Westminster Seminary California new Pulpit Supply Program helps churches fill open pulpits with Christ-centered gospel preaching and helps available M.Div. graduates with placement in churches. WSC funds travel expenses and the congregation pays an honorarium. For more information, please contact pulpitsupply@wscal.edu. Westminster Seminary California: For Christ, his gospel, and his church.
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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Scott, is this just for vacant churches or is this also for churches whose ministers are on vacation? Up here in the Pacific NW it’s not always easy to find good quality pulpit supply.
Both!
Excellent, that will be very helpful!
Awesome! and ’bout time! It was always such a pain to book students from WSC. I think this will get students much more experience and also be good for cultivating Seminary/Church relations. Very, very cool!
Will they fly to Canada? Is it year round?
Yes and yes.
This is excellent. Major kudos for this program.
Our church is roughly 1000 miles away from WSC but for over a year, as our elders have shepherded our congregation through a transition period & prepared us to call a new pastor, we have been deeply blessed with regular pulpit supply from the Westminster students.
We found the preaching from these men to be consistently Christ-centered with a clear Law/Gospel distinction so that the congregation has not only fed on Christ but we have come to recognize and expect the comfort and growth that comes from such preaching. In addition to the high caliber of scholarship and sound doctrine, the maturity and pastoral leaning of the students are evidence of the emphasis on reformed piety & practice encouraged at the seminary.
My personal thanks to you as well, Dr. Clark, for the role you’ve played in assisting our congregation. This kind of hands-on service is an important element of how a seminary should function and we pray often for the ongoing growth and ministry of WSC. Lord willing, we will be calling a minister within the next few weeks (very possibly one of these men) but I’m confident that we will continue to partner with the seminary for future pulpit supply.
This is a welcome development for the future of Christ’s Church.
Thanks Dan.
We all appreciate your encouragement!
Is the Quebec-Vermont border too far? (Don’t worry, we speak English).
Nope.
I’ll have to try and persuade my elders in Hertford to take you up on this for the summer…:)
I’ll make mention of it to the elders at Dutton URC. Feel free to stop by yourself, Scott.
We’re thrilled to have Chuck Tedrick exhort our very young church plant in Omaha this coming Sunday. Thanks WSC!
Just curious are there things like licensing and credentialing (i.e. by the Church-big “C”, ie. presbytery, etc.) required for students to be sent out in this program? Or at least in some type of under care system? Or is being a WSC student the only req?
Hi Scott,
Reformed and Presbyterian churches ordinarily allow only those who are licensed to exhort or ordained to preach. I believe that those of our students who are filling pulpits are licensed. The seminary does not license students to exhort We prepare them but it is up to consistories or presbyteries to license them.
Typically students in their second (middler) year will begin to be licensed by their churches (URCNA) or presbytery (OPC/PCA) or classis (RCUS).
Omaha Reformed Church, a church plant of Faith OPC (Lincoln) had the wonderful privilege of hearing Senior WSC student, Chuck Tedrick, minister to us from God’s Word yesterday thanks to this program.
My family and me, and now our church plant, has benefitted so richly from the ministry of WSC: through the faithful books that its professors and graduates have written and, yesterday, as we took advantage of this very generous Pulpit Supply program.
May God continue to bless WSC, its faculty, students and graduates!
Thanks Marcos!
Your encouragement means a great deal to us.
BTW, congratulations on your upcoming installation as Professor of Church History and Historical Theology. I would be there if I could.
Thanks Marcos.
Any takers for June & July 2011 in the Philippines? It will be a good short-term mission experience.