Last night, RTS Charlotte hosted a special event that formally launched our new Center for Church Planting (CCP).
The new center will include a MDiv emphasis in church planting along with a host of other types of specialized training for church planters. The church planting students will benefit from church planting conferences and lectures, mentoring from experienced church planters, internship opportunities in local church plants, and a church planters fellowship were students can grow and learn in a tight-knit community.
To my knowledge, this is the only program of its kind at a Reformed seminary in the United States.
In many ways, this new center is driven by what God is already doing in the city of Charlotte and among our alumni. The city has had a boom of new church plants over the last decade, many of which are being led by our own grads. Thus, the new center is really a response to the fact that Charlotte is naturally becoming a church planting hub.
The keynote speaker of our event last night was Andy Lewis, Senior Pastor of Mitchell Road PCA in Greenville, SC (see inset picture).
The original announcement about the CCP was made back in February of this year. And since then God has blessed this new initiative in a number of amazing ways. We have received an outpouring of interest and enthusiasm from pastors around the country, as well as from our students and alumni.
In addition, we have received new funding that will translate into additional scholarship help for future church planters. For more about scholarships for future church planters, see here.
If you want to learn more about the program, check out our website here.