Robert J. Arnott; Promoted Church Management Skills

Robert J. Arnott, a theologian and educator who helped establish church management as a field of study, died of cancer July 26 at a Laguna Hills hospital. He was 79.

Arnott was a professor of church management and director of field education at the Claremont School of Theology from 1967 until his retirement in 1988. Through his efforts, Claremont became one of the first seminaries in the nation to include business management and theory in the training of new ministers.

“Church management was generally taught by retired senior pastors giving advice to new ministers. It was usually not good advice. Robert changed all that,” said F. Thomas Trotter, former dean of the seminary.

“He was one of the pioneers, if not the first, to look at the traditional instruction of young seminarians in how to run a church, and he did it on a more scientific and more seriously academic basis.”

Arnott joined colleagues from Princeton, the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary to found the first professional organization devoted to promoting church administration as an essential skill. Church management and administration are now accepted disciplines at most theology schools in the United States.

A native of Toronto, Arnott was an expert on the Old Testament who earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1959. He moved to California in 1960 to become head pastor at First Baptist Church of Los Angeles. One of the largest and most successful Baptist churches in Southern California, it also was notable for its involvement in progressive causes.

Arnott left First Baptist to become president of the Berkeley Baptist Divinity School, where he served from 1964 to 1967. During that time he helped to form the Graduate Theological Union, a prestigious, multidenominational consortium of seminaries in the Bay Area.

He also led workshops on church management for the Air Force Chaplaincy Corps and held lectureships at universities in Britain and West Germany.

Arnott is survived by his wife, Martha Rowlett Arnott of San Clemente; a daughter, Cathy Carruthers of Tumwater, Wash.; a son, Robert Arnott of Pasadena; five grandchildren; and a sister.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Aug. 26 at Rolling Hills United Methodist Church on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.