The Biblical Foundation for Theological Education and, therefore, for what we do at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary is found in 2 Timothy 2:1-2. Notice four things.
l. First, notice the spiritual commodity which they specify.
You will notice that the Apostle calls Timothy to be strong in “the grace” that is in Christ Jesus. The grace mentioned refers to the “doctrines of grace.”
ll. Second, the spiritual genealogy which they envision.
Four generations of truth are mentioned. 1. From Me in the presence of many witnesses 2. The things which you have heard 3. Entrust these to faithful men 4. Who will be able to teach others also
So the spiritual genealogy runs like this: Paul, Timothy, Faithful Men and Others Also
Paul faces his imminent martyrdom for the sake of Christ. Cf. 2 Timothy 4:1-8. One of the things most important to the Apostle Paul as he writes Timothy shortly before his death and with his death clearly on his mind is the preservation and communication of the truths of the gospel of grace not simply or generally to all the church, but to faithful church leaders who will continue the genealogy of truth.
lll. Third, the spiritual specialty which they require.
When these verses speak of entrusting something to faithful men who will be able to teach others also, they clearly call for teaching. But the teaching in view here is not the ordinary teaching required in the Great Commission. Here, it is to be given to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
lV. Fourth, the spiritual entity which they assume.
Paul does not command Timothy to start the Ephesus Bible Seminary. Paul does not revise what he said in 1 Timothy 3:15 about “the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.” Thus, theological education ought by right to take place under the authority of the churches of Christ and not as an independent operation.
This breakout session, I will admit to you, might be seen as what nowadays is called the shameless plug for Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. But I hope you don't walk out and meet a few of us as there is it is. Don't walk out just yet in order to find something more scriptural. My goal is to show why what we are doing is very scriptural. And I will begin by laying a theological foundation for our ministry by asking you to consider with me, theological education is the work of the Church.
We will do this by looking at what is perhaps the most pivotal text in all of Scripture on this subject. I was struck anew, and the Bible actually does specifically address theological education for the ministry. I think that might surprise a lot of Christians today, but it actually does specifically address that subject. It has quite specific teaching on that subject. And I'm going to show you that this morning by turning you to the text that I think is probably the most pivotal and clear and specific text in all of Scripture on that subject that actually addresses specifically theological education for the Christian ministry.
And that text is 2 Timothy 2, verses 1 and 2. If you turn there, I want to read it. 2 Timothy 2, verses 1 and 2. You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." Now, I want you to notice in this text as we address it, I want you to notice first of all in this text the biblical foundation for theological education, and then I want you to notice the practical implementation of theological education at CBTS.
Only the second could be accused of being a shameless plug, I guess. But first of all, the theological foundation for theological education. My theology of theological education is summarized here in 2 Timothy 2, verses one and two. I want you to notice four things about the text, four things about it. First notice the spiritual commodity, the spiritual commodity which they specify.
You'll notice that the apostle calls Timothy to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. That's the commodity I want you to notice, the grace that is in Christ Jesus. I agree with the preacher I once heard who affirmed that the grace mentioned in verse one here refers to the doctrines of grace, the doctrines of grace. One of the clearest and strongest statements of the identity and sovereignty of God's grace is found, in fact, in 2 Timothy chapter 1, just a few verses previously, in verses 8 to 10. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me as prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our own works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to life through the Gospel.
I think it's what's in those verses, the doctrine in those verses, that is the grace that Paul wants Timothy to be strong in, as he says in 2 Timothy 2.1. The doctrines of sovereign grace are what Paul is talking about here and are definitely involved in this grace of which Paul speaks. I believe that when Paul speaks of the grace that is in Christ Jesus, he is thinking of the system of grace and doctrine contained in the Scriptures. Grace here then refers partly or wholly to the system of doctrine which Paul taught. Now this seems to be confirmed by verse 2 because you notice how it immediately goes on to speak of the things which you have heard from me.
These words clearly designate Christian doctrine, The Christian doctrine which Paul had communicated to those who had been his listeners, his auditors. These words clearly designate Christian doctrine And Paul refers to such doctrine frequently in the succeeding context, 2 Timothy 2.8-9. He specifies some of this doctrine, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, descendant of David according to my gospel, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal, but the word of God is not in prison. And also in chapter 1, verses 12 to 14, and I've already read you chapter 1, verses 8 to 10. The spiritual commodity which forms the subject and burden of Paul in this key text is the doctrine of grace which he preached.
This was the heart of Paul's message, and it was for this grace and in this grace that Timothy was to be strong. Further, it seems to be clearly implied that at least one way in which he was to be strong in this grace was by communicating it to other faithful men. And this brings me to my second sub point. Now I don't really see here the spiritual commodity, but we see here a spiritual genealogy. Look at the text and see if you can see four generations of truth there Four generations of truth.
I told you I only have grandchildren my dad who now lives with us after my mother's death has 34 great-grandchildren, I think the number is and But I don't have any great-great grandchildren yet. But Paul here is actually thinking about his great spiritual grandchildren, and I want to show you that. And so have you looked at the text? Do you see the four generations of truth of which Paul speaks here? Look again at verse 2.
First generation, from me, there's the first generation, in the presence of many witnesses. Second generation, the things which you have heard, right? Third generation, entrust these to faithful men. Fourth generation, who will be able to teach others also. So you see, me, you, faithful men, others also.
Four generations of truth, right? Paul is here thinking about a period of time, about a situation that goes way beyond the apostolic era and all the special elements and aspects and situations you have in the apostolic era. He is taking care of what's going to happen in the church generations beyond his death. So the spiritual genealogy runs like this. You see it?
Paul, Timothy, faithful men, and the others also that those faithful men will teach. So Paul is here taking care for his spiritual grandchildren. You can throw it from there, but I'd probably miss. I told Steve Lawson last night, I'm really sad that I haven't ever learned to give up the habit of drinking while I'm preaching. But as we think of Paul taking care here for his spiritual great-grandchildren, his spiritual great-grandchildren, we must remember the poignant circumstances in which these words of 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2 are written.
This is Paul's last book, the last book because he's going to die shortly after he finishes it. Paul faces imminent martyrdom for the sake of Christ. Just need to read 2 Timothy 4, 1-8 to see that, where he tells us that he's fought a good fight, he's finished his course, and a crown of righteousness, a crown which consists in righteousness, is laid up for him by the righteous judge who will award that to him at the last day. So Paul here is not just writing a letter under the ordinary difficult circumstances of his life, and there's nothing ordinary about his life at all. It was all difficult.
But this is reaching the pinnacle of that persecution, that difficulty, that trial and distress which characterized his entire ministry. He is about to die. And what is he thinking of when he is about to die? He's thinking of his spiritual great-grandchildren. He's thinking of the importance of communicating the truths of the gospel of grace, not simply or generally to the church, not simply or generally to all Christians.
He is thinking of communicating those things to faithful church leaders who will continue to pass on the tradition, the deposit of truth, and so continue the genealogy of truth. Myths and false doctrine, He tells us in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, his final books, Myths and False Doctrines will arise and assail the truth of the Gospel. Timothy is to combat this not only through his own ministry to the whole church, but through the passing the deposit of truth down, passing the deposit of truth down to men who are able to teach, who will maintain unbroken the genealogy of truth. Now, I think we need to stop here, and I need to tell you that I think that one of the things that has been almost lost in this generation is the importance of the Christian ministry in the Christian church. Ministry is almost exclusively thought of as every man ministry, every Christian is a minister, and of course there's an important truth in that emphasis.
It's true that every Christian is called to ministry in some sense. But in 2 Timothy 2, we see that there is a special class of Christian men who are called with a special vocation to preserve Christian truth in the world and in the Church. We must regain the biblical emphasis on the importance of this special calling and the special duties associated with it if we're to appreciate the priority that what Paul is calling Timothy to here is for Paul. So there's a spiritual commodity, there's a spiritual genealogy, and there is a spiritual specialty in these verses, a spiritual specialty. When these verses speak of entrusting something to faithful men who will be able to teach others also, they clearly call for teaching.
But the teaching is not the ordinary teaching required, for instance, in the Great Commission. There in the Great Commission, the apostles and their spiritual successors, are required to teach all the disciples to observe everything Christ commanded, right? And that's the thrust of the last and final phase of the Great Commission. Make disciples, baptize them, teach them to observe, Jesus says, all that I commanded. But I want you to notice carefully that the instruction required here in 2 Timothy 2 is not specifically that.
It is something that is not identical to that commanded in the Great Commission. It is not the instruction which is to be given to all the disciples commanded in the Great Commission. The text is very clear here in 2 Timothy 2. This is instruction that is to be given to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. This instruction is the kind of instruction you give to men who are faithful and who can teach qualifications for the Christian ministry.
Just as Christians therefore must be taught all to observe all that Christ commanded, so these men in a special way are to be instructed. Those to be taught are the next generation of Christian teachers, the next generation of Christian pastors and teachers. Thus the instruction in view is not the general instruction of all Christians, but the special instruction necessary for Christian leadership. Now, I suppose you could say that this instruction is going to cover the same basic topics, right? You're going to have all the same courses, but they're not going to be three-hour, three-credit-hour courses.
They're going to be whole semester, 12-credit-hour courses, because the way you teach these men, it's not going to be something different than all Christians get, but it's going to be something deeper, right? It's going to be something more in detail. It's going to be a detailed kind of instruction, a systematic kind of instruction that goes beyond what other Christians need and what other Christians are given and commanded to be given in the Great Commission. The subjects of study are basically the same, but the depth into which these men were to be taken was much greater than that into which the ordinary Christian could or should or, strictly speaking, even needed to be taken. This has a further implication.
Since a special kind of instruction is in view, a special set of instructors may also be in view. Well, every pastor is called to fulfill the work commanded in the Great Commission to teach disciples. Not every pastor or church is equally called to the work here commanded of Timothy. Just as Christians have different gifts, so Christian pastors have different gifts, And even Christian churches have different gifts, and it stands to reason that the work of theological education will fall more heavily and squarely on the shoulders of some pastors in some churches than on others. But now there is fourth, we've seen a spiritual commodity, a spiritual genealogy, a spiritual specialty, and now a spiritual entity which these verses assume.
Notice that Paul does not here commend Timothy to start any new spiritual entity as the context or school in which this teaching is to be accomplished. He does not tell Timothy to found the Ephesus Bible Seminary, at least not the Ephesus Bible Seminary in distinction from and different from and outside the authority of the Church of Jesus Christ. And so Paul does not revise here what he said in 1 Timothy 3.15. He doesn't revise his doctrine that it is the church that is the pillar and support of the truth. The Church is and remains the pillar and support of the truth.
It is the sole appointed custodian of the truth of Jesus in the world. And so theological education by right ought to take place under the authority of the churches of Christ and not as an independent operation. Now before I go on, there are several, a couple at least, of clarifications I want to give you that this leads to. So the work of theological education, I've already said it, but let me underscore it, is not the work of another institution besides the Church. It is the work of the Church.
It should take place under the auspices of the church. And secondly, the work of theological education is not the work of another profession beside the pastorate. It is the work of the pastor. It should take place under the auspices of the pastors of the churches. As I said, not every pastor or every church is equally called to or gifted for this special work of theological education of the next generation of pastors.
Yet every church and every pastor should be concerned about it. Well, that's the theology that comes out of 2 Timothy 2, 1 and 2, with regard to theological education. That's what the Bible itself, in its classic passage on the subject teaches us about the task of theological education, a spiritual specialty, a spiritual entity, a spiritual commodity, and a spiritual genealogy. Now all of that brings me to practical implementation, and I must have an implementation of this at CBTS, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. I must have at least 15 minutes left because you haven't held up a sign yet, right?
Okay. In speaking of the practical implementation of the vision of covenant Baptist theological seminary on the basis of these verses, I mean to answer questions like the following that are asked of us. Who are you? How do you do business? Do you have a board?
Who runs the seminary? What's your vision? How many students do you have? How do you teach your classes? What particular ministries are you engaged in?
What are the needs of the seminary? How are you supported? Those are the kind of questions I want to answer under the second point, and so I'll do so puritanically under nine headaches, okay? First of all, stated vision, Stated vision. Our vision is to see the church of the Lord Jesus Christ strengthened and expanded worldwide to the end that Christ would be known, loved, and exalted.
That's our vision. Our specified mission. This is B. Our mission, therefore, is to prepare men to undertake the full range of pastoral responsibilities they will face in serving Christ and His Kingdom, and to equip Christians for effective service in the church. We do this work by providing rigorous academic training and by facilitating extensive pastoral mentoring.
We do have one degree program, this is implied in what I've just said, that is not specifically a pastoral tract. In our pastoral tract programs, because we believe in the teaching of Scripture, the only men should be pastors, we do not have women in those pastoral tract programs. We do, however, have one program that we do encourage and invite women to study, and we have women in that program. That's the Master of Arts and Theological Studies. It's not a pastoral tract program.
It is intended for the preparation of Christians in the church to be more effective in the ministries they may have in the church. So for our specifically pastoral programs, the Master of Arts and pastoral studies, which is our short form, get you interested, hoping we'll get you hooked on doing the Master of Divinity program, which is the other pastoral track program. We do require pastoral recommendation, we require spiritual, We require pastoral mentoring as a part of those programs, but not with regard to the Master of Arts and Theological Studies. We do allow those without bachelor's degrees to study in these programs, but they are not granted master's degrees upon completion, because it doesn't have academic credibility here in these great United States to give master's degrees to people that don't already have bachelor's. But we do allow men to take, for instance, the Master of Divinity program.
And they are granted, upon completion, a Bachelor of Divinity instead of a Master's. But they've taken all the same stuff. Confessional foundation. Theological instruction must be Bible-saturated, Gospel-centered, and here's what I'm emphasizing now, confessionally grounded and led by godly experienced Reformed pastors and scholars. We are committed to the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith as the best and most wholesome summary of the truth of God's word.
All of our courses are taught in a way, and every one of our professors knows this, that is consistent with the theological position of the 1689 Baptist confession. All of our board members must be members of churches that hold the 1689 Baptist Confession. And we do occasionally have men teach for us that may not themselves fully subscribe to confession, but when they teach for us, they will teach nothing but what is consistent with the confession of faith. And that's our commitment to our students and to our board and to the churches of Jesus Christ. Fourthly, formal administration.
We are governed, and I guess when you hear this you'll say, that's kind of unique, okay? I think it is. We are governed by a board of directors and hosted by a local church. That means that we kind of have dual authorities. We have a local church authority.
It's Grace Reform Baptist Church. I have to be a member of that church. I'm under their authority, under the authority of the elders. I am one of the elders, but I'm under the authority of that church. And that's mandated in our Constitution.
But we are also under the authority of a board of directors. And you might ask, well, why are you doing that? Isn't being under a local church enough? Well, we certainly, as I've just said, are committed to being under the authority of the local church. But hard experience has shown that seminaries, like our own, need to have a certain consistency and longevity about them to do their work.
I mean, you don't want to go to a school that three years from now won't exist anymore. At least most of our students wouldn't want to go to a school like that. We have to have something that gives us longevity. And hard experience has shown—I've been a part of three or four different local church seminaries in my teaching experience—has shown that sometimes if a seminary is grounded in simply one local church, every ripple that comes to the local church ripples the seminary as well. So we have a board of directors that is very active in the day-to-day operations of the seminary, and should everything ever happen that ripples or disturbs the waters in Grace Reform Baptist Church to such an extent that it's no longer a happy home for the seminary, that board of directors has the right to take the seminary and actually lead it to and put it under the authority of another local church.
That way, we try to ensure the longevity and continuity of what we're doing as a seminary. E, varied education. We actually teach courses in four different ways. We are primarily a distance education in this institution in terms if you count our students, but we offer both residential and distance Education and we do that through a variety fourfold variety of mechanisms, so here's what we We do we offer classes about 30 hours of classes each year Ours in a live semester length a traditional kind of way we offer those classes in Owensboro Clinton, Louisiana our language classes by a missionary who teaches them on semester length basis out of Ireland. But of course, the classes coming from Ireland are not live residential classes in the ordinary sense.
We use Zoom.us To create a virtual classroom and we teach all the traditional semester length classes that we teach in Owensboro and other places are available broadcast over the internet through zoom.us, which creates a versatile classroom where students see the other students, you hear the professor in real time, they have to ask questions in real time, and it really is a significant upgrade on the traditional correspondence kind of way of taking distance education. We also offer live modular courses in Owensboro, Kentucky. This year we're looking at offering three such courses. Those are concentrated, of course. Ordinarily we're teaching two credit hour courses, and we do it in three days.
So you get eight hours of lecture each day while you're in Owensboro. Dr. Sam Ranahan was with us teaching the origins of Baptist Covenant theology over the Labor Day weekend. Dr. James White will be with us teaching the reliability of the New Testament text the first Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the New Year.
And if we can ever nail him down to exact dates, Dr. Richard Barcelos will be with us teaching hermeneutics in late May and early June sometime in there. And what we do is we invite the students to come. The church gives some bed and breakfast, at least first come first serve basis. We've always been able to serve everybody.
And the students get to meet the professors, have lunch with the professors, eat with them, and also ask them questions, interact with other students. And it's really a significant upgrade on the normal experience of a distance ed student. And then we also offer more traditional kind of correspondence courses through CBTS Pathway. Almost all the courses that you need to graduate from one of our programs are available on CBTS Pathway, which is simply a way of walking students through our master's level courses in a bite-sized kind of way, step by step, so that we try to demystify the process. So you're not asking the question constantly, what do I do next?
CBTS Pathway shows you. And so I always tell the new students that I interview, nothing can make master's level study easy. But we can make it simple in the sense of demystifying the process and that's what CVTS pathway does. So we offer courses in those four ways. We only offer our language courses through live streaming from Ireland because we believe that to effectively teach the languages for most students you need to have more than one class a week.
You need to have immediate interaction with your professor. And the zoom.us platform gives us the opportunity to do that with our language students. We get great, frankly, we get great response to those courses. Michael Amati holds a Master's in Biblical Languages from Houston, Vaspis University. He's a missionary in Ireland and a pastor there, but he stays up pretty late at night to teach our language courses for us.
And that's the only way we teach language courses, is through that live streaming virtual classroom method. You might ask, well, how big are you? Well, we've seen remarkable growth for the last four years. I think I can say accurately that we have tripled in size in the last four years. We have my administrator sitting back there and can correct me if I'm wrong, told me on the way down We have 96 active students this semester with a number of more that have applied but not get started and been accepted and not yet started so We're really thankful for what God is doing and for the way that he has blessed this We think that there's a real need for fine theological education to be offered to peoples that in such a way that they can stay in their local churches, they can stay in their jobs, they don't have to uproot their families.
And in that way, we found, I think, a real niche in which we can serve God and minister and serve his people by the distance education that we author. International cooperation. Besides the approximately 100 students that we have in CBTS proper, we also administer cooperatively programs in South America. We have another 60 students in our Master of Arts and Reform Theology in Bogota, Colombia, at what's called – I won't try to do the Spanish – that has a dual name. It's called CBTS Bogota.
It's also called the Faculty of Baptist Theology in Colombia. So we have about 60 students there. We have another 60 students in Ecuador and at the Confessional Baptist Seminary of Ecuador. Again, that's called CBTS Ecuador and also Confessional Baptist Seminary of Ecuador. We're really thankful for what God is doing in South America.
And we have a mission and goal to expand those kind of affiliate ministries that we're engaged in in South America, especially, although not exclusively there. We're seriously considering beginning the same kind of modular type seminary in Cuba in the next year. I've been talking with people in other countries in Latin America as well. Future accreditation. Sometimes students ask us, are you accredited?
Accreditation is a puzzling subject in many respects and not well understood by most people, but we have been working on accreditation. We have been accepted as formal applicants, and now as candidates for accreditation by the Association of Reform Theological Schools. That's an accrediting association that was begun by Puritan Reform Seminary in Grand Rapids and Greenville Presbyterian Seminary in Greenville, South Carolina, has seven accredited schools right now with a number of more considering becoming accredited by them. God willing, next fall will be the eighth accredited school by the Association of Reformed Theological Schools. We're very thankful for that.
We would not seek accreditation through the normal and would not be qualified to seek it as a small seminary like we are through the normal accrediting agencies, nor would we want the kind of burdens that that would put upon us. But Association Reform Theological Schools is an accrediting association that's intended to verify the academic credibility while speaking to and ministering to the needs of small seminaries like ourselves in Greenville, Prez, and Puritan Reform. Last thing I'm going to talk about is developing provision. How are we supported? Well, we are supported by a collection of interested individuals, partnering churches, and student fees.
Here's the fact of life which every seminarian knows. Are we down to five minutes? No? Okay. The people who need theological education the most can afford it the least.
That's just the fact of life. No summary in the world is supported solely on the basis of the student tuition and fees. The people who need it simply cannot afford to support it. For this reason, we of course first of all deliberately keep our fees as low as possible so that the needy men who want theological education would have families with small children and busy work lives can still afford it. Student fees are only a small fraction of our support, as I said.
Much more important are churches who support us through a church partnership program. We have a church partnership program, which means if a church supports us for $200 a month, all their students in that church take their classes tuition-free. There are other fees they have to pay, but they pay no tuition. The church also gets access without auditing costs to all the courses and resources available on our website, and it's considerable. And then we are also supported by individuals who generously give to keep our student fees lower than almost anyone else's.
The result is that we offer quality theological education. One of the things that that means is all our courses are taught by men with advanced theological degrees. That either means a PhD or the only exception to that is the one that proves the rule, and that's that our language courses are taught by men, all as masters. He has a master of divinity. He is now a master in biblical languages as well.
So We're able to give this education for a cost, which is a small fraction of what men would have to pay at other seminaries, for the most part. For the sake of our students, I, without embarrassment, feel free to ask interested individuals to support us in churches to partner with us in this work. And Grace Reformed Baptist Church, where I'm a member, and where the seminary is hosted, is one of those church partners, of course. I was hoping to have time for questions. I know I've ran through that really quickly.
I get used to giving these canned speeches to every... I interview every new applicant and accept them into the seminar usually. And so I get used to saying a lot of this stuff very quickly and so I may have said stuff that has led to questions or wasn't clear to you. Do you have any questions for me?