At our graduation this year, we unveiled a new logo for the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. A logo is a small thing compared with the work of forming people for faithful service. Yet it can give visible expression to the convictions that guide that work.

The image begins with an open Bible. In all that we teach and do, ABTS seeks to live under the authority of God’s Word. Scripture was given to God’s people in particular times and places, yet it remains God’s Word for his Church in every generation. We come to it as learners who need to hear, understand, and obey.

Woven into the Bible’s open pages is a cross, pointing to Jesus Christ: the center of God’s redemptive purposes and the one to whom the Scriptures bear witness. We want our students to read the Bible carefully, attend to each passage in its context, and see how the story of Scripture finds its fulfillment in him. The cross also shapes the kind of leaders we hope to form: people whose service reflects Christ’s humility, love, and self-giving.

The interwoven cross, with its Eastern character, carries something of the texture of our region. ABTS exists to serve the Church in the Arab world. That calls us to engage the languages, histories, questions, and hardships of our communities with care, while faithfully proclaiming the gospel entrusted to the Church across the centuries.

The arms of the cross also call to mind four commitments we seek to hold together: the academy and the Church, conviction and humility, right doctrine and right living, formation and mission. Our scholarship should serve the Church; our convictions should be held with humility; what we confess should shape how we live; and our formation should bear fruit in service to others.

This new logo gives us a way to remember our calling. Our deeper prayer echoes Paul’s words to the Galatians: that Christ would be formed in us (Galatians 4:19). That is the hope beneath our teaching, our learning, and our service.