We are having a special Sunday school. You're also joining us in the middle of a conference weekend. We have with us Dr. Jonathan Master, the president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. And the conference theme is Regeneration, the Necessity and Glory of the New Birth. And the Lord willing, Dr. Master will be preaching morning and evening on that topic. But here in Sunday school, oh, before I get to the topic of Sunday school, quick note. In line with the conference theme, we have copies of this book called You Must Be Born Again, a short book on the doctrine of regeneration. We have copies, I think, for every household in the church. And you can get them at the front pew at the corner here, the corner there, or at the table at the back. So take one of these and take it home and read it. If you're not a reader. I guarantee you can still make it through this book if you don't like reading that much. It's not a hefty tome, but it is a very useful one on a doctrine that is important to the life of the church and your own Christian life. I'll say something I said yesterday about the book. It also has a warm evangelistic tone. And it will be helpful for you to read, not only for your own spiritual good, but to help you and equip you to speak of Christ to others, or even give to somebody who's asking, what is the Christian faith about? What does it mean to follow Christ? So grab a copy of this. There's copies for each family in the church, and they are a gift to you. Dr. Master, thank you again for being with us. In a moment, we're going to hear something a little different than the conference theme. Introduction to Greenville Seminary, I don't think we've ever done this formally. Some of you know about the school, but we'll have an opportunity to hear a little bit more about the ministry of the school just down the street, a ministry which so impacts the life of our congregation in so many ways as we share in the joy of seeing men being raised up, equipped, and sent out for gospel ministry. Let's take a moment to pray, and then I'll turn it over to Dr. Master. Lord our God, we're thankful for your day, which is very good, a day in which we rejoice and are glad in you. We pray, especially this morning, that we would learn more about the mission of your church, and especially the labors of those at Greenville Seminary, devoted to the training up of ministers of the gospel. We pray that as we learn more about this, that you would help us know better how to pray, to serve, and to give, that we might participate in the work of the Great Commission also through this ministry. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Dr. Master. So good to be with you today. I was reflecting as I thought about this Sunday school, the elders asked me to speak on Greenville Seminary. This is a little bit of an unusual circumstance for me to give a presentation on Greenville Seminary. And the reason why it's unusual, normally when I am asked to do this in churches or in other environments, I'll go into a room where maybe one or two people will know about the seminary, maybe we'll have some people who've been to a conference or something like that, but by and large the vast majority of the group don't know too much about the seminary except what they maybe have seen on the website or something like that. Here it's different because, I don't know, I didn't count, Peter and I should have done this yesterday, I didn't count the number of students who have passed through and worshipped here at Covenant from the seminary over the years. But dozens and dozens of students have been here and served as interns. Obviously, Pastor Peter himself is a graduate. We have an emeritus board member here, current board members here, faculty, all kinds of students that I see. And so there's a sense in which I'm aware of the fact that many of you are extremely familiar with Greenville Seminary. But, that said, I know there are also others in here who are aware of the seminary, you've passed by it, you've met some of our students, but aren't quite as well connected and as aware of the history of the seminary and what our distinctives are. So, I'm gonna try to address both audiences, hopefully this will be helpful for both, and then what I wanna do at the end is make sure to leave plenty of time for questions for those of you who may want to learn more. I want to start at the very beginning in 1987 when the seminary was founded. One of the first things that I was given when I came to Greenville Seminary a little over four years ago were some of the minutes of those preliminary meetings, some of the meetings that were held to decide whether a seminary here in Greenville would be useful for the church. There are several things that come out in those minutes that I think are important to know when you try to understand who we are as a seminary. One of the things that comes out is this. These were ruling elders, primarily at Second Presbyterian Church, and they were concerned with several things. First, they were concerned with the fact that there were diminishing standards among the seminaries. And therefore, the men who were entering our denominations, the PCA, the OPC, their seminary options weren't as robust as they should have been. They were looking back to the Westminster Directory for public worship, and in that Westminster Directory, it's very clear the kinds of things that ministers need to be well trained in. I'll read you a quote for it. It says, it is presupposed according to the rules for ordination that the minister of Christ is in some good measure gifted for so weighty a service, and then it goes on to say this, by his skill in the original languages. and in all such arts and sciences as are handmaids unto divinity, by his knowledge in the whole body of theology, but most of all in the Holy Scriptures." And what you can see them doing in these early discussions is comparing that description, original languages, theology, all these other branches of divinity and knowledge of the Bible, and they were looking at what was happening in the curricula of various seminaries, and what they were seeing was troubling to them, because what they were seeing was that seminaries were diminishing these things. At that time, in the late 80s, and this has simply accelerated since then, There were all kinds of movements within seminaries to remove Greek and Hebrew from the curriculum or at least scale it back significantly. That was a big concern to these early founders of Greenville Seminary. There was also a concern, in addition to diminishing the academic standards, there was also a concern that there was some theological drift that they were seeing. We have our Westminster standards, our confession of faith, our larger and shorter catechism. Those are the standards, those are our confessional standards for the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, for the Presbyterian Church in America, other NAPARC churches as well. And what they, again, observed was a diminishing concern for those standards. So you have kind of academic rigor, and then you have this confessional drift. And again, that's probably something that we would say has accelerated since then, not diminished. And then the third thing that they were concerned about, and they mentioned this, this is all over those early handwritten minutes, The other thing they mention is this, that when you look back at the best examples we have of seminary education in our tradition, what you find is that the best seminaries, the ones that God saw fit to use to raise up men to serve for 40 and 50 years, Those seminaries emphasized, as much as they emphasized academic rigor, they emphasized that this needs to be a place where men are trained and are grown in their love for Christ, in their personal and family piety, in their growth in godliness and grace. In other words, We're training ministers of the gospel and what we know from the scriptures is that those ministers of the gospel have to be certain kinds of men and they have to be growing in their knowledge and love for the Lord Jesus Christ and that's something that over the course of seminary education needs to be modeled for them, and they need to be discipled in. And so those three emphases came out in those early years, and it was because of those concerns and those aspirations that the founders of Greenville Seminary set out to found a seminary. It was originally in Greenville. It's met at different places, met here for I don't know how many years in this building. and then down the street now at what used to be Taylors High School. But wherever it met, those three focal points, those three concerns and aspirations were foremost in the thinking of the school. And I want to use those observations of the founders to talk about what sets us apart today. Usually the first thing I say when I'm introducing people to Greenville Seminary is this. We are set apart by the church really for one main mission, and that's to train pastors. And most of the time when I say that, people will kind of respond as if that's not too significant, not too unusual, because after all, isn't that what all seminaries do? They train pastors. But the reason why I start with that is because one of the trends in seminary education, and there are good reasons for this, I'm not criticizing this in a wholesale way, but one of the trends in seminary education. If you look around at different seminaries, you'll find that actually what they're doing is a whole lot of things. Now many of those things are good things that I'm grateful to the Lord that someone is doing. Training up people for different para-church organizations, training up counselors, training up people for all kinds of specific types of work. But But what that means, the net effect of that, is that the core mission of training pastors can sometimes become a little obscure. It can change the kinds of students you're getting. It can change the discussions that take place in the classroom. sort of change the ethos of the place. And one of our firm convictions at Greenville, one of the things that we talk about from the board level to the faculty and staff, is that we're really here to do something very narrow, very specific, and we think this is what the church has charged us with doing. We're not free to sort of devise our own plan, but the church has charged us with doing under the oversight of our trustees, is to train pastors. Now, in order to do that, in order to maintain that focus, that means, first of all, we're saying no to a lot of other things, a lot of other good things we're saying no to, in order to do that one thing. But it also means that we constantly have to return to those three concerns and those three aspirations that our original founders had when they went about founding the seminary. So I want to talk about each of those in a little more detail and talk about why we're as committed to those things today as they were back in 1987. The first is this, remember I said that one of the reasons, and this is probably one of the things that comes up the most in those early discussions, one of the reasons why the seminary was founded was because there was a concern that many of the seminaries that were serving our denominations were either discussing or had already implemented diminished standards in study. So there was, again, that started out with biblical languages, but it extended to other areas. Now, why is that so important? Well, I already mentioned the Westminster Directory for Public Worship. That gives us some good biblical guidance, but we could go further than that and say this. In the scriptures, the scriptures hold up for us a standard of ministerial preparation that is very high. No, obviously when we're talking about the New Testament, there weren't seminaries in quite the same way there are today. Although, I would add quickly to that, very early on in church history, as the church begins to be established and to grow in certain areas, very quickly, we see training institutions that mirror what we would describe as a seminary today being developed. And in fact, actually when the church was persecuted by the government, We could look, for instance, at the reign of Emperor Julian, the apostate. When Julian wanted to attack the churches, what he did first is he went after these training institutions, what we would call seminaries. So there is a long pedigree, but we could even go back further and say this. When Jesus Christ told his disciples to look at the world, here's what he said. You know this passage, I'm sure, very well. He says this in Matthew 9. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers, the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest field. So, okay, we're supposed to be praying for the Lord to raise up laborers to do the work that he's given them to do, because harvest is plentiful, but there are very few laborers. But what's striking is, if you turn in your Bibles then to 2 Timothy 2, The Apostle Paul takes that same word that Jesus uses for laborers or workers, and here's what he says about it. Here's how he uses it. Very significant in 2 Timothy 2. He says, do your best, he's talking to Timothy as a pastor, and by extension to all those who are pastors in the church. He says to Timothy, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, and then here's where he uses that same word, a worker, a laborer, who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. Now you put those two things together and you have a fairly clear picture from the New Testament. And the picture is this. The picture is we need workers. And so what do we do? We pray for that. We pray that God will work in men's hearts to raise them up for this great task. And yet, and yet, we don't stop there because what we actually know that we need is not just more workers, we do need more workers, but what we also need is, we really need is approved workers. Approved workers who on the day in which all our works will be laid before the Lord and all of them will be laid bare, are approved by God because, we know exactly what that consists of, because they have rightly handled the word of truth. So then, scripturally, the question you have to ask is, how is it that we can raise up workers who are equipped to rightly handle the Word of Truth in all the various circumstances they'll face in pastoral ministry? Whether that's one-on-one, in speaking with someone across a lunch table, or especially from the pulpit, or in their prayer, and in their study, and in their home. These need to be men who are workers, yes, but approved workers, meaning that they rightly handle the word of truth. It's striking to think about how pervasive this vision is in the New Testament. Because just another chapter after 2 Timothy 2, you'll remember the Apostle Paul says this to Timothy, Timothy, in the last days, there are going to be times of difficulty. And he goes on to delineate all the difficulties. And just when you start to think those difficulties are only out in the world, he then makes it clear that this is in the church because he says, there are going to be those who have a form of godliness but deny its power. and amidst those overwhelming difficulties, what does Paul say to Timothy and what does Paul instruct all pastors today? But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. And then he goes on to say in a very significant passage, all Scripture is God-breathed. and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction. And then he goes on in chapter four to say, preach the word. And so we know what the picture is. from the Apostle Paul of what these laborers are supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be well-trained so that their ministry of the Word, which they will continue giving themselves to even as times get worse and worse and fewer and fewer people want that ministry of the Word, even in the midst of that, they'll persist in these things and they'll do so rightly handling the Word of Truth. If we translate the implications of that into our time and place and think about then the question of what a place that is charged with training pastors must do, what it must do is it must equip these men as thoroughly as possible in all the tools that they would need in order to rightly handle the word of truth. in order to have ministries in the midst of hardship, in the midst of false teaching, in the midst of confusion, that are approved ministries by God. Now, look again, the best examples we have in the past emphasize this. And the example of history alone should teach us that we have to be very careful in thinking that we can scale back what's required of the training of a minister. It's striking to me as I reflect on this, how in most other areas of our life, most other vocations, we instinctively recognize that rigorous training is necessary. You think about the medical profession, or you think about the Navy SEALs, or we could give other examples as well. We instinctively know that these are serious things, and training is essential for them. And what the picture the Bible paints for us of the pastoral office is a similarly serious picture And I always say to people when talking about seminary education, to the degree that you hold the ministry in high regard, if you think this is a high and important office, to that same degree you will value the preparation and training of a minister. You have a low view of the ministry, you're gonna have a low view of seminary education, but you have a high view of the ministry, and you say, no, no, this is vital, biblically speaking, then you'll have a high view of seminary education and seminary training. Secondly, The second thing I would say, and again, this just emerges from those early discussions, but I think it also emerges from the Bible, is we have to be faithful to our confessional standards. One of the things that is worth emphasizing about Greenville Seminary is that all of our trustees are ruling and teaching elders in churches that are represented by the seminary, so NAPARC churches. And why is that important? Because it reminds, it should remind us that we are, we are, under authority, we have made vows. We are here because the church wants us and has charged us with being here. And we receive oversight in a very real way from elders in our churches. And one of the ways in which that manifests itself is in our commitment to confessional transparency and confessional integrity. There is, I can see very few good arguments, I don't see really any good arguments for a seminary that is charged by a church with training her ministers that allows for doctrinal teaching that is not in line with what that church teaches. And so just at a basic level of honesty and of following the mission to which we've been called, we believe that confessional transparency is vitally important. Now, again, let's take this back to Scripture. We always need to take it back to scripture. What we find, again, in Paul's letter to Timothy, is Paul gives a command to Timothy, and again, by extension, to all pastors, that is focused on this same kind of confessional integrity. The way he puts it is this. Follow the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. And there are other places as well in the New Testament that give similar commands, but there's a very clear one where Paul says, Timothy, part of your calling as a pastor is, yes, handle the Word of God and handle it in a way that's approved and right and is in line with with truth, but also there's a kind of pattern of sound words. There are doctrinal standards, there are doctrinal truths, there are sort of tent pegs of the faith, and you need to make sure that you're following those. You need to make sure that that pattern of sound words is governing your teaching, because there are all kinds of ways we can veer off track in pastoral ministry. And what Paul says to Timothy is, you need to be careful to stay on track following that pattern of sound words. There's also a deeper biblical principle. There's a direct command in scripture, I think, that relates to confessional fidelity, but there's a deeper principle at work as well, which is this, that all Christians, but I would say especially ministers of the gospel, have to be men who are committed to godly sincerity in all their work. Let me just remind you of how Paul describes his own ministry. I'll give you two verses, first from 1 Timothy 1. Paul says this, the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. In other words, what Paul's saying is, the aim of what we're doing is love, but it must come from sincerity. It must come from pureness in our motives and in our heart. In 2 Corinthians, he puts it this way. We are not like so many peddlers of God's Word, but in contrast to being a peddler of God's Word, what are we? As men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak in Christ. The way I would put those things together in this context is to say this, that ministers have to be very clear about what it is they believe. And if ministers have taken vows saying that they affirm certain doctrinal standards, then they have to be men of sincerity. They have to be men of the truth. They have to be men of purity of heart in their ministry. Now, that doesn't mean that there might be some who disagree. Well, there may be some who disagree, but if we are committed to these things, then we have to be committed from the heart. We have to really mean it. We have to be really sincere. And since our seminary was started in order to serve certain churches and to be committed to certain doctrines, we have to model as faculty members, staff members, even all the way from the Board of Trustees on down, a sincerity, a transparency about our confessional commitments so that anyone coming in can be assured that it's not a kind of bait and switch We're not saying one thing to our constituents but having something else happen in the classroom. You would be surprised how often that happens. We're not doing that. We're operating out of godly sincerity and transparency about all that we believe. That still is a cornerstone. of much of what we do. In fact, I think, I don't know this for certain, but speaking anecdotally, when I travel around and talk about Greenville Seminary, if people have heard of us, if people know about the seminary, that usually is one of the things that they're most aware of. That we actually, it's a novel idea, we actually believe the things that we confess to believe. And we take all those things really seriously. Third thing is this, and this again arises out of our origin but is firmly held today. Seminaries must be concerned with the whole man. Academic rigor is very important. Difficult, strenuous preparation is very important. It's biblical. But we have to be as concerned with a man's growth in personal godliness, growth in piety, to use a word that we don't use too often today. Well, again, why is that? I'll give you two reasons along the lines of the way we've looked at these other things. The first reason is this, again, our very best examples from the past, the ones that we look to, in fact, the ones that our founders explicitly look to, namely, all of our founding documents are essentially, more or less, cut and pasted from those of early Princeton Seminary. And if you read those documents, what you find is that they were emphatic that personal piety, growth and personal piety had to carry great weight in seminary instruction. In fact, Samuel Miller, the second professor. at Princeton Seminary said this, the genius of reformed seminary education is the wedding of academic rigor with growth and personal piety. The General Assembly before the seminary was founded said, if all we do is graduate men who have this academic, this great academic preparation, if all we do is that, without a corresponding measure of personal piety, we have done a harm to the church. In other words, they didn't say, well, if we train them really well in the classroom, and they learn well, and they don't grow in personal godliness, that's sort of neutral. It's not the best, but it's okay. No, they said, actually, then we're doing more harm than good. And so that's sort of woven into the fabric of the seminary because there are so many historical examples of this. I was reading the introduction to the life of Andrew Bonar and it said, And it said something like this, I'm going to probably butcher the quote here, but it talked about their training, the training of Bonar and his friends. And they said, essentially, if they came into their divinity training loving Christ, they graduated from their time under Chalmers loving him that much more. In other words, the thing that they noticed the most was, yes, we learned, but we grew in our love for Jesus Christ. Oh, I actually had this quote written down. Let me not butcher it. If Bonar and his fellow students loved the gospel before they entered the Divinity Hall, it is certain that the love was greatly increasing by sitting at the feet of Chalmers. That's the kind of thing we want. Now, let's again take that back to biblical first principles. We always need to do that. We're not just looking at historical examples, however valuable they may be. If you look at the qualifications for ministry, and you've no doubt noticed this in your New Testament, qualifications for elders and overseers, what you will find is that the majority of those qualifications have to do with personal godliness and the outworking of personal godliness in the life of this man. Now there are some that have to do with certain gifting, able to teach, that sort of thing. And then of course Paul, when he gives addresses to pastors, tells them they have to be equipped for preaching and all of those things. But if you look at those lists, you've noticed it. You've noticed that most of these things, most of these qualifications, actually have to do with personal godliness. And so we, Seeing that, we know that if our objective, if our calling from the church is to train pastors, that has to govern our thinking. Paul, when he's talking to Timothy and describing what the flavor of Timothy's pastoral ministry should be. He says, flee youthful passions, pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. And then he goes on to say this, the Lord's servant must not. be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents, and on and on he goes. Even when Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, preach the word, What does he say? Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort. You remember what he adds? With complete patience and instruction. In other words, you cannot miss this in the New Testament. that ministers of the gospel need to be certain kinds of men. They need to be growing in their life of godliness. And we see, as the New Testament teases that out, that has implications in their homes, that has implications among unbelievers, that has implications in their reputation, that has implications in how they respond to criticism, that has implications in how they respond to suffering as well. In that same category of training certain kinds of men, we're always aware that we are training these men to be preachers of the gospel. And in a sense, that takes a pride of place in our thinking, and frankly, a pride of place in our curriculum. When we did a curriculum review, Dr. McGraw can attest to this, when we did a curriculum review, About a year and a half ago, one of the questions, we had the set of questions that we asked of every single course. We wanted to evaluate, are we still doing what we should be doing? One of the questions we asked was, how does this train a man for pastoral ministry? And right underneath that was, how does this train a man to preach? And again, that all flows from the fact that we have this one narrow job, which is training men to be pastors, which means they have to be able to preach God's word. And they have to do it from a certain kind of character, from a certain kind of being certain kinds of men. I want to give plenty of time for questions here, but I want to close by just making a few points. That's an overview, a big picture of the seminary. There are other things I could bring you up to date on. We just did a building project. We're very excited about that. Our enrollment is, it's just, the Lord is blessing us in incredible ways. In fact, I think I was told that Half of the students, I may get this slightly wrong, half of the students who have studied throughout the history of the institution are here now. I mean, it's just remarkable what the Lord has done in terms of growth, in terms of our ability to have certain initiatives, adding faculty, all those kinds of things. I'm happy to bring you up to date on those things as well, but I want to actually end by saying a few things. First of all, I want you to, if you think of it, please, please pray for the seminary. And you can pray in three ways. You can pray, first of all, that we would continue to be able to serve the churches that we're called to serve. And what that means is really that we remain faithful to the calling that God has given us. I've talked a little bit about history and the history of seminaries, and it's something I think about a lot. One of the things you see when you look at the history of seminaries is there are just so many ways that seminaries can go off track. And our objective, our prayer, and I'm pleading with you to pray along these lines, is that we remain faithful to what the Lord has given us to do, that we remain faithful to the doctrinal commitments we've made, that we remain faithful to training men rigorously in the word of God, that we remain faithful in our emphasis on training them in personal holiness. So please, please pray along those lines. Second thing I want you to think about as a sort of takeaway from this before we get to questions, is I would imagine that there are young men in this room or young men who are connected to those in this room who should be at least taking seriously the possibility, and we know that God has not called all men to be pastors, we know that, but should at least be taking seriously the possibility that what the Lord Jesus says, the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few, may mean that they ought to consider giving themselves over to this great work. Now I say that somewhat circumspectly because again, we know that God in his wisdom has not called everyone to this task, But we also know that there are many things in this world that are in place to distract us from the work that God is doing through the church. And it is the easiest thing in the world to get caught up in those things and to not pursue what we know the Lord is doing and what the Lord has called us to consider. So I want some of you to consider that. And then thirdly, I would ask you this. It's another prayer request. Pray that we'd remain faithful and pray that God continues to provide for us. Because we, I didn't talk about this, although in a sense it does come up in those early discussions, so it would be worth talking about. One of the distinctives that the seminary's always had is we've been committed to making sure that none of the men who study incur any debt in studying at the seminary. And that's, again, it really stems from the fact that we're training pastors and we want them to go forth in great liberty to preach the gospel and to not be encumbered by their training. We don't want their training to be holding them back. We want their training to be launching them forward so that they can freely preach wherever it is that God's called them to preach. But what that means for us as an institution is we are totally reliant on the Lord every year, totally reliant on churches, individuals to provide for our needs. That's a good place to be, actually. I'm thankful for that. It allows us to send out men in a very free way to give freely of ourselves. And it's also good for us, frankly, to be reliant on the Lord. I say all that to say, pray that God continues to provide for us. He has, and I don't ask you to do that out of some fear and trepidation, but I ask you because we need to ask the Lord. He tells us to ask Him and to cast our burdens on Him because He cares for us. That is an overview. Now I want to give time for questions. What questions do you have? Mr. Vendoris. Can I make a couple historical points? I suspected you would.