Our Vision for Developing Gospel Leaders in Southern New England

"We passionately believe that making disciples aided by well planned and strategic new church development is the way to reach New England with the Gospel."

 

Rev. Todd Murphy

Need for Ministry Training in Southern New England

Providence, RI is the second largest metropolitan area of New England. It boasts around 1.6 million people and is rich in business, culture, arts, education and ethnic diversity. However in spite of the fact that it has many colleges including the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, and the Ivy League Brown University, there is no formal theological training here to serve training needs of the Church here. This can be contrasted with Boston that has nine major seminaries and theological schools to serve it. The Little state of Rhode Island is statistically only about 1.7% evangelical thus classified as an “unreached people group” by most missiologists. On top of this, Rhode Islanders are characteristically known for residing close to home for most of their lives. While Boston charges forward with a swarm of new church development, Providence and southern New England seems to stumble along with closing churches and a lack the leadership and support to assure long term success. It is for these reasons we think it is necessary respond to this need. Sacred Journey, a congregation of the Christian Reformed Church is seeking to answer this call.
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A Kerygmatic Approach:

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Our approach to theological education is what we call the Kerygmatic approach. What do we mean by this? The term kerygma in the New Testament refers to the core content of the Gospel, especially how the biblical story of redemption finds is fulfillment in the incarnation, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. While this may seem obvious, it unfortunately is not in modern theological training. Unfortunately many students graduate from seminary more informed about what is currently trendy in theology rather than deeply rooted in the timeless truths of Christian orthodoxy. Modern approaches can be divided into two basic buckets.
    Our Model: The kerygmatic approach is ultimately about spiritual development through sound theology and leadership training. It uses the same fundamental model as the regular ministry of the Church, but with heightened theological rigor. Instead of being focused on grades and information (the academic model), or on being practical at the expense of good doctrine (pragmatic model), it is focused upon raising up faithful and theological leaders whose lives are transformed by the power of rich theological reflection and understanding. So the curriculum is centered around preaching. The curriculum here is prioritized by the Gospel itself. This means, rather than taking “a class” at seminary on “preaching” and another on “missions,” and another on “discipleship,” the entire curriculum is oriented toward discipleship and preaching.
    This raises another facet of this approach. The curriculum is then confessionally centered. Some of the best definitions of the the biblical kerygma are the historic creeds and confessions of the early Church and Protestant Reformation. Our curriculum will be then centered in the Apostle's, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds and structurally assisted by the heidelberg catechism to give it its distinctive evangelical flavor.
    The goal of the program is holistic leadership development. What the Church in New England is hurting for more now than ever is strong leaders who can proclaim the Gospel in a post-Christian culture. We need men and women who can take a stand for the Gospel, be Gospel leaders and raise up Gospel leaders; disciples who can make disciples.
    As mentioned above, the goal of the kerygmatic approach is a more intense and rigorous application of the the regular church’s ministry of discipleship. This will be an extension of the local Church’s regular ministry of disciple making. The Church’s goal is to disciple people into followers of Christ who practice repentance as a lifestyle.
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​​The Providence School of Theology

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The goal of the Providence School of Theology and Mission is to serve the needs of the Church and the advance of the Gospel in Southern New England. It would accomplish this by training indigenous leaders within their own ministry context. Unfortunately many who leave RI to attend seminary never come back. The first reason for this is that most seminaries do not provide any training in leadership and new church development. Because of this, the average seminary grad is fairly well prepared to take over and existing church, but not prepared to start a new one. Because the evangelical witness in RI is so small and so many churches are closing, there is less opportunity to find a position and come back. Second, most seminary experiences pull the student out of their ministry context, and so at best, if they are engaged in active mission and discipleship in another state, they learn to do ministry in that context, not Southern New England and RI. We would also accomplish this goal through close interaction and cooperation of existing local churches and church plants for aid in the training and spiritual development of the students. While the training would have a broad and well rounded curriculum, the school would still have a major emphasis on training church planters compared to the average seminary. This is because we passionately believe that well planned and strategic new church development is the way to reach New England with the Gospel once again.

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