As part of a major study on Protestant spiritual formation, Bruce and Carolyn Hindmarsh have co-authored an article for the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care with a special focus on the story and impact of Regent College.
“We didn’t need professional training for ministry,” they write, reflecting on their arrival at Regent College in 1987 after a busy season of church involvement. “We needed a deep well to drink from.”
In this article, Bruce and Carolyn describe Regent’s unwavering emphasis on spirituality since the College’s inception, mapping its influence on the past 50 years of Protestant theology. Encountering faculty like J.I. Packer, James Houston, and Eugene Peterson, Bruce and Carolyn recall how their eyes were opened to the way scholarship and prayer can be fused together within a seminary context, shaping an approach that is “personal without becoming sentimental, and intellectually robust without becoming merely academic.” Inviting readers into key moments of Regent’s story—such as its emergence as the first evangelical Protestant institution to include spiritual theology as a concentration—Bruce and Carolyn demonstrate the College’s profound role in the development of spiritual theology across Protestant theological colleges.
The article takes a closer look at Regent College’s core convictions, including its commitment to equip the whole people of God, learn from Christian history, stand under the authority of Scripture, and embody personal relationality. Holding unapologetically to values that provide a foundation for spiritual life, Bruce and Carolyn relate how Regent’s leadership opened doors for spiritual formation to take root far beyond the green roof.
This article is published in a supplemental issue of the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care. Funded by the Global Spiritual Formation Project and the Martin Institute, the issue explores the Protestant Spiritual Formation Movement, attending to the past in order to discern the movement of the Spirit in the present. Contributors to the issue also include Regent Summer Faculty members Steve L. Porter (Senior Research Fellow at Westmont College and Executive Director of the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture) and David C. Wang (Cliff and Joyce Penner Chair for the Formation of Emotionally Healthy Leaders at Fuller Theological Seminary).