West Port Experiment

Interested in auditing or participating in a Reformed ethics course, from a historic, Scottish Presbyterian perspective?

A few years back, our small denomination decided to start up an in-house ministerial training program, especially for practical reasons such as preventing more debt for our students and enabling them to remain at home, keep their secular employment, and preserve ties with our congregations.

A committee of presbytery is presently exploring whether we might make our seminary course offerings available at an undergraduate level—with corresponding adaptations of academic requirement—for the personal enrichment of folks in our own denomination, the training and continuing education of our church officers, and then more broadly in the communities where we serve and beyond. (And personally, I would also like to explore making such courses available in Spanish, with sufficient assistance.)

As an experiment, I am looking to secure some to participate in my next seminary course on Christian Ethics by Zoom, once per week for five months. Participants would need to commit to regular class ‘attendance’ and to reading approximately 30-40 pages per week (without further course commitments required for M.Div. students and without cost). This trial could help enable us to discern how well such a seminary course could be delivered simultaneously to graduate and undergraduate levels (with varying extra-classroom requirements), or whether the course might simply be offered in the future at each level separately. See the attached draft syllabus for specifics.

Please contact me if you are interested and have questions: mjives.refparish@gmail.com, 515-783-5637. I would like to fill at least two to three more participant slots for this trial. Further, if you would be interested in simply observing class sessions and/or receiving the video recordings from each class after they are complete, please let me know. Last, if you are not a member of the Presbyterian Reformed Church but would be interested in our efforts and possible future offerings, feel free to share your information for possible future offerings.