One of the most treasured items that gets hauled out of storage in our household each Christmas season is the crêche, or Nativity scene. Ours is a simple affair. It is composed of wooden folk-art figures made, as I recall, in Costa Rica.

On the second Sunday of Advent we anticipate and celebrate the promise that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has come to bring peace into the world. In the face of so much hubris, greed, polarization, division, and war around the globe, the promise of peace might seem a distant and elusive dream.

As we prepare to receive 50 new students at the College this semester, I am once again reminded that many, if not most of our students have been drawn to Wycliffe because of our evangelical commitments and the quality of our teaching, and not because of any denominational allegiance.

In a conversation with some students recently I made reference to Wycliffe College’s Six Principles, and was met with blank stares. I do not fault the students. The fact is that we don’t talk about the Principles nearly as much as we did when I began teaching here in the late 1990s.

In Churchland there is a natural tendency to look to churches that appear successful, hoping to learn from or emulate what they are doing in our own communities.

Like many of you, I spend the first week of the New Year going through my diary, trying to anticipate some of the challenges and opportunities the next twelve months will bring.

“My soul longs, indeed, it faints for the courts of the Lord”

Psalm 84 is a psalm of longing or lament, and it is also a psalm of pilgrimage. Three times a year the people were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the temple to appear before the Lord (Exodus 23:14–17).

In late October I attended a conference at Yale commemorating the centenary of Hans Frei (1922-1988), one of the leading historical theologians of our age, and the most important figure in the so-called “Yale School” of theology and scriptural interpretation.

Many positive things can be said about the benefits of online education. While in-person classes were largely suspended over the last two years because of the pandemic, students did not have to suspend their lives or learning. Wycliffe students were still able to proceed in their programs.