The Alumni Office is honored to recognize this year’s DTS Alumni Distinguished Service Award winner, Joe Arthur (PhD, 2005). Joe and his wife, Meta, have spent a lifetime cultivating their love for the Lord, caring for their family, and building up the global church. A church planter and seminary professor in Brazil, Joe has mentored many. One of his greatest joys has been the privilege of being present for those moments when people witness something life-changing—the moment when a truth registers and begins its transformative work.
Joe attended the University of Michigan, where he earned a degree in engineering. Toward the end of his undergraduate studies, his college church hosted a missionary conference. Joe had never seen anything like it—people from all over the world reporting back on all the amazing things the Lord was doing overseas. During his senior year, Joe felt God’s call to the mission field. Joe took his pastor’s advice regarding his employment and stayed in Kalkaska, Michigan; he worked for five years to pay off his college debt and to return the investment his employers had made in training a blossoming engineer.
Joe then attended Grace Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana, earning his MDiv; he later earned his ThM, which allowed him to dig more deeply into the Old Testament. During seminary, Joe met and married Meta, who was studying nursing and preparing to go to the mission field as a single woman. After seminary wrapped up, the couple left for the mission field; once they got to Brazil, they realized they needed more training. Joe talked with other missionaries, including Dr. Scott Horrell (ThM, 1977; ThD, 1988). The two of them worked together on a Portuguese theological journal, and they both concluded that Joe should apply to DTS. Joe headed to Dallas and began his doctoral studies in 1995.
Joe passed the written exams and then endured an oral interview for the PhD program, being grilled by Dr. Harold Hoehner (ThM, 1962; ThD, 1965), Dr. Don Glenn (ThM, 1965), and Dr. Eugene Merrill. Joe came into the program low on confidence. Meta and their children stayed with Meta’s parents in New York for his first semester, just in case things didn’t work out. Something Joe learned about God at DTS is that God uses whoever he wants for his glory. God sometimes puts big desires into the hearts of believers who get overwhelmed, and then God does things you never thought possible. This still leads Joe to worship. God used Joe, an engineer, to preach, teach, and strengthen the global church. Joe learned to trust the Lord to do the big things, and he still trusts him.
While at DTS, Joe’s focus was on the Old Testament; however, his favorite class was Dr. Daniel Wallace’s (ThM, 1979; PhD, 1995) New Testament Criticism class. Dr. Wallace, a tough-as-nails professor, made his students laugh and laugh hard. Joe spent every spare minute working on that class and loved it. One of his assignments required him to read a medieval manuscript. Using a microfiche, he carefully scanned through John’s Gospel, getting in touch with a text that had passed through the centuries. Joe loved his advisor, Dr. Eugene Merrill; Dr. Rick Taylor patiently filled in the gaps of Joe’s Bible background knowledge. Dr. Bob Chisholm (ThD, 1983) and Dr. Don Glenn trained him to examine modern scholarship with a critical eye.
During Joe’s PhD days, he and his family flew back and forth between the States and South America. Living in Dallas for six months, followed by a year in Brazil, meant it took Joe longer to complete his degree. Joe’s course schedule meant that the student body changed greatly from one visit to the next. He identified with the international students, as he also had to adapt every time he returned to the States. Joe always looked forward to spending time in the library. He especially enjoyed digging through all the theology journals released during his absence.
Joe’s professors modeled what it meant to teach with compassionate rigidity, something he worked to imitate with his own students and others he mentored in Brazil. That compassionate rigidity also helped with church planting. Dr. Merrill modeled it exceptionally well; he held compassion and resolve in tension, applying them in a way that most benefited his students.
As a professor at Logos Baptist Seminary, Joe taught everything, but he enjoyed teaching exegetical methods and exposition best. When the seminary started offering a master’s degree, Joe taught his favorite courses: exegetical methods, Hebrew, and Greek. Through teaching, Joe prepared his students to properly handle and follow the Scriptures and built up their passion for God’s revelation.
Teaching also had its challenges. Many students had families and were working for lower wages; therefore, Joe took up another, less comfortable mantle—fundraiser. The downtown area around the seminary had begun to deteriorate. Students were hesitant about commuting, especially those enrolled in night classes. When the seminary found a property on which to build the school, God used Joe’s skills as a civil engineer. And when it came time for accreditation, the accreditors found it flawless.
In Brazil, Joe spent about 75 percent of his time planting churches and the other 25 percent at the seminary. Joe’s Portuguese teacher realized that Joe needed a little more time to perfect his language skills before setting him loose on a theology classroom, so Joe shifted his focus and started planting churches. Joe and Meta eventually planted three different churches, staying at each church for an average of ten years to ensure each church’s stability. An older missionary couple taught them the ropes and helped them plant their first church; a Brazilian pastor approached Joe to plant the second. While designing the new campus for Logos Baptist Seminary, Joe considered using it as a church. His third church was planted there. When Joe and Meta retired, all three churches hosted a sendoff for the couple, complete with a combined choir. Joe said that nothing compares to that experience—seeing everyone they loved and had worked alongside coming together. All three churches were self-sustaining and growing, and all were there to send them home.
The Lord also used Joe’s and Meta’s family story to form their perseverance and faithfulness. When they were raising support, their first son, Andrew, was born with spina bifida. They reached out to friends to see if Brazil had the medical resources their family would need. It turned out that Brazil had the best resources for Andrew in the southern hemisphere. Their second son, Peter, was born within the first nine months of their move to Brazil. Peter was premature, weighing two pounds, nine ounces. He stayed in an incubator in the hospital for the first fifty-two days of his life. It took six months for Peter to reach birth weight. Leading up to Peter’s birth, Meta had been on bed rest and losing blood, trying to carry the baby as long as possible. Somehow, the Lord carried them through those scary and difficult times. These experiences shaped Joe’s and Meta’s steady natures and persevering hearts. As the Lord used Joe’s experience as an engineer, the Lord used Meta’s nursing skills to care for her family. She turned out to be a nurse and a warrior for her children; five years later, Joe and Meta had a little girl. God’s goodness engraved perseverance and faithfulness into their hearts, and they, in turn, have shared those traits with others.
This past May, twenty-five years after his graduation, Joe and Meta returned to DTS to watch their son Andrew (MBTS, 2025) cross the stage to receive his degree. Joe and Meta are now retired, living in Michigan with Andrew. Joe’s still working on his Portuguese. So far, it has taken a year of formal study followed by thirty-seven years and counting to learn.
Morgan E. Underwood (ThM, 2023) is an administrative assistant for the Alumni and Career Services Office at Dallas Theological Seminary. She is also a Theological Studies PhD student and writer. She is married to her husband, An Dau, and they, along with their black cat, call Dallas home.