I'm sure that was the case Oct. 14 at Southeastern Seminary where I attended chapel and the dedication of Patterson Hall, a 36,000-square foot classroom and office building named for Paige and Dorothy Patterson who served as president and first lady at Southeastern 1992-2003.

As is appropriate at such a celebration Patterson was lauded and lifted as an example of statesmanship and preaching excellence. The occasion marked the close of Southeastern’s trustee meeting and the beginning of a Real Evangelism conference with headliner Bailey Smith, a former Southern Baptist Convention president.

Smith said Patterson is, “The No. 1 man who brought the Southern Baptist Convention to its senses.” Patterson is credited, along with Texas layman Paul Pressler, with making biblical inerrancy the Maypole around which the SBC has danced since 1979.

Smith said he was the one who asked Patterson to run for SBC president in 1998 while Patterson was president of Southeastern. (That obvious conflict of interest has precedent but should not be repeated.)

Current Southeastern President Danny Akin, who came to Wake Forest with Patterson from Criswell College, introduced Patterson, who was to bring the chapel message.

“If it were not for Paige Patterson I would not be standing here today,” Akin said, acknowledging the mentor relationship. “And none of you would be here because you would not have wanted to attend a Southeastern Seminary the way it was,” before the changes wrought by Lewis Drummond and Patterson.

I did not attend Southeastern Seminary so I was not insulted for myself at that comment, but I felt slapped on behalf of many godly Christian men and women who attended and taught at Southeastern “the way it was” before Patterson. The list in North Carolina alone is huge.

Akin followed his comment with a short litany of the doldrums Southeastern endured before Patterson began his tenure. Enrollment had dropped to 580 students, he said, and it now serves 2,500, including a new Southeastern College. That is impressive growth.

With its clear focus, engaging leadership and development muscle some say Southeastern Seminary is becoming the epicenter of theological education among Southern Baptist Seminaries.  Akin said “all the good things happening at Southeastern today are traced right back to (Patterson).”

Maybe it’s just my lens coloring it for me, but the statement about the low point and its context implied that Southeastern pre-Patterson was in the doldrums for some reason other than the convulsions of a Southern Baptist Convention adjusting to change and because trustees were undermining the leadership of Randall Lolley, president from 1974-87.

Southeastern’s own website credits significant growth during the Lolley years.

Akin and later Patterson were both careful not to blame Lewis Drummond during whose transitional tenure enrollment and support hit bottom. “Louie Drummond had to come here when it really wasn’t easy,” Patterson said. Drummond, he said, started the turnaround with his “precious spirit, trading good for evil.”

It was a time, Patterson said, when “students were threatened for believing the Bible.” In that context, his comment went unchallenged.

Patterson called himself the “chief troublemaker” in Baptist life when Southeastern called him as president and he expressed appreciation for “all the saints who welcomed us when it wasn’t popular to welcome us.”

Although Patterson’s eventual return to Texas to lead Southwestern Seminary was being paved by his friends who clumsily pushed Southwestern President Ken Hemphill toward other opportunities, Patterson told the dedication crowd that when Southwestern trustees called, “I didn’t think I had another fix in me, but God is gracious.”

I’ve always criticized my critics for their inability to understand that my praise of one thing does not mean I’m castigating its competitor. I can say Hollifield Leadership Center is wonderful without implying that Caraway Conference Center is not. I might be falling into that trap in this instance as a hearer.

The dedication of the Paige and Dorothy Patterson Building was rightly a time to praise the honoree. But the triumphalism it engendered made me feel the insult for those whose contributions in the past were dismissed as little more than labor pains.

It seemed like the man who said, “I don’t like my son-in-law, but didn’t he produce the world’s best grandbaby?”