, but we enjoyed warm reunions, good conversations, and times of fellowship at the presidential inauguration of Heath Thomas at OBU in 2021 and then again in the fall of 2022 when we were both inducted into the Bicentennial Hall of Honor at Union University. Bob was also appropriately honored by inductions into the Union University Sports Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Higher Education Hall of Fame, and the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Hall of Fame.

I thank God for the years of friendship with Bob Agee. I am grateful for his significant imprint on Baptist higher education. To honor Bob’s legacy, I will be delighted to continue to echo his call for Baptist higher education institutions to be characterized as academically excellent, thoroughly Christ centered, and unashamedly Baptist. We offer thanks for the life and legacy of Bob R. Agee.