Peter Reynolds

D.Min., Pastoral Counseling

Peter Reynolds came to Christ through his personal study of Scripture while he was working as a shepherd in his native New Zealand. After completing his Westminster M.Div. in 1984, he returned to his homeland to serve as a pastor, but “New Zealand has an evangelical population of around 3-4 percent and a very tiny reformed tradition and witness,“ he says. So he planted a reformed congregation with his next-door neighbors. During the 17 years that he pastored that church, he was also involved in establishing Grace Theological College, a seminary for training church planters..

Within 10 years of the college’s formation, six graduates had planted reformed churches across New Zealand. Three years ago—the same year the New Zealand government legalized prostitution, Peter points out—these congregations came together to form the Grace Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, a denomination he describes as similar to the Presbyterian Church in America.

“We train these young men to keep the front doors of their churches open by preaching Christ from all the Scriptures,” he says of the program at Grace, “and now we must train them to keep the back doors closed with effective counseling and pastoral care.”

So this alumnus (who remembers meeting Professor Cornelius Van Til in his home) has returned to the Westminster classroom as a Doctor of Ministry student in the pastoral counseling program. His favorite courses have been the preaching seminars, and he says one of the spiritual challenges of his program is “to see Christ as Lord over all of life, including the task of preaching.”

In 2004, he completed a Th.M. at Covenant Theological Seminary, where his wife Margaret graduated this year with a M.A. in counseling. They are returning to Grace Theological College, where he will establish and teach in the counseling department and she will develop a new counseling center. Peter and Margaret have three children: Charlotte, Martyn, and Rebecca.