Mission
The seminary’s primary mission is to form men and women for lay or ordained leadership and service in the ministry of the church. Out of its evangelical heritage and its missionary tradition, it emphasizes the life of prayer, worship and community, the ministries of preaching, teaching, pastoral care and social justice. It seeks to prepare its students as servants of Jesus Christ to equip the people of God for their vocation and ministry in the world. It also provides continuing theological education for clergy and laity of all denominations.
The seminary believes that theological education leading to ordination normally requires full-time study and full participation in its common life and worship. It also believes that theological education is greatly enhanced when it is done within an ecumenical, international and cross-cultural context.
Read more about this topic: Virginia Theological Seminary
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
“I cannot be a materialist—but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery—such suffering, such dreadful suffering—and shall the short years of Christ’s mission atone for it all?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.”
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907–1961)