Alumni Profile

Benjamin T. Inman

Class Years:  ‘95, ‘04
Westminster Degrees: M.Div., Ph.D.
Current Ministry: RUF campus minister at UNC-Chapel Hill
Hobbies: ultimate frisbee, children’s fiction, and “sitting down doing nothing”

Rev. Dr. Ben Inman is an ordained minister in the PCA working as campus minister for Reformed University Fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He preaches at a weekly mid-week service on campus, trains and pastors students, leads Bible studies and supervises students leading Bible studies, and meets one-on-one with 10-15 students each week.  “Essentially my job is catechesis and apologetics in the venues of evangelism, counseling, and training,” he explains.

Inman started RUF at North Carolina State University and served there until the fall of 2004, when he moved to UNC-CH.  Campus ministry is unique in that it serves a broad cross-section of Christian and non-Christian culture, he says.  “I have more access to non-Christians than any other pastoral ministry with which I am familiar.  My university is much like a small city with no cars; thus I get to help students learn to live for Christ within the common grace context they share with their neighbors—quite different than the tendency to ‘subculture’ common in many church contexts…I get to work with Christians from many backgrounds and help them build their convictions by developing a sound understanding and use of Scripture and the sacraments within their own lives as members of churches and members of their community.”

Inman’s background well prepared him for student ministry, though when he completed his B.A. at UNC-CH in 1989, he never dreamed he would return to his alma mater as a pastor.  “I was reading proto-new-age shamanism and developing a pretty substantial irrationalism, but my elder brother was praying and tolerating my anthropological interest in his evangelicalism,” he says of his conversion.  “Having a solid handle on total depravity is pretty easy for a post-modern adolescent, but being persuaded that God has spoken in Christ was difficult.”  He experienced a “sudden epistemological transformation” and then “it took about two years, and (odd though it sounds) reading [Jacques] Derrida, for me to come to any substantial assurance of salvation.”
 
He developed an intense interest in ministry, but “the blather and enthusiasm about seminary and ministry around me in college made me think any 22 year old planning to become a pastor was a self-impressed glory monger. So, I was a little conflicted about attending seminary,” Inman recalls.  He decided to go for it with the intention of “seeing if I will bounce off this idea.”   He studied Greek and Hebrew in college and looked into a dozen seminaries, finally narrowing down Westminster as his top choice.  “I was convinced that Westminster was the only place where my languages would be at least as strong when I left as when I arrived. Secondly, I read [Professor Vern] Poythress’ Symphonic Theology.  Westminster seemed to be a place where orthodoxy didn’t suffer from tunnel vision.  I wasn’t a Presbyterian and was only tentatively Reformed but I figured Westminster was simultaneously the most conservative and the most fertile intellectual environment I could find.”  Though skeptical of his call to the ministry when he arrived at Westminster, by the end of his M.Div. program he was convinced that he was on the right track. 

“At Westminster I learned four things,” he declares.  “First, the rich authority of Scripture: if you will listen to the text, then you will be convinced of unimaginable good things.  Second, the fullness of Christ’s work: the incarnate love of God in Christ takes hold of all that God made and all that sin has wrecked.  Third, the necessity and utility of human theology: piety is framed not only from having the Bible but from the work of believing it all at once.  Fourth, by taking as many courses from CCEF as possible, I learned that preaching can address real people who bring no constructive resources to the kingdom.“

His advice to those in campus ministry?  Students “are easy prey to various forms of ideology that will reinforce their own predilections, but they have nearly no assistance in discovering their own desires, calling, or confusion. The greatest thing you can do is show them that the Bible provides a one-size-fits-all revelation that will be tailored by the Holy Spirit as they listen to Scripture and reply, sometimes rudely but honestly, to God who reveals himself as merciful and powerful.”

In October 2006, Inman was a featured speaker at the emerging church forum sponsored by Westminster’s Student Association.  CDs of the forum are available at Westminster Bookstore.

Ben and Sara were married in 1989 and have four children: Kathryn, Jesse, Anna, and Sadie, and a Maine Coon cat named Lumos Starmaria.