Welcome to Wycliffe College

The Rev. Canon Dr. George Sumner gave the Founders’ Day Sermon at St. James’ Catherdal, Toronto on Sunday, 1 October, 2006. In course of the sermon, he said:

“I fervently believe that Wycliffe College is called in all these ways to be salt for our beloved Anglican Church, because it trains leaders, because it is a theological college, and because it aspires in all humility to the label of “evangelical.” I pray that it will be a tool in God’s hand for the renewal of the Church, Anglican and beyond, by focusing attention on our traditional, credal faith, by challenging our resistant denomination to evangelize, by remembering its own roots in lay leadership (out of this cathedral I might add). It will be a tool of renewal in God’s hand as it holds these convictions in our fractious time in a loyal, modest, and generous-spirited way. At the risk of self-importance, I am convinced that its health is critical, and we are encouraged, amidst our many struggles, by what God has been doing among us. Our entering M.Div. class is as big and as young and as enthusiastic as any in memory, our connections from China to the West Indies to Africa widening, our explorations of new ways to teach at a distance on-going. New faculty books on discipleship in the New Testament, and women interpreters of the Old, and the nature of evangelism in Jesus’ time, and doing so now, are all close to the press- signs of encouragement these too. Wycliffe College’s ministry is as easily overlooked, but as essential, as salt.”

Read the full text of the sermon below.