The elder statesman of Evangelicalism for over 50 years was John Stott. He managed to maintain a balance of strongly held convictions, biblical faithfulness and a genuine humility, in the presence of opinions, ideas and people with whom he profoundly disagreed. Some of his words written in an early publication should be laminated and attached to the outside door of any room where theological education takes place.
Life is a pilgrimage of learning, a voyage of discovery, in which our mistaken views are corrected, our distorted notions adjusted, our shallow opinions deepened, and some of our vast ignorance diminished."
The experience of the Summer School this week has not been dissimilar to those attitudes which in fact underlie all good teaching and all good learning. Our keynote speakers have each spoken out of their experience, but without insisting that gave a claim to be right without further discussion. The Bible studies led by Tom Greggs have set our talking and listening, our sharing and questioning, our differences and togetherness all in the light of Paul's vastly painted canvas of cosmos and church, election and service, God's purposes and our strategies. Peter Neilson has ensured that each day has been bracketed with prayer and worship, contemplative waiting and open-hearted intercession. Together Tom and Peter have helped us create spacious minds and hospitable hearts in order for us to welcome new thinking, searching questions and theologically potent pointers for developing our own vocational gifts.
So when we have talked in our small groups, or over lunch and coffee, or walking in the campus grounds, we have done so in an environment of openness and trust, because nobody feels the need to be right, to have the last word - or even the first word. We are a very diverse bunch, from Seattle to Ireland, post-graduate and undergraduate, theological educators and folk who have made time and expense available to be part of this pilgrimage of learning and voyage of discovery.
There is something special about a week of collaborative learning when together we are open to the rest of John Stott's description of evangelical and intellectual humility. There's time to think; good folk to talk things over with; experienced people whose vocational achievements are very different, very impressive, but who are the last to see it and the least impressed by it! Alison Wilkinson, Nick Cuthbert and John Miller have offered their personal experience for scrutiny to help us see further and better; they have spoken with that unassuming and therefore more persuasive authority of people who don't need to be right all the time, and therefore make themselves accessible to the rest of us; and they have spoken out of a love for God, an experience of the grace of Christ, and a life in which as they have walked in the Spirit, so blessing has fallen on the paths the rest of us walk.
It's been a good week. It will finish tomorrow, but in another sense it will start tomorrow. Because learning only begins as informative; it then becomes formative as we take it to heart and begin to perform better the script of our lives; and then it becomes transformative as one life touches another, and we become conduits of grace and mercy and peace, ambassadors of Christ, ministers of reconciliation, a community who make the Gospel real through the embodied practices of love, peacemaking and compassionate generosity. The view up into the library building is a stunning concept, like a ladder of knowledge, or a spiral of the intellect, or layers of learning - whichever image it evokes, it encourages a commitment to continue the pilgrimage of learning, and to travel forward on the voyage of discovery.
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