The GCS Mission Statement
After discussion with staff, faculty, and the board, our mission statement was revised in early 2023. This was not to change our mission, but to use new words to describe the mission. It now reads:
Our mission is to equip men and women for church-based ministry. We accomplish this through quality graduate-level distance education programs in biblical, theological, and pastoral studies grounded in biblical, Christ-centered, historically orthodox faith and worship.
The revisions can be helpful for our internal audience and our external audience. I want to draw attention to two areas:
- We equip people for ministry, not just pastoral ministry. We are serving ministry leaders in GCI churches, and we also hope to appeal to a broader audience of prospective non-GCI students. We are not designed to serve everyone’s individual ministry – our goal is to support church-based ministries in which believers are working together.
- For at least a decade, we described our approach as “informed by Incarnational, Trinitarian faith.” This phrase continues to accurately describe the basis for our courses, and we will continue to use this phrase in various places. However, a new description may be helpful for the following reasons:
- For people not familiar with GCI, such as prospective students, the phrase can be puzzling. Although it looks like the name of a formal, well-defined style of theology, it is not listed in any dictionary of theology. How are we different from other seminaries that teach the Incarnation and the Trinity? It is not immediately apparent, so it seems that the phrase doesn’t help them much.
- For some people within GCI, the phrase “Incarnational, Trinitarian theology” designated a set of doctrines that set us apart from other churches. However, all evangelical churches accept the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
The phrase “Incarnational, Trinitarian” was intended to position GCI within a broad theological stream, pointing to agreement with the Nicene Creed and the Christological formula of Chalcedon, and therefore to agreement with many other churches. It was not intended to set us apart from others (however, we do strive to be as consistent as possible in developing those doctrines).
We do not need to create a new distinctive label – we want to describe our agreements in such a way that it does not become a label of differentiation. We hope to achieve that with “biblical, Christ-centered, historically orthodox.” This uses ordinary words to fill out what we mean by Incarnational, Trinitarian theology. Our description is now too long to become a fixed label with an “insider” understanding.
Will we continue to have distinctive teachings? Of course – our statement of faith has several teachings that are not commonly found in evangelical statements, particularly regarding the Son of God and the judgment. These will continue to be reflected in our courses.
“Equip”
In the first sentence of our mission statement, the word “equip” alludes to Ephesians 4:12, which says that Christ puts leaders in his church “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (NET). We want to prepare or train people for ministry, that is, to be able to help build up the church.
Pastors and teachers are to equip people in their congregations; we hope to help equip them to do this. We do not just provide practical advice that might work for any volunteer organization, but we strive to ground ministry practices in good theology and worship.
Ministry training is not just “how to” advice based on smart sociological principles. Ministry needs to be grounded in good theology for two reasons: 1) so that we are helping people toward the right result, and 2) so that we are, through our participation, being transformed to be more like Christ as the Spirit works in us. Theology should lead us to worship, and to ministry.
Theology is not an intellectual game where we discuss how much we might know about the inner logic of the universe. Rather, God reveals these things to us for a greater purpose – the work he is doing in us. He is not just interested in the work he does through us, as if our primary value to him was work. The ministry we do is part of his greater purpose of re-creating who we are.
Paul tells us that the purpose of ministry is to “build up the body of Christ” (v. 12). We are to keep doing this until Christ returns – “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God—a mature person, attaining to the measure of Christ’s full stature” (v. 13). Our ministry should promote unity under the Lordship of Christ and his Word, and knowledge should help us become more like Christ. It’s important that we know what he is like!
Paul gives another result of our ministry in verse 14: “So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching.” We want to be doctrinally stable, well-grounded. It’s important that we be teaching the right things, not leaning to our own understanding.
What should we do? “Practicing the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ, who is the head” (v. 15). We become more like Christ not just by learning facts, but by putting them into practice in our lives, living in the love of Christ.
Paul briefly develops the analogy of “body” to make another point: “From [Christ] the whole body grows, fitted and held together through every supporting ligament. As each one does its part, the body builds itself up in love” (v. 16). The body is built up as each person in the church does whatever the Spirit has gifted them to do. We in GCS want to do the best we can where God has placed us, and that is to help each of you be the best you can be in what he is doing in us and through us.
Michael Morrison, GCS News, Summer 2023