ENGAGING THE CULTURE, CHANGING THE WORLD
With a long and distinguished history in Christian higher education, Seattle Pacific University entered the new century positioned to engage the culture and influence the world for good. At a time when the legacy of the secularized modern university is under scrutiny, Seattle Pacific provides more than 3,800 students with a high-quality, comprehensive education grounded on the gospel of Jesus Christ. This combination of vital scholarship and thoughtful faith is a powerful one that brings about lasting change in the lives of our graduates, and in the people and communities they serve.

Located just minutes from downtown Seattle, the leading urban center in the Pacific Northwest, SPU is committed to engaging and serving in the modern city, cultivating a global consciousness, supporting the church, and addressing the crisis of meaning in our culture. These, we believe, will be some of the Christian university's most important contributions in this century.

Guiding the work of Seattle Pacific University are these three preeminent goals:

We seek to graduate people of competence and character. At SPU, each student is profoundly important. We focus our curriculum and resources on shaping graduates who will be effective and positive change agents in the world. This means that we work to prepare individuals who understand their own giftedness, who are both liberally educated and skilled in their chosen field, who exhibit honesty and integrity, and who value serving others.

We seek to become people of wisdom. As a university, SPU believes that one vital means of transforming lives is through ideas: ideas that matter; ideas that can bring light and understanding where there is darkness and confusion; and ideas that lead to wisdom. We support our faculty in the pursuit of this kind of scholarship, and we educate our students to become thinking Christians who are able to speak clearly and intelligently about their convictions.

We seek to model a grace-filled community. As we serve our students and commit ourselves to the life of the mind, we believe our best work is done in community. In our life together at Seattle Pacific, we strive to treat each other and all people with respect, kindness and care. Recognizing and respecting differences among individuals, our goal is to become examples of grace, forgiveness, and civility in a culture that is too often polarized and contentious. [Back to top]

STATEMENT OF FAITH FOR SEATTLE PACIFIC UNIVERSITY
Faith and Mission
At Seattle Pacific University, we seek to ground everything we do on the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ. Such a claim is both personal, a commitment by each member of our community, and institutional, a corporate aspiration that has guided this institution from its founding. Even while we celebrate the rich diversity of the church throughout the world, we anchor our faith on the person of Jesus Christ, the authority of holy Scripture, and the tradition of the Christian church throughout history.

Our mission at Seattle Pacific University is to engage the culture and change the world, through competence, character, wisdom, and community. We believe our faith in Jesus Christ is the informing and sustaining power through which we fulfill this distinctive calling.

Our position of faith within the Christian Church is shaped in four ways:

1. We Are Historically Orthodox. We affirm the historic Christian faith, as attested in the divinely inspired and authoritative Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and as summarized, for example, in the Apostles' Creed and Nicene Creed. We affirm that God is triune, and that the three divine Persons � the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit � are coequal, coessential, and coeternal. We affirm that by the grace and power of God, the universe was brought into being, is continually sustained and governed, and will ultimately be brought to its promised consummation. We affirm, further, that we human beings are created by God in God's own image to be stewards of creation, and that we are called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love others as ourselves. In these divinely appointed tasks we have failed, so that we are now subject to judgment and death. Yet we rejoice that God's grace is available to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and that through faith in Christ we are delivered from sin and death and empowered by the Holy Spirit for lives of joyful obedience to the Father. Finally, we respond to the Spirit's call to participate in Christ's body, the Church; to embrace Christ's mission to the world; and to live in the hope and assurance that Christ's return will bring to completion God's saving work.

2. We Are Clearly Evangelical. We stand within the broad evangelical tradition of Christianity and, as such, we joyfully accept the task of proclaiming the evangel � God's good news � to the world. We understand this to mean that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior of the world and that he alone can liberate broken and fallen human beings from sin and death. We lift high the authority of holy Scripture as divinely inspired, embraced by the Church as central to our understanding and witness. We affirm that the Holy Spirit works in human hearts to kindle faith in Jesus Christ, to restore people to a right relationship with God and each other, and to begin transforming people into the likeness of Christ. And we believe the gospel promise that light, health, wholeness, and peace are abundantly available to everyone who asks. Yet we also believe that we are called to practice what we preach: first, by cultivating vital Christian piety; and second, by engaging the surrounding culture through public testimony and loving service.

3. We Are Distinctively Wesleyan. Standing within the Wesleyan holiness branch of historic and evangelical Christianity, and recognizing the Free Methodist Church as our founding denomination, Seattle Pacific University is informed by the theological legacy of John Wesley and Charles Wesley. We share their conviction that God's saving purpose is the renewal of human hearts and lives in true holiness through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. We are shaped by their emphasis on the importance of the human response to the Spirit's renewing work, including the vital role of the spiritual disciplines and practices � such as prayer, meditation, worship, Scripture study, charitable giving, public witness to Christ's saving love, and service to those in need � all of which serve as means of God's grace. Above all, we embrace the Wesleys' hope that God's transforming love is offered to all persons, addresses all areas of life, and will not rest content until it has redeemed the whole creation.

4. We Are Genuinely Ecumenical. As heirs of John Wesley's catholic-spirited Christianity, we seek to gather persons from many theological and ecclesial traditions who have experienced the transforming power of Jesus Christ. We believe that theological diversity, when grounded in historic orthodoxy and a common and vital faith in Christ, enriches learning and bears witness to our Lord's call for unity within the church. We are also well aware of other dividing walls that separate people from one another, walls that Christ desires to break down � walls of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, and class. We believe that Christ calls us to value diversity and to seek ways for all persons in our University community to grow in their individual giftedness and to contribute in meaningful ways to our common life and work. Thus, in all of our diversity, we are centered in Christ, and called by him to shape, model, and participate together in grace-filled community.

Therefore, we commit ourselves to this faith, and to these shaping influences that define our community of faith, and we pledge ourselves, with humility and conviction, to live as best we know how in loving relationship with Jesus Christ and in faithful service to others. This we believe to be the defining center of our lives and the guiding aspiration of our life in community at Seattle Pacific University.
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OUR EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
A Vital Learning Community
We are a Christian university that prizes learning and seeks to be a vibrant learning community that grounds its intellectual activity in learning theory. Our faculty and staff are committed learners and are committed to mentoring learners. We are convinced that the best learning occurs within a relational context of the teacher, student, and subject matter, and we therefore prize the relationships between faculty, staff, and students.

We are committed to learning for cultural engagement. We seek to rigorously investigate the critical issues of our time and to offer thoughtful and Christian insight to these issues. We believe these issues can be investigated through a variety of academic disciplines; however, they cannot be fully understood through only one discipline. Therefore we are committed to interdisciplinary learning � learning that explores these critical issues through several disciplinary lenses in order to come to a clear view of the issue.

We are a learning community and all that we do is intended to support learning. Therefore our work with student life, residence life, student leadership, campus ministries, athletics, lectures, and symposia are all intended to contribute to learning along with the curriculum.

An Integrated Curriculum
As a comprehensive university, we offer learning opportunities in the humanities, arts, sciences, and professions, and all of our programs are grounded in the liberal arts. The liberal arts include particular content areas but also imply a style of education that seeks to develop critical thinking, analytical thinking, and communication skills.

Research indicates that students do not see the connections between general education, majors, and their future. Through a three-part curriculum, we seek to integrate general education with the major in ways that help students make the connections.

We begin with a commitment to a very distinctive Christian Common Curriculum. In the first quarter of their freshman year, SPU students are enrolled in University Seminar, an intensive exploration of a special interdisciplinary topic. Twenty to 25 students enroll in each course to form a cohort and attend other freshman classes in the Common Curriculum together. Their University Seminar professor serves as their first-year academic advisor. The relationship between students in the cohort and their professor are intentional and support our belief that the best learning occurs within a relational context.

In their freshman, sophomore, and junior years at Seattle Pacific, students participate in two parallel sequences of required courses. Cumulative and developmental in nature, these classes are designed to support and enhance students' learning in the majors.

The University Core sequence explores key human questions in three classes titled Character and Community; The West and the World; and Belief, Morality, and the Modern Mind. The University Foundations sequence looks at the basics of faith in Christian Formation; Christian Scriptures; and Christian Theology. A capstone senior course in the student's major adds application and personal calling to the picture.

Learning Outcomes
Our learning outcomes are our educational goals for our students and are directly derived from our University's mission statement. Following are the outcomes we seek for our undergraduate students:

Competence
SPU graduates will articulate discipline specific knowledge and apply essential skills enlivened by the liberal arts.

• Demonstrates knowledge of Christian narrative and beliefs.
• Demonstrates knowledge in disciplinary field.
• Integrates liberal arts and disciplinary knowledge.
• Applies knowledge, inquiry, and critical-thinking skills in problem solving.
• Demonstrates a global perspective.
• Communicates effectively.

Model Grace-Filled Community
SPU graduates will cultivate a life of friendship, civility, and community through responsible discourse and respect for each other.

• Demonstrates interpersonal skills necessary for effective personal and professional relationships.
• Engages with diverse others.

Character Formation
SPU graduates will embody personal and professional integrity by serving the public good in doing what is right and doing so with an awareness of consequences.

• Reflects upon ideas and actions through the lens of Christian faith and ethics.
• Balances interests of self, others, and the community in pursuit of the common good.

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OUR CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY
Christian Faith Exploration
Study in a Christian university provides a unique opportunity to explore answers to life's ultimate questions. While honoring the diversity of the members of our campus community, Seattle Pacific University embraces the commitment that all faculty, staff, and students will explore the meaning and implications of the Christian faith for our academic disciplines, our personal and corporate lives, and for the complex issues we face in our society and world. This commitment integrates academic programs with residential and campus life, personal and corporate reflection, co-curricular activities, and community service. Programs contribute to our vision to be a grace-filled community that nurtures people of competence and character, cultivates the scholarship of wisdom, and equips people to engage our culture with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  For more information regarding the theology and programs, see SPU's University Ministries (formerly Campus Ministries).

Commitment
Our campus community is enriched by the diverse faith traditions within our student body, and is therefore committed to honoring and respecting these traditions. We are also committed to the life-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we seek to do the following:

• Develop outstanding curricular and co-curricular Christian faith exploration and discipleship programs that contribute to the fulfillment of our mission and vision as a Christian university.
• Give all students the opportunity to explore the meaning and implications of the Christian faith while at the same time honoring the diversity of our student body.
• Encourage students' responsibility for their own spiritual accountability.
• Provide abundant opportunities for the development of an informed and thoughtful faith, a vibrant worship life, engagement in a grace-filled community life, holistic discipleship, and culture-engaging local and global service.
• Facilitate students' growth in leadership abilities through student-led programs.

Program Opportunities
All-Campus Convocations
All-campus convocations are a rich and vibrant tradition at Seattle Pacific University. Beginning with Opening Convocation at the start of the academic year and extending to Graduation in the spring, these events provide an opportunity to celebrate together as a community and to reflect together through the seasons of the academic year.

Worship
Worship is a vital component of our life as a grace-filled Christian academic community. Though participation in worship services is not required, and students are encouraged to participate in churches from their own traditions, a broad variety of opportunities are available on campus. Corporate worship provides the opportunity for our community to worship together; to grow in our understanding and appreciation of the rich variety of Christian worship traditions; and, through faculty, staff and guest speakers, to provide opportunities for growth in discipleship, leadership, and service.

Students, faculty and staff can participate in different weekly worship services, including:

• Morning Chapel. A worship service using various worship styles, usually led by the student Chapel Worship Team, with outstanding faculty and guest speakers.
• group. A late-night, celebrative, student-led worship service with outstanding faculty and guest speakers.
• Morning Prayer and Communion. An early-morning liturgical service of prayer and Holy Communion.

Faith/Learning Forums

Faculty, students and guests lead weekly Faith/Learning Forums that address various contemporary topics from the perspective of the Christian faith. These often follow a debate or panel format with time for questions and answers.

Small-Group Fellowship and Discussion Groups

• Cadres. Faculty and staff lead more than 20 discussion groups each week with students. Some explore insights the Christian faith brings to contemporary issues; others gather around a particular interest of the participants. Many of these groups meet within specific academic departments and examine in depth the relationship of the Christian faith, academic disciplines, and vocations.
• Hall Fellowships and SMC-Led Studies. More than 40 student ministry coordinators (SMCs) serve in the residence halls to provide support and encouragement. The SMCs lead or facilitate prayer, Bible study, and discipleship groups on each floor of the residence halls.
• Sharpen. The Sharpen ministry facilitates discipleship groups and mentoring relationships for commuter and campus apartment residents.

Local Community Service

Service is basic to leadership, life in society, and Christian discipleship. Therefore, all students are expected to engage in community service. This can be done in many different ways:

• Leadership in campus-based organizations
• Participation on a student-led Urban Involvement team, serving a variety of Seattle-area community agencies
• Service through Latreia, a referral resource connecting SPU students to community service needs around Seattle
• Participation in service-learning projects as part of academic coursework
• Leadership in a church or parachurch group

Global Community Service

SPRINT (Seattle Pacific Reach Out International) is a student-led program to encourage cross-cultural education, service, and global awareness. During academic breaks, more than 15 teams of students engage in cross-cultural service-learning programs across the United States and in more than a dozen countries such as Honduras; Mexico; Brazil; South Africa; Jackson, Mississippi; Nampa, Idaho; Malawi; China; the Dominican Republic; Ecuador; and Russia. Prior to departure, students receive training and upon return participate in extensive debriefing and reflection.

SPRINT also offers opportunities for students to receive academic credit for trips, when working with a faculty member to ensure educational and ministry goals.

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Christian Faith Exploration Requirement

Visit University Ministries (formerly Campus Ministries) for information about the current Christian Faith Exploration requirement.

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