Our history, mission, and values
Our history goes back to the early 1990's when radical political changes happened in Eastern Europe. An American mission organization Westminster Biblical Missions came to Hungary and started a new Reformed theological Seminary – Karolyi Gaspar Institute of Theology and Missions (KGITM) in Budapest. The seminary later relocated to Miskolc. Hungarian speaking students came from three countries – Hungary, Romania and Ukraine and completed their theological training in four years.
The first 7 students graduated in 1996 and started to lay down the foundations of a new Church after the historic and nominal Hungarian Reformed Church closed its doors before the graduates. This was primarily because of our seminary's strong theological convictions regarding the inerrancy and authority of Scriptures, reformed theology, the need for faithful membership in church and biblical administration of the sacraments. We rejected liberalism, ecumenical fellowship with the Catholic church and liberal churches, the office of bishops and ordination of women for the ministry.
Thus, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Central and Eastern Europe was born. This new Presbyterian church trained its pastors for the next few years in this seminary.
Meanwhile, with the new challenges we realized that we need to make some changes and restructured the program for distance learning. Since some of our teachers continued their studies in US and built new contacts with like-minded seminaries like Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, we felt the need for further development.
By God's providence Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary decided to expand their accredited program in Europe and offered a cooperation with our seminary. By restructuring our seminary, we have chosen a new name, Presbyterian Seminary in Budapest, and started our new endeavor in 2022.
We are a Bible grounded, Gospel preaching, Christ centered seminary, with the clear aim to share the gospel and give proper tools in the hands of those men who are eager to share the whole counsel of God.
The aim of our seminary is to fulfill the great commission by training men for the ministry. Our joy would be if men graduating from this seminary would plant new and faithful churches by evangelizing the lost.
We believe that Calvinism is not a lifeless set of doctrines, but the doctrines of grace need to exert a lifechanging influence on the minds and hearts of those who accept them. This needs to be manifested in humility, joy, peace, and boldness to preach the eternal gospel of God.
We are open to cooperate with other Christians who share our vision for planting or strengthening faithful, evangelical, reformed churches.
We have a partnership with like-minded seminaries and formed an association called European Association of Reformed Theological Schools (EARTS).