I made a new friend recently. Alex Tso leads the Campus Evangelical Fellowship in Taiwan. We were both speaking at an IFES East Asia event and had connected. We discovered that we were both alumni of Regent College (Vancouver). Regent College alumni will know the joy of finding someone else who had spent time in Regent. We compared our memories of Regent and agreed that there were some elements of the Regent ethos that really attracted us to the school and shaped us for life after.
1. Integration
There was a strong commitment against a sacred-secular divide. All of life was meant to be lived under the Lordship of Christ. The Kingdom of God had invaded and transformed all of life. The school existed to equip all of God’s people for all of life, and not just clergy for the church and scholars for the academy.
Combined with this emphasis was a strong commitment to the laity. They saw that the origins of the term laity was laos, a Greek work that referred to the people of God. There were those set apart for leadership in the church and different church traditions expressed that differently, but there was an understanding that the term “clergy” if used at all, referred to a ministry within the body of Christ, not to a class of special people in the church.
2. Formation
The school was also committed to spiritual formation. James Houston, the founding principal led the charge in this but, in those early days, faculty and students understood that a foundational goal of the school was to help people grow in Christlike character. There was a fear that a fixation with technology, technique and knowledge would outstrip a commitment to the harder work of sanctification.
This concern was prophetic, coming at a time when many Christian leaders had fallen into public sin. They fell not because of lapses in knowledge or skill but because of major lapses in character.
3. Community
Perhaps the part of Regent life that touched us most was the emphasis on community. The Christian life was relational and personal, and this was a key part of the Regent DNA. Fellow students became friends. Faculty and students became friends. Coming from Asia where relationships were much more hierarchical, I was blown away when faculty who were distinguished scholars and practitioners reached out in friendship, and as in all friendships there was mutuality and reciprocity.
I suspect many of us learnt our most important lessons not in the classrooms but in the personal conversations we had with faculty and fellow students. In 2 Timothy 3:10, Paul encouraged Timothy to learn from his teachings and his way of life. This type of learning can only happen in relationships, and we had that at Regent.
4. Fidelity to the Scriptures
The Bible was taken very seriously. The Bible properly interpreted was the final authority for faith and practice. Very early in our student life we were taught proper exegesis and hermeneutics. And although the faculty came from various church traditions, e.g. Brethren, Anglican, Pentecostal, Baptist, Lutheran, Mennonite, etc., there was an understanding that if church tradition clashed with Scripture, fidelity to Scripture must come first. As J. I. Packer would say, the Bible may be inerrant but our interpretation of the Bible may not.
There was also a wonderful marriage between scholarship and piety. Often one left a class with greater scholarly clarity of a subject under study but with one’s heart also warmed by what one had heard. Teachers informed the mind but taught in a way that also strengthened your heart. And this could happen because the lecturers themselves lived lives that sought to integrate scholarship and discipleship.
Of course there were areas where the faculty disagreed, e.g. the role of women in church leadership. There would be spirited debates between these established scholars. But what many of us remember is that at the end of such debates, there would be handshakes and hugs. Their differences did not affect their fellowship. We need so much more of this ability to love those we disagree with today.
5. A global perspective
When I embarked on theological studies, the Lord had made it clear to me that I was to return to Asia and minister there. I wanted a school that looked out into the Pacific and home. Located in Vancouver, Regent was that and Vancouver was also cosmopolitan. But I encountered more than Asia in Regent. I encountered friends from Switzerland, Grenada, Germany, Australia, various parts of the U.S. (including folks from Texas to California), India, Hong Kong, from different parts of Africa, Japan, and Canada. This international community helped me get a more global and more nuanced understanding of the faith. There was also much mutual learning.
A number of these international friendships continued after our time at Regent and continue to be important sources of care and perspective. I am not sure I would have experienced this Revelation 5:9,10 precursor in many other schools.
I am not trying to whitewash the Regent of my time. It is always tempting to look back at some “golden age”. As in any community of God’s people this side of heaven, there was unhealthy pride, slogans that promised more than they delivered, and the fair share of conflicts that came from such a diverse community. I have no way to gauge how Regent is today. Times and context change and institutions need to evolve. However, as I look at the five main strengths of Regent that Alex and I recalled, I can’t help but feel they are more relevant than ever. I want to put on record again how grateful I am for my four years at Regent (1981–1985) and how it shaped me for life and ministry. Maybe the Regent of old is like Camelot, an idea of an ideal that should still guide our commitment to formation in whatever Christian community we find ourselves.
