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    Inaugurations: Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College
    Inaugurations: Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College
    Inaugurations: Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College
    Ebook248 pages2 hours

    Inaugurations: Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College

    By Stanley E. Porter

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    The inaugural lecture is a tradition that has been practiced in western universities for centuries. These lectures originated in the great universities of continental Europe, spread to Great Britain, and then to North America. The tradition has now been appropriated further by universities around the world and especially of late in majority world countries. The inaugural lecture is a form of academic discourse, in which the recipient of a suitable academic honor--usually the bestowal of a form of professorial appointment--offers a public lecture in recognition of the event. McMaster Divinity College follows in this academic tradition by attaching public inaugural lectures to the appointment of scholars to professorial positions, and in particular to those appointed to endowed and named professorial chairs within the institution. McMaster Divinity College currently has six such endowed, named chairs held by its faculty. This volume contains the six lectures by those in these six chairs, representing the fields of preaching, theology, pastoral studies, Christian worldview, ministry studies, and Christian history. Each of these inaugural lectures is a contribution to scholarship in the field and a token of the inaugural professorial lecture.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPickwick Publications
    Release dateSep 25, 2017
    ISBN9781532611360
    Inaugurations: Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College

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      Book preview

      Inaugurations - Stanley E. Porter

      Inaugurations

      Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College

      Edited by Stanley E. Porter

      102915.png

      Inaugurations

      Inaugural Lectures Delivered at McMaster Divinity College

      McMaster Divinity College General Series 9

      Copyright © 2017 Wipf and Stock Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      McMaster Divinity College Pickwick Publications

      1280 Main Street West An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-1135-3

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-1137-7

      ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1136-0

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Last, First. | other names in same manner

      Title: Book title : book subtitle / Author Name.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016 | Series: if applicable | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-1135-3 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-1137-7 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-1136-0 (ebook)

      Subjects: LCSH: subject | subject | subject | subject

      Classification: call number 2017 (paperback) | call number (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 09/10/09

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Preface

      Contributors

      The Inaugural Lecture and McMaster Divinity College

      Chapter 1: Consider the Lilies

      Chapter 2: Theology

      Chapter 3: Cultivating the Resilient Congregation

      Chapter 4: Who Is Roy Hope, and Why Should We Care?

      Chapter 5: The Minister as Artist

      Chapter 6: The Armenian Genocide and Its Implications for the Teaching of Global Christianity

      Preface

      This volume is admittedly an unusual collection, in that it does not provide the usual academic fare. This book is instead a commemoration of the celebration of scholarship—hence, at the same time both an example of scholarship and a memorial of and to it. Those of us at McMaster Divinity College decided to publish this volume for a number of different reasons. One of these reasons was the simple fact that we wished to recognize and even commend our recently inaugurated institutional practice of sponsoring and then publishing inaugural lectures when our faculty are installed in named, endowed chairs. We believe that this tradition—often not practiced in North American institutions—is one worth adopting and emulating by other institutions, because it makes a contribution not only to a specific academic discipline but to the wider field of scholarship itself by recognizing and commending such work. Another reason is that we wish to congratulate and esteem our professors. We believe that our professors have gone beyond a reasonable call to academic excellence by producing scholarship significant enough to merit their appointment to a professorial chair and then preparing and delivering an inaugural lecture to commemorate that fact. These lectures do not have the same type of subject-specific focus that other works by our professors usually do. However, this does not mean that the research, writing, and presentation are any less significant, intense, or important. We believe that these lectures in themselves, as commemorative statements by our faculty members, offer unique and appreciable insights into their fields of study, and we wish to promulgate their findings to others, so that others may benefit from their public acts of deliberation.

      The introduction to this volume makes clear the nature of the individual professorial endowed chair involved, the circumstances of the delivery of these lectures on their particular occasions, and something of the circumstances and findings of the individual contributor and contribution. All but one of the essays contained here has been published previously. We include one lecture that was not previously published, because at the time of this scholar’s inauguration into his professorial chair, there was no convention at McMaster Divinity College of delivering and publishing such a lecture. That situation has changed, and now in virtually all instances the inaugural statements are delivered as part of the celebration of the installation in the endowed chair and have been published in McMaster Divinity College’s McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry (MJTM). There have been some slight revisions to the various essays to make them more suitable for publication in this volume. The date of delivery of each lecture is provided in the first footnote of each, and the original publication information for each is listed below. This volume does not contain all of the inaugural lectures delivered at McMaster Divinity College. It is the practice of our institution to invite our members of the faculty soon after their joining us to offer a lecture in which they respond to their appointment. The lecture by Steven Studebaker was originally such a lecture, but his installation in his endowed chair occurred reasonably soon after that it seemed to make a second lecture redundant. Others of those installed here gave earlier inaugural lectures upon their initial appointment. These lectures, however, were not systematically published until more recently (some of these more recent lectures may be found published in MJTM in the following places: Phil C. Zylla, MJTM 9 [2007–2008] 129–43; Paul S. Evans, MJTM 12 [2010–2011] 33–60; Lee Beach, MJTM 12 [2010–2011] 167–78).

      In the course of preparing these inaugural lectures for publication, I have had to draw on the good will of a number of people. I wish most of all to thank the individual contributors. When the idea was presented that we would like not only to engage in delivering inaugural lectures to commemorate installation in named, endowed chairs, but also to publish and then collect them together in a suitable volume to celebrate such activity, I was pleased that each of the contributors gladly acceded to the request. In one instance, the contributor who had not had the opportunity to deliver and publish such an inaugural lecture at the first instance of installation in the endowed chair agreed to prepare a representative lecture that would fulfill the purpose of the missing original. I wish to thank Michael Knowles for his willingness to do this. The other inaugural lectures were presented as part of a series of such lectures at McMaster Divinity College that roughly coincided with the installation of the incumbents into their respective chairs. The participants prepared their lectures for presentation according to this schedule, and they had the patience to present them, publish them, and then wait for us to accumulate all of them for this publication. I wish to thank each one of those represented here, Steve Studebaker, Phil Zylla, Lee Beach, and Gord Heath.

      McMaster Divinity College is fortunate to have its own publication venture that works closely with Wipf and Stock Publishers. This volume is an instance of a continuing series of books that we have cooperatively published. We wish to thank Wipf and Stock for their continued activity in this partnership. I also wish to thank the former Managing Editor of McMaster Divinity College Press, Hughson Ong, for his work on these manuscripts, both the first time when they were prepared for publication in MJTM, and again when he revisited them in preparation for publication in this volume.

      One of the several things that all of those participating in this volume have in common is that we all are employed as professors at McMaster Divinity College. McMaster Divinity College is a seminary and graduate school that offers a wide range of graduate-level degrees, including the MDiv, MTS, and DPT (for those new to this nomenclature, it stands for Doctor of Practical Theology) as professional degrees for those in the church and related Christian ministries, and the MA and PhD for those in primarily academic areas. Our contributions to this volume constitute one of the ways in which we take the opportunity to reflect upon our vocational interests and return both to our guild and to our institution appropriate reflection upon our fields of expertise.

      The inaugural lectures included here were first published (except the one by Michael Knowles, which is published here for the first time) in MJTM as follows: Steven M. Studebaker, MJTM 8 (2007) 9–22; Phil C. Zylla, MJTM 15 (2013–2014) 100–118; Stanley E. Porter, MJTM 16 (2014–2015) 51–64; Lee Beach, MJTM 16 (2014–2015) 131–50; Gordon L. Heath, MJTM 16 (2014–2015) 177–95.

      —Stanley E. Porter

      Contributors

      Lee Beach (PhD McMaster Divinity College), Associate Professor of Christian Ministry, Garbutt F. Smith Chair of Ministry Formation, Director of Ministry Formation, McMaster Divinity College

      Gordon L. Heath (PhD St. Michael’s College), Associate Professor of Christian History, Centenary Chair in World Christianity, Director of the Canadian Baptist Archives, McMaster Divinity College

      Michael P. Knowles (ThD Wycliffe College, University of Toronto), Professor of Preaching, George F. Hurlburt Chair of Preaching, McMaster Divinity College

      Stanley E. Porter (PhD University of Sheffield), President and Dean, Professor of New Testament, Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview, McMaster Divinity College

      Steven M. Studebaker (PhD Marquette University), Associate Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Howard and Shirley Bentall Chair in Evangelical Thought, McMaster Divinity College

      Phil C. Zylla (DTh University of South Africa), Academic Dean, Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology, J. Gordon and Margaret Warnock Jones Chair in Church and Ministry, McMaster Divinity College

      The Inaugural Lecture and McMaster Divinity College

      An Introduction

      Stanley E. Porter

      The inaugural lecture is a tradition that has been practiced in western universities for centuries. These lectures originated in the great universities of continental Europe, spread to Great Britain, and then, at least in part, to North America. The tradition has now been appropriated further by universities around the world and, especially of late, in Majority World countries.

      The inaugural lecture is a form of academic discourse, in which the recipient of a suitable academic honor—usually the bestowal of a form of professorial appointment—offers a public lecture in recognition of the event. The lecture may be used—and, in fact, has been used—for a variety of purposes. For some, it is a way of honoring the appointee him- or herself by offering the opportunity for a suitably distinguished scholar to be featured in an appropriate academic and wider venue by giving an address in which others have the opportunity to avail themselves of the wisdom and insight of the duly recognized person. For others, it is a way of honoring the appointment itself. Many inaugural lectures are directly linked to endowed monetary funds held in trust and given in honor of people of distinction and/or means. In some instances, those of means have offered beneficence to the educational institution, and their generosity has been recognized in the form of the appointment to which the inaugural lecture attaches. In other instances, those of appropriate standing are offered recognition by having a professorial position named in their honor and an inaugural lecture linked to that appointment. In these instances, the one appointed to the position honors the position itself in the lecture. Finally, for still another group, the inaugural lecture is a way of honoring one’s area of academic standing and expertise. The one appointed to a position is invited to make comment upon or to offer guidance for or critique upon a subject or to forecast directions in which the academic field may or could develop. In these instances, the inaugural lecture is offered in recognition, if not in honor, of the academic field itself.

      McMaster Divinity College follows in this academic tradition by attaching public inaugural lectures to the appointment of scholars to professorial positions, and in particular, to those appointed to endowed and named professorial chairs within the institution. McMaster Divinity College currently has six such endowed, named chairs held by its faculty of over fifteen core faculty members. Each of these chairs is named, usually in honor of a person or group of people who have contributed in a tangible way to the furtherance of Christian higher education, especially Christian higher education in Canada and in particular in Ontario. Each of these chairs has also been endowed in significant financial ways as a means of supporting and funding the professorial appointment. As a result, the scholar who is appointed to the particular chair is invited to offer a lecture and reflect upon the state of one’s discipline and offer comments upon one’s vision for that position. In some instances, the inaugural lecture has coincided with the initial appointment of a scholar to a position at McMaster Divinity College. This is often the case at many institutions. However, this is not the general case at McMaster Divinity College, at least of late. In fact, only one of those offering an inaugural lecture in this volume was appointed to his position and installed concurrently in the endowed chair to which the inaugural lecture pertains. That means that the other scholars were awarded their chairs on the basis of their subsequent proven contribution in the area pertaining to the chair itself.

      The first endowed professorial chair inaugurated at McMaster Divinity College was the George F. Hurlburt Chair of Preaching. This chair was established in 1985, through the generosity of members of the Hurlburt family, especially Murray Hurlburt and Art Hurlburt, in commemoration of their father. George Hurlburt was a well-known pastor in Baptist circles in Ontario, and his sons, who were highly successful builders in the greater Toronto area, wanted to honor their father’s legacy and address the need for strengthening biblically-based evangelical preaching within the

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