Biola University is acquiring Phoenix Seminary, rebranding the Arizona school as Talbot Seminary Phoenix in a consolidation that will create the nation’s second-largest seminary without a denominational affiliation.
In January, leaders from Phoenix Seminary approached Biola to propose merging the schools and donating its Scottsdale, Arizona, campus. Biola’s board of trustees unanimously approved the plan, announcing today that the Arizona seminary will become a regional campus of Biola’s school of theology.
“We plan on keeping those buildings and expanding the good work that Phoenix Seminary has been doing for nearly four decades,” Biola president Barry Corey told CT, saying he hopes the campus will begin operating under the Talbot name in August.
Phoenix Seminary, whose faculty include professor emeritus Wayne Grudem, offers five degree programs and enrolls around 300 students.
Founded in 1988 as a branch campus of Western Seminary in Oregon, the school first held classes in a pair of churches. It became independent in 1994, relocating its campus three times before settling into its four-acre Scottsdale property in 2017.
The combined school will enroll more than 1,800 graduate students, making it one of the largest independent evangelical seminaries in the country, behind only Dallas Theological Seminary.
No specific crisis precipitated the merger, according to Phoenix Seminary chairman Ron Ogan. The board had been prayerfully considering a merger for more than a year and a half, he told CT. It recognized a contracting market for smaller schools and decided the best move for the seminary’s future was to seek an acquisition while things were still going well.
Ogan said the board considered a series of schools as potential suitors. Biola was aligned with Phoenix on principles like the inerrancy of scripture, and it was willing to keep the school in Scottsdale.
“It was refreshing to be able to understand one another, recognize that this was really Spirit-led,” Ogan said. “When they came and visited, they saw this was not a crisis in the making.”
Michael Maples, who chaired Biola’s board during the acquisition process, said the decision to acquire was made easier by the fact that Phoenix Seminary is financially healthy.
Enrollment at Phoenix Seminary has been relatively steady over the past five years, records show. Its revenue has declined slowly since 2022 to about $5.5 million last year, when it ran a million-dollar budget deficit—not entirely unusual in today’s higher education environment.
Its most recent tax filings list around $3 million in assets.
Maples said proposals for asset donations like this are not uncommon. “The financial model for smaller seminaries has become more challenging,” he said. “One thing I really respect about the board and Phoenix Seminary is they didn’t wait until the last minute.”
Overall, seminaries—particularly evangelical seminaries—are seeing brighter times for enrollment. The Association of Theological Schools reported that enrollment at about half of its member seminaries grew the last two years, following more than a decade of decline.
Still, many private colleges are at risk of closing as student bodies shrink. Huron Consulting Group, which specializes in higher education, projects that “442 of the nation’s 1,700 private, nonprofit four-year colleges and universities” could close or merge within the next 10 years.
Additionally, a proposed policy under the Trump administration could cut federal funding to Christian colleges and seminaries with large numbers of graduates who go on to work in lower-paying ministry or nonprofit jobs.
Courtesy Phoenix SeminaryWhen Phoenix Seminary explored joining Biola, its leadership was searching for an institution with a “shared theological commitment,” said Corey, Biola’s president. “We’ve been doing this for 118 years now at Biola, so that’s not going to change.”
Maples, a real estate developer by trade, said he visited Phoenix Seminary’s campus earlier this year and was impressed with how well maintained it was.
“I walked the different back areas to see if there was trash back there, and it just showed this attention to detail and care. Even all their furniture is up-to-date,” Maples told CT. “It showed a deep regard for what they were doing as an institution.”
Corey said that Biola, which has its main campus in the Los Angeles suburb of La Mirada, would retain as many staff as possible but that he expected some reductions. Maples said the plan is to offer jobs to all current faculty but there may be cuts in the campus workforce.
The acquisition of Phoenix continues an expansion of remote-learning opportunities at Biola, which last year received a $10 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to fund an initiative called Talbot Embedded. The program allows students along the West Coast to study remotely and periodically meet in person with professors at sites in San Diego, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Hawaii.
Talbot School of Theology dean Ed Stetzer said he had already been in discussions about opening a Talbot Embedded location in Phoenix and now, “in God’s providence,” Biola will have an entire campus there.
Stetzer said Arizona, with its growing population, is a prime spot to expand theological education. He thinks the Phoenix-area location could attract students who would see moving to Los Angeles as too big of a stretch.
Maples told CT he hopes the new Talbot Seminary Phoenix could double its enrollment in five years.
Correction: An earlier version of this story gave the wrong first name for Biola president Barry Corey.
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