Short-term mission trips are nothing new. But transplanting one’s family to a different part of the globe for a period of several years is becoming more common in the RPCNA. Recently the Witness interviewed Rob Edgar shortly after he and his family returned to the States. They had spent four years in Scotland to help the Airdrie RP Church and the Semester in Scotland program. The Edgars are members of the Covenant Fellowship (Pittsburgh, Pa.) RPC.

Could you please introduce us to Covenanter Training Institute? Are Semester in Scotland and CTI one and the same?

Rob: Semester in Scotland is a program run by the Covenanter Theological Institute (CTI)—probably the biggest program at the moment. CTI has hopes of building a seminary in Scotland someday. The reason is that the church went downhill when it stopped training its own ministers.

Semester in Scotland is a program run by CTI for university or college students. They can take a semester overseas and get credit. It is done through Geneva College, so the credits come from Geneva.

We just brokered a deal to have a reciprocal agreement with Geneva, which means that any student from any school can go through Geneva to CTI. It doesn’t matter if you go to Purdue University or Geneva or Penn State or University of Pittsburgh—you can do the Semester in Scotland program and get credit for it.

What could somebody­­ typically expect when they take the Semester in Scotland?

Rob: In some ways it’s like many other semester abroad programs, but in many ways it’s very different. You can expect a lot of theological training and a life-changing experience. The program is set up for students to take 15 credits, which is about a normal load per semester for a student. Six of those credits are practicum, or an internship, and the other credits are classes that they take.

There are several different combinations of classes, but the one class everybody takes is Covenanter History and Theology. Examples of other classes are Pauline Epistles and Reformed Evangelism. You’re also expected to integrate into the body of believers that are there in Airdrie, Scotland.

How did a young man from Pennsylvania like you get involved in Semester in Scotland?

Rob: Ultimately, through God’s hand. But, my wife and I had been to Airdrie on mission teams, and I had led the team there several times with RP Missions. In talking with Pastor Andrew Quigley of Airdrie RPC, we knew that, not only for the Semester in Scotland program but also for the church as a whole, we could be a benefit. The church had a small age-gap problem—they had many older people and some younger families, but they didn’t have anybody in the middle range. They didn’t have any people in the right age groups or with enough energy to run the youth programs. So Jess and I moved over to help out the church and to fill a gap for a few years. While we were there, we also worked with CTI.

What was your capacity in working with CTI?

Rob: I was the dean of students, and both Jess and I were in charge of part of the students’ cultural experience. One major part of what I did was trying to get as many students as possible to be able to participate in the program. Getting the reciprocal agreement with Geneva was a big step for CTI, because that meant that not only Geneva students could go and do the program, but any student from any school could go too.

The other way we worked with the program was by just living our lives. We’re generally of the same age group as the students that are coming over, so we’re a point of contact for them, halfway in between Americans and Scottish. We help them integrate into the church.

How many students would you be working with, typically, in a semester?

Rob: It has varied widely from 2 students the first semester to 5 right now. CTI has the capacity to have 8 to 12 students there at a time, but as of yet, many students haven’t been able to come. The hope is that in the future, as more people hear about the program and the other students go back and talk about it, a lot more people will be signing up and inquiring.

What kind of student, in what kind of course of study, could be interested in Semester in Scotland?

Rob: Most of the classes are Bible and theology, and are really geared towards history majors and the like. But, in reality, we’ve had more science majors come than anything else. Biology has been the biggest major. This semester’s students might change that slightly. Any student doing any program can benefit from it. It has been designed, by both Andrew and myself, so that, whatever your needs are, we can fit them in through CTI or you can go to a local university and take another class or an independent study. It is probably easiest for Bible and history majors, but the hope is that it will be all majors that go.

If someone were interested in pursuing Semester in Scotland, what would be the next step?

Rob: The easiest one is to go to the web site, SemesterInScotland.org. All the information, such as course outlines, is there. Also, how to proceed depending on what university you’re from. If you’re from Geneva, you can just walk into the Crossroads office. If you’re from another university there is a form on the web site that emails the administrative secretary, Beth Bogue, and also the university. Geneva and that university work out a reciprocal agreement, or a transient student situation, where, for that semester, you are enrolled at Geneva College even though you might never step on campus.

What else were you doing while you were in Scotland?

Rob: Both my wife and I had full-time jobs. I worked as a schoolteacher, and she worked as a cardiac physiologist in a hospital. That’s how we paid for our existence there. But we also ran the youth programs at the church.

Airdrie Reformed Presbyterian Church has a very deliberate program for developing its young people, from toddlers through adults—there’s a group or a club or something for them to be doing. Every young person is involved in what are called METs, which are Mutual Encouragement Times. They are basically Bible studies, and are for every person from about the age of 12 or 13 up to the adults. METs go on through the week, and for the young kids are on Friday nights. Then there are also various other clubs. By the time Jess and I were leaving, we were regularly having events where we had 25 or 30 kids.

Nearly every person of every age is involved in a midweek study?

Rob: Yes, there are actually more people involved in Bible studies each week than there are members of the church, many more. The session of the Airdrie RPC has been incredibly deliberate in how they meet the needs of each individual. The name of every single person who has walked through the church door has been written down to follow how the church and session are meeting their spiritual needs. It’s done for each of the kids as well.

A real emphasis was put on developing the Covenanter Youth, because, as the Scriptures show, and as people have seen from their own past, God works through families. He’s a covenant God. We should remember that, and pay special attention to it, because that’s the reason why Airdrie and the Scottish RP Church is in the situation that it is in—or that it was in. For many years people forgot to train up their young people. It’s not that they didn’t love them, but they didn’t love them enough to teach them the Scriptures. Whole generations left the church. Until several years ago, the youngest person who had grown in the church who was still there was David Frame, and he is 44 years old. He is the only person who went to that church as a child and still attends now. That church was a very large church at one time.

Are there other questions that you wish I would be asking, about CTI or Semester in Scotland or your experience?

Rob: I guess our motivation for moving over there. We weren’t the first people; Karen Reyburn from Phoenix RPC and Beth Bogue from Ohio were already there. Beth actually wasn’t a member of the RP Church before that. Both of them came over on RP Missions teams. So, that church has really benefited from RP Missions, as many others have.

One other thing is that we as a denomination (and many denominations) have programs for young people, and have programs for people in college, and then expect people right out of college to just seamlessly be in the life of the church, which is a great thing. But we forget that there are also people who have a lot of energy, probably more than the rest of us do now, and people who have fewer commitments than the rest of us.

I would like to see many more college graduates and young people deciding to work with the church and to move to a church for a time and help it out. Jess and I moved to Scotland, knowing that we weren’t going to be there forever. We didn’t know how long God was going to have us there. But, we didn’t own a house, we didn’t have any kids when we moved there, and we didn’t have any animals either. It was probably the only time in our lives when we could, pretty easily, make the decision and say, “Yeah, sure, I’ll move to Scotland for four years, that won’t be that big of a problem.” Whereas now, I’d have to take my wife, my child, my dog, and sell my house.

Too often, people just out of college are so focused on getting a job—and we put that pressure on them as well—when instead they should be pressured to think, “Where’s a church that I can help?” and then, “Maybe I can go move there and support myself, and help them for a few years.”

I would like to see the denomination, in a combination of Foreign Mission Board and Home Mission Board, building in a program of identifying churches that could benefit from young couples or individuals just out of college or even in the middle of college moving there and helping them out for a few years. Then this combined board could work on identifying those individuals that could or should be doing that, and trying to support them in some way.

Is there an important story that should be told?

Rob: There are certainly many stories, like the way that God led Jess and me to Scotland. When I was a senior at Geneva, I was captain of the track team; but I was kicked off the track team because I had a disagreement with the coach. I believe that I was in the right, but because of being kicked off that team, I went to the University of Pittsburgh. God blessed me through that, because I then was able to go to the University of Pittsburgh and get my master’s degree in teaching, which meant that I could get into the U.K. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have given me a work permit. God orchestrated events in our lives to put us in a perfect position where the two occupations my wife and I had were work-shortage occupations in the U.K. They gave us work permits and both of us found jobs there very easily. I mean, it didn’t seem easy at the time, but the first person that called back I interviewed with and they gave me a job. That just doesn’t normally happen. We look at the story of Joseph and say, “Well, that never happens to us” but it does happen to us. We just have to realize how God works through our lives.

Being in a different culture for four years really opens your eyes to things like that and to ways that you could or should be serving when you’re back at home. The things that people do you start to appreciate: the leadership in the church, and how our people work.

What most struck you about the differences in cultures?

Rob: One of the things that struck me was actually the similarities. By the time we moved to Airdrie, I had already been there and led the mission team several times, so all the little things like driving on the other side of the road weren’t so exciting anymore. I guess what really struck both me and my wife was how much believers in Christ are the same all over the world.

But what was incredibly different and is incredibly different about the Scottish RP Church is how it sees itself as a part of building Christ’s kingdom and the whole worldwide body. In the United States, we can go to the international conference where we have over 1,000 people, and you can drive to the closest RP church and there are youth groups of 20, 30, or 40 people. We have summer camps where you can go and hang out with 200 or 300 other kids. Whereas in Scotland, there’s the Airdrie church and there’s the church in Stranraer, and that’s it. They have to get on a plane and fly to Northern Ireland for any fellowship like that.