Present & Prospective Westminster Students

You have come to Westminster (or we hope you soon will be coming!) to seek out the best possible preparation for future ministry. For many that future will be as a pastor, counselor, youth worker, or missionary. Others of you will build a solid theological underpinning for other vocations.

Now stop a moment. Reread that first paragraph.

When you read the second sentence, did you think to yourself “full-time ministry”? Did the third sentence bring to mind a category like “secular work.” If so, congratulations—you have been well-trained by a modern evangelical mindset that suggests that not all work is influenced by the Gospel. And you have also demonstrated to yourself why the Gospel & Culture Project could be a valuable—perhaps indispensable—part of your Westminster education.

WTS and G&CP: Seminary to the Max

Through your involvement with the Gospel & Culture project, you will have an opportunity to unfold how the theology you learn at Westminster is truly the theology of a glorious Sovereign God. His reign knows no bounds, and he refuses to be limited by artificial barriers of “sacred” vs. “secular.” The Gospel & Culture project can help you flesh out and expand your knowledge of this God in ways that too many have missed, though they were always there.

A Westminster Theological Seminary education gives you a thorough grounding in biblical and redemptive-historical theology. Biblical theology teaches you that the Bible reveals a unified and cohesive message, while redemptive-historical theology enables you to trace how God has progressively unveiled and implemented that message across human time. But what do either of those mean in our time, the time in which God has called us to minister? What is the ongoing mission of God to his world? What part do you and every Christian play in that mission? How does such theology intersect and interact with a world that is either ignorant of it or willfully ignores it?

1. Your Westminster education can be like studying mathematics. Understanding facts about math is very important. We learn that math has integrity; we can rely on it. However, if our understanding is limited to “math facts” like the times table, we are missing something significant. To our impoverishment, we then overlook all the less tangible but invaluable things that exist because mathematics does: architecture, music, theoretical physics, economics, etc. In a sense, we would miss the poetry of math in our preoccupation with its prose. Far more tragically, we too often reduce the Gospel to a set of “math facts” to be memorized and passed on.

The Gospel and Culture Project will help you see the “poetry” of Christ's Gospel that arises from the “prose” of the things you learn in your many classes. That statement is not by any means meant to denigrate the factual material you study. Far from it! The solid theological underpinning you receive at Westminster is essential to all that the Gospel and Culture Project seeks to bring to you.

Alumni

No doubt, many Westminster Alumni are already involved in cultural ministry and thinking through the issues of how the Gospel should be impacting decisions in all areas of life. We would appreciate hearing from you to discover opportunities to both partner with you and learn from you.

Contact: info@gospelandculture.org