 John Calvin (1509-1564) |
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Greetings!
1. Ministers need help.
2. We help ministers.
The Foundation for Reformed Theology helps renew and reinvigorate ministers through an expense paid, week long, guided study of the historic faith and teachings of the church. Ministers grow in their faith, knowledge, understanding, and ministry. They also grow in their friendships and in their mutual aid and support of each other's ministries. Congregations can tell the difference.
The Foundation focuses on helping strengthen ministers in better preaching, better teaching, and better pastoral care. These, of course, are the primary human means by which the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, the Scriptures and the Christian faith are taught, and the people of God are gathered for worship and service.
That is to say, the Foundation understands that the ministry and the faith and life of the church can best be upheld, sustained, and reformed through the church's own historic faith and practices of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, which have a proven record of building up the church. Thus we work to strengthen pastors in their ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ as attested to in the Scriptures, as summarized in the creeds and confessions of the church, and as articulated in the classic texts of Reformed theology, all to the glory of God and the building up of the church.
This leads to the question of what Reformed theology is. The leaders of the first generation of the Protestant Reformation, including Martin Luther (1483-1546), were committed to the authority of the Scriptures as the word of God. Through that, they rediscovered the gospel of Jesus Christ as salvation by grace through faith.
The leaders of the second generation of the Protestant Reformation, including John Calvin (1509-1564), sought to be even more thoroughly Reformed according to the word of God. This led to their additional emphases on the sovereignty of God and on the Christian life of worship and obedience. The Foundation affirms the faithfulness, wisdom, depth, and vigor of these Reformers and of those theologians of later generations who built upon their articulation of the Christian faith. Their theology has had a profound impact upon the church and human history, for they described with authenticity both the human condition and the reality of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Thus the Foundation is committed to receiving, studying, learning, and appropriating the faith and teachings of those who have gone before us in order best to apply that historical and ongoing theology to reforming the faith and life of the church today. Moreover, we affirm that a lifetime of diligent study and understanding of Reformed theology will help build up the Reformed and Presbyterian congregations of the church in particular and therefore the entire church of Jesus Christ in general.
The Foundation's main program for strengthening pastors in their ministry is a series of week long, annual, study seminars covering more than thirty topics, from the Bible, the living God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, election, providence, and revelation to the creeds, preaching, prayer, worship, Christian life, and the hope for eternal life. We provide leadership, bibliographies, room, board, and travel for these seminars.
The Foundation continually seeks to recruit more pastors into this program and to form new seminars. Many ministers report that these occasions for study, retreat, collegiality, and friendship with five or six of their fellow pastors are the most rewarding events for reforming ministry in which they participate.
The Foundation also sponsors graduate scholarships, lectureships, research fellowships, translations, publications, and the purchase of rare Reformed books to help ministers and so to help the church.
3. Will you help us? |
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 Grace and Peace, |
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The Foundation is exempt from Federal income tax under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3)
and is not a private foundation as defined by Section 509(a) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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