This ethos statement exists in order to promote spiritual growth and to foster a safe, wholesome, loving Christian environment, on campus and online, for the benefit of all members in the seminary community.
Thus, the members of this community are expected to evidence commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord by walking in the Spirit so that they can grow in the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:16, 22-24) as evidenced by a life of honesty, purity, respect, and concern for the welfare of others. Members of the seminary community are also expected to abstain from alcohol and any intoxicating substances, as well as unruly behavior, gossip, evil-speaking, gluttony, illegal or harmful substances, occult practices, pornography, commercialized sexual entertainment, and all sexual practices outside of the marriage relationship between a man and a woman. Personal attire, appearance, and conversation should exemplify godliness in the Christian community and the world.
The seminary faculty is committed to consensual Christianity, as expressed in the ecumenical creeds, and to the evangelical and Wesleyan emphases of our statement of faith. Students from various traditions that affirm Christianity’s creedal essentials will find a warm welcome and a place of academic freedom that encourages respectful, critical enquiry into both the issues that divide Christians and Christianity’s interaction with the non-Christian world. The diverse nature of the seminary community provides a wholesome environment for theological inquiry, spiritual formation, and preparation for ministry in the present world.
The members of the Wesley Biblical Seminary faculty have freely committed themselves to its statement of faith and its ethos in their pursuit of truth. We are orthodox, Trinitarian, Evangelical, and Wesleyan. The seminary community nurtures an openness of theological inquiry that Trinitarian believers from various Christian traditions find wholesome and inviting. Faculty encourage students to irenically explore and understand these other traditions as well as our own. A spirit of academic freedom pervades the Wesley community that is committed, confessional, but not coercive.