Mission & Statement of Faith
A new purpose statement was adopted by the university in April 1999 and reads as follows:
Southeastern, a dynamic, Christ-centered university, fosters student success by integrating personal faith and higher learning. Within our loving Pentecostal community, we challenge students to a lifetime of good work and of preparing professionally so they can creatively serve their generation in the Spirit of Christ.
To supplement this concise statement of purpose, the university’s Leadership Council developed a “Mission in Action” statement in January 2000. This companion statement reads as follows:
From its inception in 1935 as a Bible institute to train pastors and missionaries, Southeastern has rested on a solid foundation of vision and faith. That foundation has held firmly as our school evolved and relocated through the years, gradually expanding its mission and degree offerings along with its student population, and moving in 1952 to our permanent suburban campus in Lakeland, Florida.
Today, vision and faith still underlie Southeastern University. A four-year undergraduate university of the Assemblies of God--co-educational and primarily residential--Southeastern enrolls approximately 2,000 students, both traditional and nontraditional, who represent a variety of denominations, personal interests, backgrounds, states, and countries.
We offer a vital, Christ-centered education that, through a wide range of academic majors leading to the bachelor’s degree, prepares our students for a life of world-changing leadership in church-related positions and in other professional fields. Arriving at Southeastern as people committed to following Jesus Christ, these students graduate ready either to enter graduate study or to serve throughout the world as teachers/educators, social service and mental health professionals, and business men and women.
Our programs of study span the following academic areas: behavioral and social sciences, business, education, language and communication arts, music, natural sciences and mathematics, and religion.
Along with academic preparation, Southeastern provides many opportunities for voluntary service and ministry in our local community and abroad. Frequent chapel services, a thriving music program, a variety of clubs and associations, and competitive and intramural sports add to our students’ full and busy lives.
Ideally, a student educated within Southeastern’s Christian academic community displays these abilities and experiences:
- Orally and in writing, communicates with tested competence and clarity;
- Demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and maturity necessary for the profession he or she has chosen;
- Has acquired scholarly habits and can perform skilled research;
- Has rendered, to the campus and the community, service appropriate to a Christian citizen; and
- Demonstrates a broad cultural perspective informed by a Christian worldview.
Saying “yes” to Christ, we believe, implies not only a zeal to serve, but a commitment to excellence in every activity.
Southeastern University seeks to graduate men and women who combine faith, compassion, and humility with self-discipline and careful thinking; who take seriously the Biblically based obligation and privilege of being “the salt of the earth”; and who consequently approach every task--a class assignment, a volunteer project, an internship experience, a career--as an opportunity both to do well and to do good.
DOCTRINAL STATEMENT
Southeastern University subscribes to the Statement of Fundamental Truths of the Assemblies of God. The university believes the Bible is the inspired and only infallible and authoritative written Word of God; there is one God, eternally existent in three persons; God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit; in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious atoning death, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, in His personal future return to this earth in power and glory to rule a thousand years; in the Blessed Hope--the rapture of the Church at Christ's coming; the only means of being cleansed from sin is through repentance and faith in the precious blood of Christ; regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential for personal salvation; the redemptive work of Christ on the cross provides healing of the human body in answer to believing prayer; the baptism in the Holy Spirit, according to Acts 2:4, is given to believers who ask for it; in the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a holy life; in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, the one to everlasting life and the other to everlasting damnation.
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