US Pastors College - Class of 2023
An update from Jeff Purswell, Director of Theology and Training for Sovereign Grace Churches and Dean of the US Pastors College...
It never gets old. Although we’re busily preparing for our incoming class at the Pastors College, we’re still reflecting upon and savoring all the ways that the Lord met us and answered our prayers for the recently graduated class of 2023.
In June we had the honor of celebrating the graduation of ten students, marking the completion of a rigorous course of study and the culmination of ten months of intense discipleship, growth, and training.
The men attended 35 weeks of classes, totaling over 800 hours of lectures and an additional 1000+ hours of outside work, reading, papers, and exams (one of the students tabulated the reading at 11,307 pages). On top of this were dozens of men’s and ladies’ groups, couples’ groups, individual and couples’ meetings with various PC staff, all designed to provide fellowship, care, and counsel, and all aimed at helping them “watch their lives” (1 Tim 4:16), their marriages, and their families. These men worked tirelessly, devoting themselves to the study of God’s Word and the pursuit of godliness, all the while serving their wives (the real heroes) and children at home. And all for the cause of the gospel and the glory of Jesus Christ in their lives, their homes, and, Lord willing, the ministries they will pursue in the future. I couldn’t be prouder of them.
We entered last year with high expectations and fervent prayers, and it was a privilege to witness the particular ways in which the Lord refreshed, strengthened, provided, and worked through these men and their families. He supplied remarkable faith to all the PC wives, especially to the three who arrived with babies on the way as they embraced the challenge of delivering a child in an unfamiliar city and caring for their newborns in the midst of a demanding family schedule. He sustained another PC wife who had to undergo emergency appendicitis in the middle of the year, as the rest of the class rallied around this family to care for them. He gave astounding stamina to another student who shouldered the heavy workload of the PC while completing his PhD (a feat we would not typically recommend). The Lord opened doors for the gospel through another student and his wife as they reached out to their neighbors through game nights and a weekly Bible study in their apartment complex. He refreshed all of us and broadened our vision for the gospel’s global reach through Rocco Dalia, who hails from Italy, and his wife Mady (from Romania), as they came to us from the UK and prepared to return to Italy for an SGC church along with Ed and Robin O’Mara. Sovereign Grace Church of Louisville was also refreshed through Rocco, who represented his class in preaching to the PC’s host church.
It’s impossible to recount all the ways the Lord matured these men, strengthened these marriages, forged life-long friendships, inflamed a hunger for God and his Word, instilled gospel values, and infused them and their families with Christ-exalting joy, even as they encountered disappointing set-backs, redirections, and unexpected trials. These are gospel men, and men who love the local church because they love our Savior. Our lives are richer because of them, and our hearts were full as we sent them out. And by God’s grace, Sovereign Grace will be stronger and more fruitful as they take their place in local churches to serve the cause of the gospel and care for those for whom Christ shed his precious blood.
It is these answers to prayer that kindle in us fresh gratefulness to the Lord and faith in his goodness as we look ahead. Please join us in praying for the class of 2023 as they labor in the corners of the harvest to which the Lord has called them. And please pray for the incoming class of 2024—that the Lord would again fulfill our renewed requests for his name to be magnified in every heart, mind, and life associated with the Pastors College.
