Deepening Our Longstanding Partnership

When I attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) in the early 1980s, I witnessed something that has stayed with me even today. 

Around my second year at TEDS, the EFCA was wrestling through a question: could a pastor be credentialed in the EFCA if he didn’t hold to a pretribulation view of the rapture?

In their search for unity and insight, the EFCA Ministerial Association asked three TEDS professors—Paul Feinberg, Gleason Archer and Douglas Moo—to each write a paper defending one of the three main interpretations of the rapture. After they finished, each presented his view on the TEDS campus at the Ministerial Association’s 1981 Mid-Winter Institute (the precursor to the EFCA Theology Conference). 

Sitting in the Arnold T. Olson Chapel as a young seminarian, I watched with genuine amazement as these brilliant, godly men engaged in a lively dialogue on a significant theological topic that mattered to the Free Church—as friends.

As Dr. Moo put it in his presentation on post-tribulationalism, “I cannot, indeed must not, allow this conviction to represent any kind of barrier to full relationships with brothers who hold different convictions.”

Although the professors genuinely disagreed, they did so respectfully. Despite their differences in beliefs, they all anchored themselves in the Word of God, their love for each other and their love for the church.

“This is incredible,” I remember thinking. “I want to be a part of something like this.”

So much of my life as a young pastor—and eventual leadership in the EFCA—was built on what I learned and experienced at TEDS. And all of it—the unwavering commitment to Scripture and deep love for the church, majoring on the majors and minoring on the minors—reflected the DNA of the EFCA. It’s who the Free Church has been since the beginning.

Earlier this year, when the Trinity International University (TIU) Board of Regents approached me about becoming TIU's next president, I thought back to my years at TEDS. I thought back to that robust discussion between those professors, to the gospel-centric focus surrounded by a spirit of deep love and unity. 

And I thought, “If we lose that, we lose something that can really help the EFCA to be who God called us to be as a movement of churches.” If Trinity and the EFCA lose that longstanding partnership—based on the historic values we share—we both lose an opportunity to grow in our shared mission to effectively train pastors, missionaries and leaders for the church. 

EFCA family—pastors and church leaders, national and district staff, missionaries, lay leaders and members—this is what EFCA churches need today. This is what Trinity needs today. I love Trinity, I love the Free Church, and we're better when we’re together. 

Returning to our roots 

The Free Church started for three primary reasons: 1) to send missionaries, 2) to plant churches, and 3) to train and affirm pastors. Trinity finds its roots in that third goal.

In 1897, in the basement of a Swedish Evangelical Free Church in Chicago, that congregation started a 10-week Bible course. They wanted their church leaders to be trained in the ethos of the EFCA: tethered to the Text, grounded in the gospel, majoring on the majors as they followed Jesus’ Great Commission to the ends of the earth.

In the early 1960s, after several decades and iterations of the school, Trinity Dean Kenneth Kantzer cast a new vision for the seminary that combined robust biblical orthodoxy with evangelistic zeal and cultural engagement. The “Kantzer vision” centered on academic excellence and pastoral proficiency. Understanding God’s Word and living it out. Deep theological study and practical application in the local church.

More than half a century later and following several years of declining enrollment, now is the time to reaffirm TEDS' longstanding relationship with the EFCA. How can TEDS better reflect the heart and ethos of the EFCA, and more effectively serve local Free Churches? And beyond that, how can we, in the words of Ken Kantzer, be “a love gift from the EFCA to the entire church of Jesus Christ”?

It starts with a healthy partnership between TEDS and the EFCA. 

Honoring the ethos of the EFCA 

Following my leadership transition and subsequent emphasis on TEDS returning to its roots, one of the TIU Board members—and longtime Free Church member—asked me: “Kevin, what’s your elevator speech? If you had one paragraph to describe what it means that TEDS is returning to its roots, what would you say?”

In other words, what does all of this actually mean?

For TEDS, while we still train students from a variety of evangelical streams, it starts with joyfully honoring the distinctives and ethos of the EFCA.

The EFCA has always been people of the Book. This movement was built on our shared Statement of Faith, our unwavering commitment to the inerrant Word of God as the foundation for life and ministry, and our stewardship of the life-changing gospel that challenges the mind, engages the heart and encourages action. That theological core, which Trinity fully embraces, is essential, but it’s not the whole picture. 

As Bill Kynes wrote about in The Gospel Coalition, “the central EFCA distinctive is that it ‘majors on the majors.’” Yes, we anchor ourselves in the truth of Scripture, but we also do that in a way that reflects the heart of Jesus. The EFCA is about pursuing truth with a sense of winsome graciousness to say, “We’re in this together, and we keep our eyes on Jesus and His mission while grounding everything we do in the inerrant Word.” That’s what I witnessed back in the early ‘80s with those three professors. That’s what enables Trinity to educate those from a variety of evangelical backgrounds, and it’s what has inspired so much of my ministry vision, even today. 

The EFCA and Trinity exist at an important juncture in our world today. In a moment so polarized and tribalized—where, in anger and fear, we dismiss people by putting them in boxes—our culture needs a counter-cultural picture of unity. EFCA churches need to provide a refuge in the chaos. Our church leaders need training in the distinctives and ethos of the EFCA, because this is who we are. 

Training the next generation of EFCA leaders 

When I think about the people who I know influenced my life, three people come to my mind. I think of my dad. I think of one my uncles, Art Ramsland, who was also a Free Church pastor. And I think of Wes Johnson, my pastor growing up who eventually became superintendent of the EFCA Great Lakes District.

As a young pastor, when I thought about who I wanted to become, these three men were right there—and all of them studied at Trinity (my dad studied at the college, not the seminary). Trinity shaped who they became, and in turn, it shaped me as well.

Directly and indirectly, TEDS taught me to think biblically and theologically. Professors like Don Carson, John Woodbridge and Walter Kaiser (among many others) taught me the ethos of the EFCA: we agree on gospel essentials, and we charitably disagree about non-essentials. We can still love each other and not divide.

Since I stepped into this new role, I’ve had several people tell me that this transition feels like the next logical step toward “one EFCA,” the vision I cast back in 2015 to see local, regional, national and international ministries working together toward common ministry objectives with shared values and trusting relationships. I have to say, I agree.

Part of my role as EFCA President was to guard the theological and biblical integrity of the movement, and I believe a healthy, vibrant TEDS helps the EFCA do that. After all, TEDS is the only seminary to share the EFCA Statement of Faith. As TEDS helps to raise up the next generation of church leaders—and come alongside existing leaders—EFCA churches will be better equipped to effectively address the issues of our day while still maintaining a counter-cultural unity.

If we do this well, the EFCA and TEDS can deepen a longstanding partnership of biblical-theological study and practical application in the context of the local church. 

Because, at the end of the day, TEDS is about the church. 

By the church, for the church 

To once again quote my friend Bill Kynes, Trinity was started by the church, for the church. At the core of the school’s foundation are questions like, “How do we support the church?” and “How do we resource the church?”

We’re not just writing papers. We’re equipping real leaders for real ministry. It’s head, heart and hands. Yes, we’re molding minds with great theological content. Yes, we’re shaping hearts in the life-changing power of the gospel. And we’re also equipping hands to do the work of ministry.

I think about North Suburban Church (EFCA), just down the road from campus, where senior pastor Tim Higgins (MDiv ‘16) credits Trinity for jarring him “out of the realm of the theoretical and…into the realm of devotion.”

I think about First Free Wichita (EFCA), where pastor Josh Black (MDiv ‘11) partners with TEDS to lead a residency program focused on multiethnic ministry, and Jane Schaible (MA Theological Studies, ‘22) leads women to practice faithful hermeneutics in their local congregations as the director of women’s leadership and discipleship for the EFCA Midwest District.

I think about The Compass Church (EFCA) in Naperville, Illinois, who recently partnered with Trinity to launch a certificate program to train church staff and leaders. I think about Brian Farone (MDiv ’07)—member of the Trinity Board of Directors and superintendent of the EFCA North Central District (NCD)—who, along with TEDS professor Dr. Scott Manetsch, led a group of NCD pastors through the Alps to learn about church history and wrestle through their own pastoral practices.

I’m not a scholar, by any means. The closest I’ve come to an academic is the honorary doctorate Trinity so graciously gave to me. But I do have the heart of a pastor who loves the church. I love the EFCA, and I believe TEDS is here for the church. And if what we’re doing isn’t serving the church, we need to rethink what we’re doing.

TEDS and the Free Church are better together. Together, we can effectively serve the church by training men and women to engage in God’s redemptive work in the world. And we do this by returning to the roots of who we are, all for the glory of God and the advancement of His gospel.