Online Students Visit Seminary

Calvin Theological Seminary welcomed its first group of distance-learning students to this year’s Gateway, the seminary’s orientation course for new students.

With a compressed five-day schedule that ran into most evenings, the 14 students got a foretaste of many on-campus intensives to come.

From lectures on hermeneutics and homiletics to lunch in the student center and
dinner at the parsonage, students enrolled
in the first semester of the new, M.Div program
were also treated to a taste of residential life at CTS.

Throughout the busy week, members of the first-year cohort also had an opportunity get to know each other.

Coming from diverse walks of life, they expressed a common gratitude for the journey on which they are about to embark.

Here are some of their remarks:

•     “Walking through the hallways of the seminary and seeing the pictures and sensing the history, I felt grateful to be here.”
•     “I had all kinds of ideas and expectations coming to Grand Rapids. But my experience here has exceeded all my expectations.”
•     “I’m grateful that I can continue serving my home church and still get an excellent seminary education.”

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Students in the program will complete much of their work online, traveling to the CTS campus in Grand Rapids twice a year for one-week intensives such as the Gateway program.

Formation for ministry will continue to be a strong emphasis as students experience the program in learning cohorts, engage in a wide range of internship opportunities, and receive support through mentoring groups.

Using innovative tools like Canvas, a cutting-edge Learning Management System (LMS), CTS is able to offer courses in an online environment.

With the new distance M.Div., those called to ministry can receive sound Reformed theological training while staying rooted in their current home and ministry contexts.

For more information on the distance-learning program, Click here.