Benjamin Wontrop
Benjamin is American, but it’s hard to tell; perhaps it’s having given his heart to a British girl, perhaps it’s an in-born love for England. Either way, his American heritage and eclectic education (Benjamin has studied theology in the States and at Edinburgh too) meant that I approached this interview with particular interest. How important a part has Westminster UK played in readying him for the UK ministry?
“In England there is nowhere else to get an explicitly Presbyterian and Reformed education. I really appreciated this emphasis; it is unapologetic and runs right through the curriculum. In other places there tends to be a smorgasbord of ideas; Westminster says clearly, ‘This is what we believe the Bible says.’
“Having spent my first year pursuing distance learning, we should definitely be shooting for that in-person experience. I would encourage people to move here. Interaction on site with professors and with other students is valuable. To hear a good quality lecture and then discuss it afterwards, not only with the lecturer but with my fellow-students, all of that you don’t really get when you are doing it online.”
Benjamin landed in the country nearly a decade back, and it’s fair to say that a transformation has taken place. In Mark chapter 4 Christ says, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.”
The Word sown during Benjamin’s Westminster years is bearing fruit in him, and now he himself is scattering the good seed on the ground.
