Chaplains for pirate ships. April 10, 2025. Well, to be honest, they aren't exactly

pirate ships, which would not be very Christian. They are more like privateers operating

with letters of mark and reprisal. But let us not get distracted from the main point.

Greyfair's Hall has been operating for some 20-plus years now, graduating its first alum in 2004,

which meant we started the program a few years before that. The central idea was that the training

of future ministers is a task that ought to be undertaken by the church, and not by a detached

academic institution.

Graduates were given a letter of completion, tailored to their gifts and accomplishments,

which was a letter that like-minded churches took seriously.

At the same time, although the work was equivalent to a graduate degree, there was no pretense.

It was a letter, not a diploma. Now that Greyfriars Hall has been incorporated into the range of programs offered by New St. Andrews College and is offering an accredited MDIV, one of the most

obvious questions to ask is whether we have drifted from our earlier commitments to a ministerial

training program that is overseen by the church. The answer is no. In fact, the hands-on involvement

of our students on the life of the local church

is even more robust than it was. In order to complete the M-Div, the student has to be placed by Christchurch as an intern

in one of our local churches, beginning with his second year. If that doesn't happen, for whatever

reason, the student can still earn an MA, but not the MDIV. All the MDIV graduates

will have ecclesiastical calluses. We live in a time when the crying need is ministerial training

that is scholarship on fire. We need ministers who will preach a hot gospel, straight, no chaser,

and who will be equipped to cast a hopeful and theologically informed cultural vision across

generations. This is what we mean

by all of Christ for all of life. Some churches preach a hot gospel, but they have no cultural vision.

...