[9] The seminary, under the presidency of Sydnor L. Stealey, began offering classes in 1951 on the campus of Wake Forest College.

Under demands from an increasingly fundamentalist Board of Trustees, Lolley resigned in 1987 and was succeeded the following year by Lewis A.

He took the same position at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2004,[5] being replaced by Daniel L. Akin, the school's current president,[14] who has taken a similar approach.

Patterson Hall was dedicated in 2008 to house classrooms and academic suites for several of Southeastern’s programs and initiatives, including The L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture, The Center for Preaching and Pastoral Leadership, Global Theological Initiatives, and twenty-two faculty offices.

[16] The seminary was granted an exception to Title IX in 2016, allowing it to legally discriminate against LGBT students for religious reasons.

[17] In 2017, a campus was established in the Nash Correctional Institution prison in Nashville, North Carolina.