Mission, Values & Theological Position

Regent College cultivates intelligent, vigorous, and joyful commitment to Jesus Christ, His church, and His world.

Global Mission

The heartbeat of the Regent community is captured in our Global Mission statement:

Regent College cultivates intelligent, vigorous, and joyful commitment to Jesus Christ, His church, and His world.

In addition to our Global Mission, Regent College articulates its priorities and aspirations in terms of an Educational Mission, a description of our Ethos, and a list of five key Values.

Educational Mission

Our hope for students is that through their time at Regent College their lives will become more fully integrated in Christ, so that their minds are filled with the truth of Christ, their imaginations captivated by the glory of Christ, and their characters formed according to the virtues of Christ.

We understand our educational mission to be what the New Testament calls paradosis (transmission), the handing on of living faith from one generation to another. In service of the Church we engage in graduate education through a kind of higher catechism or paideia (formation) that enables Christians to live more thoughtfully in varied vocations in the church and the world. By our formal classroom interaction, and by the culture we foster more generally at Regent College, we aim to help students to see all of life—and all aspects of our own lives—as spheres of God’s creative and redemptive work. As students leave Regent College, they should be prepared to pass this vision on to another generation.

Regent College does not aim principally to prepare students for thoughtful and virtuous citizenship, or to prepare them with the necessary skills to succeed in the workplace. These aims of higher education have their place at Regent only within the larger educational aim of preparing students to engage with their culture as thoughtful and prayerful Christians, sharing in Christ’s creative and redemptive mission to the world.

Since our ideals are as high as those of the apostle Paul who aimed to “present everyone perfect in Christ,” we will never be able either to see our educational mission fully achieved, nor will we ever be able to take much credit for the lives of our graduates when they demonstrate the sorts of qualities we desire for them. Yet we will rejoice with our graduates:

  • when we see that they are passionately devoted to Christ, seeking after holiness, their lives shaped at the deepest level by prayer and Scripture, sharing in the suffering of Christ in order to bring life to others.
  • when we see that their domestic and intimate lives are rich with family and friendship, celebration, service, and a joyful stewardship of the gifts of creation.
  • when we see them participating fully in the life of the church, leading in ministries of evangelism, discipleship, teaching, worship, and healing, and exercising their gifts to further the work of the kingdom in all its forms.
  • when we see that they are able to discern their work in the world as God’s work and to grasp how their Christian faith calls them to live creatively, thoughtfully and redemptively as artists, teachers, politicians and public servants; doctors, lawyers and business executives; engineers, carpenters and social workers; pastors, missionaries, and youth workers; and in every other worthy vocation, paid and unpaid.

Ethos

Regent College, as a Christian academic community, takes relationships seriously, seeking to understand and live them in light of our biblical and theological commitments. We want to embrace the vast implications of being the “new humanity in Christ,” including how we treat gender, ethnic, racial, denominational and theological differences (cf. Galatians 3:28). Regent College welcomes students as varied as the whole people of God and seeks to create an environment in which all students feel safe to engage in courteous and respectful conversation in the pursuit of truth, as we seek to be formed and reformed by the Scriptures. The College welcomes and actively pursues qualified faculty reflective of this commitment.

Our concern to provide a safe and respectful environment and to foster healthy relationships is reflected in Regent's Privacy Policy and our Bullying and Harassment, and Discrimination Prevention Policy.

Values

1. A Graduate School of Christian Studies 

Regent College is graduate school of Christian studies grounded in the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. As a community of Christian scholars, we believe that rigorous academic study is an expression of our love for God and that it is vital to the health and mission of the church. We invite students into our community in the hope that our curriculum will establish them in the evangelical tradition, that it will deepen their faith and theological understanding, that it will introduce them to the discipline of Christian scholarship, and that it will prepare them for ministry both within and outside the institutional church. As a community we aim not simply to be informed by study but also to be transformed by the Holy Spirit through study, to the end that we might become more Christ-like and therefore more fully human. By being conformed to Christ—both to his life and to his suffering—we come to know and love our creator, the Triune God. Loving God, we desire also to love our neighbour and to learn to take our responsibilities in creation seriously. We are committed to a Christian vision of the human person, and this is reflected both in our curriculum and in our life together as students, faculty, staff, and governors. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, we believe, applies to every aspect and to every arena of life. 

2. What We Believe: Historical Evangelicalism 

As an evangelical institution, we confess a statement of faith modeled on that of the World Evangelical Fellowship, and we seek to stand robustly in the evangelical tradition. To this end we affirm the unique authority and trustworthiness of the Holy Scriptures, the supremacy of Christ, the necessity of personal repentance and faith, and the importance of bearing witness to Christ in word and deed. At the same time, we recognize the importance of holding and defending evangelical convictions graciously and reasonably. We are indebted to many of the insights of non-Christian scholarship. And we are profoundly grateful for how much we have been, and continue to be, blessed by the entire Christian tradition-Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant, worldwide. We endeavour also to model love for the church. We emphasize the importance for the Christian life of participation in the local church, while continually framing local participation within the context of the church universal. 

3. Whom We Serve: The Church, the Marketplace, and the Academy 

Regent College was founded for the purpose of providing graduate level theological education to lay believers. Through our core curriculum, we continue to strive to provide a fully integrated theological education to students from all backgrounds, including those arriving from careers in the church, the marketplace and the academy. The College’s original vision has subsequently expanded to include educating and training pastors and other leaders in mission organizations and parachurch ministries. We also aim to prepare students for research and study at the doctoral level. In all our educational programs we seek first to reflect Christianly on the whole of human life and only secondarily do we focus on professional training. 

4. What We Look Like: People and Space 

Our faculty places high value on collegiality, and we have resisted growing so large that we must divide into departments. We believe that students and staff, as well as faculty, benefit from our intentionally small size. The College is also intentionally diverse. We value the energy and insight that come from bringing together women and men of different denominational traditions, from different ethnic and national backgrounds, and with very different vocational goals in view. We view the tensions such diversity creates as healthy and positive, for they provide us with the opportunity to learn courtesy and to experience something of the breadth and depth of God’s kingdom. Our diversity also encourages us to celebrate our oneness in Christ and to seek to manifest an allegiance to Christ that transcends our membership in and loyalty to human communities. The particular place and space that the College occupies is not incidental to the College’s mission. Our relatively small, light-filled facility fosters personal interaction and face-to-face learning. And our location on the campus of a major university encourages us to work and think in the larger context of contemporary society and culture. 

5. Prayer 

Regent College’s core vision is not so much something that we have determined ourselves as it is the gift of God, entrusted to us for the sake of the church and the world. By God’s grace the College has made a significant difference in the lives of a great many women and men around the world. We are amazed by this and deeply grateful for it. And we look forward to serving all those who come to us, knowing that everything we undertake depends entirely upon God’s gracious provision. "May the favour of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands" (Psalm 90:17).

Theological Position

The Theological Position of Regent College consists of a Doctrinal Statement and a Moral Vision.

Doctrinal Statement

The Educational Mission of Regent College speaks of “the handing on of living faith from one generation to another.” We believe that the content of this faith is set forth in the revelation of God given in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We confess the faith therein set forth and summarized in such historic statements of the Christian church as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. We here explicitly assert doctrines that we regard as crucial to the understanding and proclamation of the gospel and to practical Christian living:

We believe in:

  1. The sovereignty and grace of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in creation, providence, revelation, redemption, and final judgement.
  2. The divine inspiration of Holy Scripture and its consequent entire trustworthiness and supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct.
  3. The universal sinfulness and guilt of human nature since the fall, bringing everyone under God's wrath and condemnation.
  4. The substitutionary sacrifice of the incarnate Son of God as the sole ground of redemption from the guilt, penalty, and power of sin.
  5. The justification of the sinner by the grace of God through faith alone in Christ crucified and risen from the dead.
  6. The illuminating, regenerating, indwelling, and sanctifying work of God the Holy Spirit in the believer.
  7. The unity and common priesthood of all true believers, who together form the one universal Church, the Body of which Christ is the Head.
  8. The expectation of the personal, visible return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Moral Vision

Regent's Global Mission statement speaks of “commitment to Jesus Christ,” which means that we embrace not only the truth of the Gospel, but also the way of life that Christ invites his disciples to inhabit. Thus, Regent’s Educational Mission statement expresses the hope that our students will not only have “their minds filled with the truth of Christ” and “their imaginations captivated by the glory of Christ,” but will also have “their characters formed according to the virtues of Christ.” We therefore commit to the moral vision set forth in the revelation of God given in the Old and New Testaments, as a good and beautiful gift of God to his people and to the world. We believe this is a vision that leads to human flourishing for individuals and communities.

Our Values statement makes clear that we desire to be a Christian graduate school where learners can be “transformed by the Holy Spirit through study, to the end that we might become more Christ-like and therefore more fully human.” We welcome our students with hope that our curriculum and community life will open the way to an ever-deepening life in Christ and his Church, rooted in foundational belief and theological understanding, and expressed through integrated Christian practices.

We aspire together to pursue an educational process centred on the Christian calling to love God and to love our neighbour. Therefore, we affirm that we need to take all our neighbour relationships seriously, seeking to understand and live those relationships in light of our biblical and theological commitments. We strive to be formed by the vast implications of being the “new humanity in Christ,” loving our neighbours as ourselves and extending hospitality and respect to all. This hospitality and respect extends across differences, including denominational and theological commitments and perspectives.

Regent College welcomes students as varied as the whole people of God and from beyond the community of Christian faith. Because of this, Regent students are not required to subscribe to the College’s theological and moral commitments, which form the basis for our teaching. However, we hope they will be aware of and respectful of those commitments as foundational to our educational mission.

As a graduate school committed to the pursuit of truth, we invite those in our community to wrestle with complex and sometimes controversial topics as we engage with matters about which people disagree. We seek to nurture an environment in which all are encouraged to participate in careful, courteous, and respectful conversation. We want Regent College to be a place where students can develop biblical and theological convictions in a community of honest exploration and dialogue.

We also desire to be a place of spiritual formation and pastoral concern. We invite all to be formed and transformed by the truth taught in the Scriptures, learning what it means to live under the lordship of Christ. We understand that everyone is in a process of transformation and stands in need of God’s grace. Students have a variety of needs and concerns, and we want to care for those in our community with the love of Christ and the sensitivity of the Spirit, even as we all seek to grow up into Christ.

Our moral vision includes the following essential elements:

  1. Followers of Christ are called to a life of increasing maturity in holiness and depth of character. As sinful people we all need the grace of God and the work of the Spirit of God as we live into Christian virtues, resisting patterns of sin that hurt ourselves and others, and growing into the freedom of Christ (Romans 3:23–24; 6:19, 22; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Galatians 5:1; Colossians 3:12; 1 Thessalonians 3:13; 1 Peter 1:14–16).
  2. Given the unique status of human beings made as God’s image, we are committed to the dignity, value, and sacredness of human life from conception to death. Accordingly, we reject all forms of prejudice that objectify, diminish, or devalue human beings, either individually or collectively (Genesis 1:27–28; Genesis 9:6; Psalm 139:13–16; James 2:1).
  3. As we learn to love one another, paying attention to the needs of all, we foster a faithful witness to the gospel in the world (Hebrews 12:14; 1 Peter 2:5, 11–12). Thus, we seek to orient ourselves towards our neighbours and the world at large in ways characterized by humility, joy, mercifulness, peaceableness, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, and courage (Matthew 5:1–12; Galatians 5:22–23; Philippians 2:1–5; James 3:17).
  4. We uphold the church’s historic understanding of the biblical view of marriage and singleness. Marriage is a covenant commitment between a man and a woman, intended by God to last a lifetime and to serve as the rightful context for the expression of sexual intimacy. Both singleness and married life are spheres of discipleship in which we are called to sexual holiness in obedience to Christ (Genesis 2:20–24; Malachi 2:13–16; Matthew 19:1–12; Romans 7:2; 1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Hebrews 13:4).
  5. Our choices and actions are informed by a concern for justice and are designed to promote such justice on behalf of those who are deprived of it, including people experiencing poverty, marginalization, displacement, racial and ethnic prejudice, or misogyny (Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 16:19; 24:17; Amos 5:24).
  6. We seek to respond obediently to the biblical mandate for all humanity to live responsibly and creatively within God’s good creation (Genesis 2:15; Psalm 8; 1 Corinthians 8:6; Revelation 4:11).

We believe it is our calling, and as we mature in Christlikeness it is increasingly our delight, to seek to love God, our neighbours, and God’s creation in ways that attend to “the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27).

Note: All Regent faculty (both full-time and sessional), senior administrators, and members of the Board of Governors subscribe to the College's Theological Position in writing on an annual basis.