Leaving HBU, Heading to HGST

After 25 years of teaching in the Department of Theology at HBU, I have made the decision to join the faculty of Houston Graduate School of Theology as their new academic dean.  The decision has been a hard one as you might imagine.  I have had several thousand students at HBU since 1990, and today they are all over the world doing wonderful things.  I will miss the place, the students, and my colleagues. HBU has had and continues to have a wonderful faculty who have gotten along well and worked productively over the years.  I have been around long enough to see a number of colleagues retire from HBU—A. O. Collins, Joe Blair, Gene Wofford, Peter Davids, for example.  Those teaching there now are a uniquely talented lot. I will miss them.

I’m heading to Houston Graduate School of Theology.  The school’s website is www.hgst.edu. It was started about 30 years ago by the Quakers and today serves an increasingly diverse group of students from various denominations.  It has many of the challenges you’d expect small, independent schools to have, but it has a president who is a gifted leader, Dr. James Furr. It also has a unique mission. What draws me is the opportunity to work with a multi-ethnic, multi-denominational population of men and women who sense a call to ministry and service to the world.  The students I’ve met have been dedicated and hard-working.  Under President Furr’s leadership, the school has become a good place in Houston to study theology, ministry, counseling, and leadership.  Our faculty and adjunct faculty come from various denominations, traditions, and communities.  If I can, in some small way, make the school a better place to work and study, I think I will have accomplished something important.