Watch President Dr. Rick Reed’s Christmas update from Heritage College & Seminary and learn about how God continues to use Heritage to raise up a generation of gospel-hearted men and women with a passion to bring the good news of Jesus to neighbourhoods and to nations.

Also, our annual Christmas newsletter will be arriving in mailboxes soon. Inside, you will read stories from current students reflecting on the fall semester, a recent alumna on how Heritage has prepared her for her new role, and more.

This Christmas, Heritage is seeking to support the students who’ve come to Heritage to study God’s Word and prepare for ministry through providing scholarships. Help support Heritage students by donating to the Heritage Scholarship Fund.

Visit DiscoverHeritage.ca/Donate.

To read this year's Christmas Newsletter, click here.

Read this article and more in this year's Christmas Newsletter arriving in mailboxes in December 2020. 

COVID-19 has had a lasting effect on the entire world, but it has not stopped God from working in the lives of His people, as well as in the world around us.  Being at Heritage this fall semester definitely looks different, but it is no less impactful than years before.

The community this year has adjusted quite well to protocols and restrictions, but still manage to connect with each other despite remaining socially distanced.  There is rarely a day where you won't find people connecting in The Bean through mutual homework or playing music, enjoying a game of pool with a friend, or even playing a competitive match of ping pong.  At the heart of the Heritage community is a yearning to know God more each and every day and a desire to build relationships with others who love Him as well.

Personally, this semester has definitely been a different one.  As a student leader, I want to help foster a community of people loving God first and loving each other well. I do my best to help build the community to be the best experience it can be, while trying not to get distracted by everything I miss about last year.

One lesson that sticks out to me this year is finding my joy in God alone and not only in the experiences He brings.  God is continually working this year and it is a joy to simply be a part of what He is doing.

Godfrey Thorogood is excited for the opportunity to be part of the work of Heritage College & Seminary as the newly hired Director of Ministry Partners.

From his time serving in a number of pastoral roles to his seven years as the Leadership Development Director with FEB Central, Thorogood says that he has seen firsthand how Heritage has positively impacted the church through its students and graduates over the years. Reflecting on the impact that it has made on his own life as a graduate of Central Baptist Seminary, he says that he and his wife felt led by the Holy Spirit to this new role of serving at Heritage.

“This opportunity allows me the sincere privilege of giving back to the school God used to invest so much into my life and helped prepare me as a young man for pastoral ministry,” says Thorogood.

One of the focuses of his new role will be reconnecting with the alumni of Heritage College & Seminary, including those who graduated from London Baptist Bible College and Seminary and Central Baptist Seminary. As an alumnus, he is looking forward to having the opportunity to encourage, care for, and pray with the graduates of Heritage while highlighting the opportunity they have to also be a part of impacting the church in Canada together with Heritage.

“I want our alumni to realize that we have the opportunity to bless and encourage the next generation of pastors, missionaries, church planters, and workers for the church that God is raising up and equipping to serve him in years ahead,” says Thorogood.

He will also be working at supporting existing partnerships with churches, organizations, and individuals who share the passion and mission of Heritage, along with building new relationships.

Thorogood believes that it is in and through strong relationships with ministry partners that Heritage will be able to continue to be a part of supporting the health and growth of the church in Canada as the school seeks to equip more men and women to serve the Lord through the local church.

“In my experience, when godly leaders in the church and godly leaders for the church are raised up and equipped, churches become healthier and begin to have an expanded influence for the gospel,” he says.

This new role will also see him helping college and seminary students find internship opportunities in local churches and other ministries where they will receive guided ministry experience in conjunction with their theological education. He will provide mentoring to interns to complement the mentoring they receive from pastors and other ministry leaders.

As he looks ahead to the start of this new role in January 2021, he says that he is praying that God would continue to use Heritage to equip the next generation of ministry leaders for the church who are passionate and sold out for God, the Gospel, and His church.

On December 1^st, we are asking you to consider joining us as we continue on in our mission to train and equip men and women for life and ministry.

For Giving Tuesday, Heritage is raising funds that will go towards financially supporting college and seminary students through scholarships – including the support of a growing number of international students and new Canadians. Our scholarships continue to provide valuable help to many students as they begin their theological studies at Heritage.

At Heritage, we continue to be devoted to training pastors, missionaries, church leaders to serve Christ, his church, and his mission. Please consider giving financially to help more students have the opportunity to be equipped and make an eternal difference, here in Canada and the nations.

Join the mission of Heritage College & Seminary this Giving Tuesday – visit DiscoverHeritage.ca/Donate to give on December 1^st.

Heritage College & Seminary has recently opened registration for the upcoming winter semester. Current college and seminary students will now be able to visit myHeritage and register for their classes next semester.

The deadline for registering for Winter 2021 courses is November 22, 2020.

Heritage will also continue to provide the same course delivery plans for the upcoming winter semester.

For students of the college, most classes will continue to operate in-person, on-campus in a safe, physically distanced classroom setting. Students will also have the option to choose the option of taking on-campus college classes through a live-streaming format.

Again, some of the college courses offered this semester will only be offered online with no in-person instruction. Please refer to the Winter 2021 College Schedule to see which classes will be delivered completely online. Courses that are offered as dual for both college and seminary courses will continue to be offered in this online format.

All Heritage Theological Seminary classes will continue to only be available in an online delivery format.

For more information on Winter 2021 Registration and to see the College and Seminary Schedules for the upcoming semester - please visit DiscoverHeritage.ca/FallWinterUpdates.

Dr. Rick Reed, President of Heritage College & Seminary, has recently launched Preacher to Preacher - a new weekly podcast focused on equipping preachers and teachers to grow in their gifts.

This new podcast, launched on October 20, will provide encouragement and wisdom to preachers each week with the goal of building up those who want to get noticeably better as teachers of God’s Word.

In the first episode, Dr. Reed will be talking about right sizing your expectations each time one goes to preach.

To find this new podcast and subscribe, you will be able to find Preacher to Preacher with Rick Reed on Spotify, Apple, Google, and at DiscoverHeritage.ca/Podcasts.

Dr. Carolyn Weber, Professor of English Studies at Heritage College & Seminary, believes that we all are defined by longing. This universal human condition is something that she has not only experienced personally but is also something that she sees continually in culture as people search for fulfillment all the wrong places – especially when it comes to relationships, intimacy, and sex.

Out of a desire to remind readers that there is another way, Weber was inspired to write her latest memoir, Sex and the City of God: A Memoir of Love and Longing.

Weber explains that her interest in the topic of longing began after her own conversion. as she began to see in retrospect how much of her own aches, desire, or, as C.S. Lewis termed it, “sehnsucht” was pointing her to something bigger. This was God.

This fascination with longing was what led her to focus academically on the Romantic writers of the 18^th and 19^th century who were defined by this “infinite longing”. However - through her study of authors like Goethe, Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, and the Shelleys - she began to see a deeper longing in all people.

“I began to see how this longing very much characterized just about everything we searched for in life: companionship, achievement, belonging, safety, refuge, peace,” says Weber. “Augustine’s famous claim then took on a very personal and relevant meaning for me: ’You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’”

Looking back on years of conversations with friends, students, participants at women’s events, and her own children, Weber says that she began to see how culture has been looking to everything else but God to meet this sense of longing.  When it came to relationships, marriage, and sex, she has become increasingly concerned that people are bombarded with sexual information yet no relational wisdom and no way to think bigger about love and how best to love.

“As my children grew older, I wanted them to see more than the world shows them: I wanted them to understand marriage as a place that is not immune to the fallen world – nowhere on this side of heaven is – but that it can be a safe place to grow, and to forgive and be forgiven, and to taste grace intimately,” says Weber. “And that regardless of our worldly relationship status, we are married first to Christ, and therefore should be thinking of responding to him first, looking to him first.”

Through reflecting on her own life after studying at Oxford University and her personal faith journey, Weber seeks to explore what our lives can look like when we choose to love God first in this new memoir.

Weber states that her hopes for this new work are to see those who are looking at anyone or anything other than God to meet their deepest needs to be lovingly encouraged to revisit the First Commandment and find relief and peace. Rather than fulfilling needs in people or actions at the cost of hurting or exploiting other people, she desires that readers of this book may discover the truth that finding our identity in Christ ultimately means we live in relationship, and so in responsibility, to other people.

“God has to be our First Love, or else the bottom of everything really does fall out; the bucket has an endless hole,” says Weber. “We are our brother’s and sister’s keeper, and a keeper of our hearts as well, and that’s an immense privilege that relationship reminds us of and points us to with our heart’s homecoming in God.”

To learn more about Sex and the City of God, click here.

Register today for this year's Andrew Fuller Centre for Baptist Studies Lecture by visiting DiscoverHeritage.ca/AFC2020.

How are longing, desire, love and joy indicative of the redemptive relationship for which we were eternally made?

Award-winning author and Professor of English Studies at Heritage College & Seminary Dr. Carolyn Weber will look at this deep and relevant question during the second annual Andrew Fuller for Baptist Studies Lecture being held online on Friday, October 30 starting at 7:30pm.

In her lecture entitled The Great Divorce and The Even Greater Marriage: C.S. Lewis and the Bright Lady, Weber will be looking carefully at Lewis’ work The Great Divorce in order to examine the unbearable beauty of grace within the holy ordering of our loves.

Dr. Weber’s memoir, Surprised by Oxford, has received critical acclaim and was awarded the Grace Irwin Award, the largest award for Christian writing in Canada. Her latest book Sex and the City of God: A Memoir of Love and Longing looks closely at the topic of longing and seeks to explore what our lives can look like when we choose to love God first through her own life.

Watch this year's lecture now on our YouTube page: