Commendations from our patrons
Denton Lotz
BWA General Secretary, emeritus
Dear Friends of Rüschlikon and Prague!
It is my great joy to support the IBTS in Prague. We rejoice at the tremendous progress made since moving from Rüschlikon. As a former professor at Rüschlikon I think warmly of the many times of good fellowship and the many students who have gone on to be leaders in Europe. Now our enthusiasm is transferred to Prague. We are grateful for the tremendous progress that has taken place in Prague under the leadership of Keith Jones.
Out of the pain of suffering has come the joy of a new beginning. I do believe that IBTS in Prague is fulfilling the vision of the new united Europe. It is an amazing experience to visit IBTS and speak with students from the former Eastern European countries. Now in freedom they have accepted the challenge of preparing themselves for ministry in the 21st century.
It is with enthusiasm and joy that I encourage you to contribute to the future ministry of IBTS. This new European Baptist center in the heart of Europe can become even more a beacon of light to those who have suffered so long. Therefore, it is our prayer that IBTS will continue to be a beacon of the light of Christ in a dark and threatening world. Please support the seminary as a sign of the hope we have in Christ and His victory! Greetings and God bless you!!
Yours faithfully in Christ,
Denton Lotz
BWA General Secretary, emeritus
The Revd Dr Karl Heinz Walter
European Baptist Federation General Secretary 1989 – 2000
My first memories of IBTS reach back as far as 1953 when IBTS hosted a first EBF Youth and Children’s Workers Conference in Rüschlikon. I had the privilege to be at this conference. Since that time it has always been clear for me that IBTS plays an important role in Europe and even farther to Africa, Asia, South and North America, and especially with the USA.
IBTS has been for many a place of an open dialogue, for careful listening to each other, respecting other cultural backgrounds, and for freedom of studying and teaching theology. During the years of the “Cold War” IBTS became a bridge to bring East and West together. All of this has tremendously influenced Baptist Churches and their leaders all over Europe.
The task for IBTS is not finished. The gap between Western and Eastern Theology due to the growing estrangement out of political reasons during the last century is still wide. It is my sincere hope and wish that in coming years this gap can be over bridged through programs and activities of IBTS and that Baptist Churches and Unions will make provision so that IBTS will be in a position to fulfil this task.
Karl Heinz Walter DD
Dr John David Hopper
President of IBTS 1988 – 1997
As IBTS celebrates the 60th anniversary, we can turn to the vision of those who gave birth to the Seminary. Europeans and North Americans realized the need for an institution of higher international education in Europe. They wanted a place of reconciliation after the Second World War. They sought to offer future Baptist pastors and leaders the opportunity to prepare together for Christian ministry. They recognized the need to weave our Baptist movements into a koinonia or special fellowship for mutual encouragement, for our Unions to share faith with one another and to help one another.
International education is not new in Europe. During the middle ages many students took courses in various national universities to better understand their world.
I think the Russian Baptists who attended the founding of the Baptist World Alliance in London in 1905 were the first to suggest forming an international Baptist seminary in Europe. European Baptists from time to time mentioned the need for such a school possibly in one of their seminaries . Only after the destruction of Europe in the First and Second World Wars was the seminary established in neutral Switzerland.
Contemporary Europe is very different today than it was only fifty years ago. Many of our towns and cities resemble a small United Nations. Should our theological preparation be shaped only for our own national scene? Or should it rather take into consideration the cross-cultural reality of our present situation? IBTS students today widen their perspectives and broaden their vision beyond cultural and national boundaries.
As IBTS Prague faces the future may it continue to be a center to strengthen the “tie that binds us.” I can only wish for IBTS that the next sixty years are as effective as the first sixty years.
John David Hopper PhD
The Revd Dr David R Coffey
President of the Baptist World Alliance 2005 – 2010
I first heard the visionary story of the founding of IBTS from my college Principal, Dr George Beasley Murray, a former staff member of IBTS in the 1950’s. This story was a refreshing vision, in the cold war years of the early 1960’s, about a Baptist academic centre in war torn Europe which provided a place of reconciliation for the peoples of the nations.
My first visit to IBTS was not until the 1990’s for an EBF Missions Conference. This was probably one of the first truly representative gatherings of European Baptist mission specialists following the cataclysmic dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The papers delivered by the missiologists were stimulating, but the most memorable part of the conference was the testimonies of the East European representatives and their first hand accounts of the various ‘revolutions’ which were taking place in their countries. Forty years after the founding vision IBTS continued as a strategic meeting place for the nations.
As a member of the EBF executive I participated in the historic discussions that took place in the years 1994-96. I participated enthusiastically in the decision of the 1997 EBF Council to give IBTS Prague a central place at the heart of the EBF. As representative European Baptists we shared in a
spiritual commitment IBTS Jubilee commendation to be a Gospel salt and light people in the ‘new’ Europe and we re-imagined the role that IBTS could take in fulfilling this commitment.
I am delighted to honour those IBTS leaders and students who have gone before. By their founding vision and sacrifice they made it possible for us to celebrate this Jubilee occasion. I hold in the highest esteem the current Rector and his team who have consolidated skilfully IBTS as a multicultural community with a passion for spiritual community, academic excellence, and cutting edge mission.
My personal hope in this Jubilee Year is for a new generation of prayer partners and encouraging supporters who will emerge, to guarantee the journey of the Seminary into the ‘hope and the future’ that God has in store. I consider IBTS a jewel in the EBF crown and I want to see it sparkle with spiritual hope as it continues to serve as a gathering place for all nations!
David Coffey OBE
