“The faithfulness of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in coming generations depends upon you,” President R. Albert Mohler, Jr., charged graduates from the opening words of the Psalter. “You are not alone. You join a long line of faithfulness that marks the Christian church.”
On Thursday, May 7, 2026, the Boyce College Class of 2026 gathered on the Seminary Lawn for the school’s 28th Commencement Ceremony, a day Mohler described as “rightly marked with ceremony, rightly characterized by celebration, rightly both heavy and light on our hearts.” Faculty, family, and friends joined together on a beautiful spring morning to give thanks for what God has done in these graduates and to commission them for the work ahead.
This year, 190 students from 34 states and seven countries had their degrees and certificates conferred and now go out as pastors, missionaries, teachers, counselors, communicators, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and more, prepared, as Provost Paul Akin prayed in his invocation, “to faithfully serve Jesus Christ in the marketplace, on the mission field, and everywhere in between.”
Choose Ye Which Way You Will Go
Preaching from Psalm 1, President Mohler set before graduates the two ways of the Psalter, the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked and read the passage Christologically. “Christ alone is the righteous one,” Mohler said. “He is the fulfillment of what is declared and presented in this psalm. But those who are God’s people are called to follow that way.”
He emphasized that the blessed man is marked by his delight in the law of the Lord and his meditation on it day and night, a word-centeredness that defines the entire mission of Boyce College. “Everything about this school, everything about its curriculum, everything about its faculty is intended to surround Christians, even immerse Christians, in the comprehensive truthfulness of God’s Word and the glorious truth of the Christian faith,” Mohler said. “It’s all about training up, for the cause of the church and for the glory of Christ, a generation that will go out into the world and into the church to make a determinative difference.”
Mohler reminded graduates that this commencement is not merely an academic milestone but a transfer of trust across generations. “The past is testified all around us. The future is present right among us,” he said, calling graduates to feel the weight of “all the sacrifice and hope and prayer that was invested” in them by Christians now dead who gave so that a school like Boyce could exist.
Even as he charged the graduates to leave, Mohler acknowledged the bittersweet weight of sending them out. “We would love for you to stay,” he told the class. “Your professors have loved having you in the classroom. Your friends have loved having you live on the hall. We’ve loved seeing you on this campus. But the time has come to tell you to leave, or at least to move to the next step. And this is to the glory of God.”
His charge to the Class of 2026 came directly from the Psalm: “Choose ye which way you will go.” Mohler urged graduates to feel both the gravity and the gladness of the moment, what he called a “serious joy,” as they take their place in a long, unbroken line of Christian faithfulness reaching back to prophets and apostles and forward to peoples yet unreached. “With you go the hopes and dreams of Christ’s people,” he told them. “To God be the glory, great things He has done.”
Brotherly Love, Permanent Things, and Trust in the Lord
Dean Dustin Bruce preached from Hebrews 13:1–6, offering three encouragements grounded in what he has already seen God do in this class. The first, drawn from verse 1: “Let brotherly love continue.”
“You have poured your lives into this place,” Bruce said, “building a community that is remarkable in the way it expresses the genuine love of Christ for others.” He recalled that as Dean he has fielded student emails inviting him to sing Christmas carols at nursing homes, “it just doesn’t happen in a lot of places,” as one example among many of the brotherly love that has marked this class.
His second encouragement was to keep contending for the permanent things: marriage, the created order, and the goods that the world increasingly seeks to desecrate. The third was to keep trusting the Lord. “He is worthy, and He is faithful,” Bruce said. “He is the one who comes to us in a time of need.”
Bruce closed with a line from Tolkien’s The Hobbit, where Gandalf defends his choice of Bilbo to the doubting dwarves. “I want to say to the world, there’s a lot more in these graduates than you may guess,” Bruce said. “And I want to say to you, there’s a deal more within you than you may have any idea of yourselves.”
Following the conferring of degrees, the Class of 2026 stood together to recite the Boyce College Graduate Pledge, declaring, “We are unashamed of the Gospel, determined to serve wherever God may call us, knowing that by the power of the resurrected Christ, our labor is not in vain.” The whole ceremony, marked by Scripture, prayer, and worship, reminded graduates that this moment is not a private achievement but a public commissioning. The service concluded with the entire congregation singing “Soldiers of Christ in Truth Arrayed,” the seminary hymn written for the institution’s first commencement in 1860 and sung at every commencement since.
Honoring Excellent Pedagogy
This year’s Charles W. Draper Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence was presented to Curtis W. Solomon, Associate Professor of Biblical Counseling. Named in honor of longtime professor Charles W. Draper, the award is chosen by students and faculty to recognize excellence in teaching and Christlike investment in students. Solomon, who has served Boyce College in the classroom and in the lives of students, continues Dr. Draper’s legacy of academic rigor and pastoral care.