A Message from the Founding President

I founded the New School of Biblical Theology with a conviction that has only deepened over four decades of pastoral ministry: the church cannot afford to produce believers who love God on Sunday and lose their way by Monday afternoon.

That conviction is not abstract. It was forged in Brooklyn, where I have spent my adult life pastoring at the intersection of faith and culture, watching men and women come alive in worship yet struggle to connect their faith to the decisions they face at work, at the school board meeting, in the public square, and around their own kitchen tables. The problem was never a shortage of sincerity. The problem was a gap in formation. We were making converts. We were not always making disciples, people formed deeply enough in Scripture, theology, and spiritual maturity to carry their faith into every sphere of life with both conviction and wisdom.

The New School of Biblical Theology exists to close that gap.

From its founding moment, NSBT was designed with intentionality around a single, governing mission: to prepare men and women for effective Christian ministry and leadership in a global context by deepening their understanding of the Bible, attending to intellectual and spiritual formation, and equipping them to be more effective in cultural engagement and public theology. Every word of that mission statement was chosen carefully. Every program we offer flows from it.

We do not train leaders to retreat from culture. We do not train them to be absorbed by it. We train them to engage it redemptively, as thinking disciples who understand that Jesus Christ is Lord not only of their private devotional life but of public life, of justice, vocation, community, and the common good. This is what I mean by Christ in Culture, a theological posture that refuses withdrawal and resists assimilation, holding Christ as the interpretive center of all reality while meeting the world as it actually is.

NSBT is a school of public theology. That phrase carries weight. Public theology is not partisan commentary dressed in religious language. It is the disciplined, reflective engagement of the Christian faith with the great questions of our time, pursued not for the sake of influence but for the sake of the common good, not for the sake of power but for the sake of transformation. Our students do not learn theology in isolation. They learn it in conversation with culture, history, ethics, and the urgent realities of a world that is louder, more fragmented, and more spiritually hungry than at any point in living memory.

Our faculty are scholar-practitioners who carry both academic rigor and pastoral depth. Our programs are fully online, making graduate theological education accessible to students across the globe who are called to ministry but cannot leave their ministry posts to pursue it. Our learning community is diverse, drawing students from multiple denominations, cultural backgrounds, and vocational callings, united by the shared conviction that Christ has something to say to the world, and that the world needs men and women equipped to say it faithfully.

I did not build this school to replicate what already exists. I built it because something was missing: a theological institution designed from the ground up to form leaders who think critically, live faithfully, and engage culture redemptively. That is our mission. That is our calling. And it is more urgent now than when we opened our doors.

If you are reading this catalog, something has drawn you to this work. I invite you to explore what NSBT offers, not merely as an academic program, but as a formation community where Scripture, scholarship, spiritual depth, and cultural engagement converge. The church in every generation needs leaders who are not merely sincere in their faith but formed by it, not merely willing to follow Jesus but equipped to do so in the world as it actually is.

We are preparing those leaders. I invite you to become one of them.

Grace and peace,Dr. A. R. Bernard, Sr.Founding President and Professor of Public TheologyThe New School of Biblical Theology