Redeemer's church planting organization to open NYC seminary in 2015

NEW YORK–Redeemer City to City, the church-planting offshoot of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, announced it will open a seminary in New York in partnership with Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS), which already has campuses in seven U.S. cities. The seminary will focus not just on training New York pastors, but pastors in cities around the globe.

Dubbed Redeemer City Ministry, the seminary will accept applications starting this fall, and open next fall. Classes will meet at Redeemer’s relatively new building for its Upper West Side congregation, on 83rd Street. A reformed seminary in the city is significant as demographics are shifting to urban areas and as mainline Protestant seminaries here have in many cases grown more and more theologically liberal.

Planting a seminary is a natural move for City to City, which has planted more than 300 churches in the United States and abroad since the organization started in 2001. City to City has planted 75 churches in New York City alone, showing the wide reach Redeemer has had here. RTS also has an online program, which will allow international City to City planters to receive training abroad. Still, the seminary will encourage international students to come to New York to study. City to City’s international church planters already come to New York for training from the organization.

The program will offer a two-year Masters of Arts degree in biblical studies, and then a year of City to City training. The final year will be focused on practical ministry training, covering four areas: preaching, mission, pastoring, and leadership. Tim Keller, Redeemer’s pastor since its founding in 1989, will teach classes in the final year of training.

Redeemer, which just this past weekend celebrated its 25th anniversary, is part of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), but RTS is nondenominational. Many Redeemer plants in New York are not part of the PCA. City to City said it partnered with RTS because of its commitment to reformed theology.

“The Bible calls us to take the gospel to the nations, but the nations of the world are pouring into the cities on a history-changing scale,” Keller said in a statement. “This massive migration is both a significant opportunity and challenge. Even in parts of the world where Christianity is growing rapidly, the national churches have difficulty reaching their own greatest urban areas. We are thankful for this new partnership with RTS, through which we hope to prepare leaders for ministry in New York and the other great global cities of the world.”