Grace Theological Seminary - Xapis / Grace Yearbook (Winona Lake, IN)

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full-time Director of Public Relations for the Seminary, a post he retained until 1962. Already in 1945 the Board of Trustees had begun to plan a building to provide a permanent home for the school. The projected size of the building was expanded several times as the atten- dance of the Seminary (and later of the collegiate division) rose rapidly. The structure as finally completed in 1951 is designed to serve four hun- dred students, and is located on a campus which now comprises sixty acres at the east edge of Winona Lake. This new building was dedicated on August 30, 195t, and the service was highlighted especially by the presence of Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer. This was virtually Dr. Chafer’s last public appearance prior to his home-going almost exactly one year later, and he brought warm greetings and con- gratulations from his own institution, Dallas Theological Seminary. During the early 1950’s Grace Seminary ex- perienced two other major additions. One was the expansion of the collegiate division into Grace College, a four-year liberal arts Christian college, and the other was the emergence of several new, young seminary faculty members whose contribu- tions were to prove valuable and permanent. In 1953 a third year was added to the collegiate division program, and in 1954 a fourth year brought Grace College into reality. This is not the place to recount the history of the College, but a few remarks on its relationship to the Seminary will be of value. In the first instance, the chief mo- tive in the establishment of the College was to pro- vide a place where preseminary students might receive an adequate liberal arts preparation for theological studies, a preparation received in a Christian framework and with an emphasis conducive to channeling men and women into full-time ministry in the Brethren Church. This purpose has indeed come to fruition through Grace College. Already dozens of men and women have studied in both Grace College and Grace Seminary and gone forth into the pastoral or mis- sionary ministries of the National Fellowship of Brethren Churches. In addition, of course, the College’s simultaneous development in close proximity with the Seminary in subsequent years has contributed immeasurably, in untold ways, to the richness and depth of the Seminary’s own experience. Among the younger teachers who joined the faculty in the early 1950’s, ultimately to remain for a lengthy ministry, were Homer A. Kent, Jr., specializing in New Testament and Greek, James L. Boyer, also concentrating in New Test- ament and Greek, S. Herbert Bess, teaching He- brew and later other Semitic languages and Bib- lical archaeology, and John C. Whitcomb, Jr., specializing in Old Testament and later in apol- ogetics. These men, with widely varying back- grounds of academic training and experience, each had much to contribute to the deepening and broadening of the Seminary’s curriculum. Simi- larly, Donald Ogden, who was subsequently to contribute so much to the musical life and min- istry of both Seminary and College, appeared at this time as a teacher with great promise. The Free Methodist Building, Winona Lake, the home of Grace Theological Seminary for twelve years, 1939-1951.

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Thirty Years Two circumstances unite to make the publica- tion of the GRACE 1967 an appropriate occasion for rehearsing briefly the blessing and providence of God in the sustenance and growth of Grace Theological Seminary. First, the year 1967 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the organizing of the school. Second, this year’s annual is the first deal- ing with Grace Seminary separately from Grace College to be published since the collegiate divi- sion was begun in 1948. The Seminary has been supported throughout its existence especially by the prayers and sac- rifice of Brethren people, and therefore it seems fitting that it originated in a prayer meeting in the home of Rev. J. C. Beal, a Brethren pastor, in the summer of 1937, and began its operation the following October 4 in facilities provided by the Ellet Brethren Church of Akron, Ohio. Two full- time faculty members and thirty-nine students participated in that beginning. The faculty mem- bers were Dr. Alva J. McClain, as president and professor of Christian theology and apologetics, and Professor Herman A. Hoyt, as professor of New Testament and Greek. They received con- siderable part-time assistance in other teaching fields such as Old Testament, practical theology, and church history, especially from Professor Homer A. Kent, Sr., who was to join the full-time faculty in the autumn of 1940. Soon the school received from Dr. W. E. Bied- erwolf a heartfelt invitation to relocate at Winona Lake, Indiana. As president of the Winona Lake Christian Assembly, Dr. Biederwolf believed that such a move would by mutually advantageous, since the Brethren Church had been meeting in annual conference at Winona Lake for more than fifty years, and since the northern Indiana area could be expected to benefit much from the pres- ence of this conservative institution of theological education. The Free Methodist Publishing House arranged to lease the upper story of its building to the Seminary. Thus after two school years in Akron, Grace Seminary began the fall term of 1939 in these new surroundings. The quarters in the Free Methodist Building brought with them the fortunate opportunity to use the library of the The Faculty, 1947-48. Front Row: Homer A. Kent, Alva J. McClain, Herman A. Hoyt. Back Row: Paul R. Bauman, Harry Sturz, Robert D. Culver. Winona Lake School of Theology, which used the same facilities during the summers. The student enrollment in the years following the transfer to Winona Lake rose continuously, as the following figures indicate: 1940, thirty-seven; 1942, fifty-four; 1944, sixty-nine; 1948, eighty-five; 1949, ninety-nine; 1950, 144. In addition to this increase, in 1948 a two-year collegiate division was added, to prepare students with no college training for entrance into a Bachelor of Theology program in the Seminary. By 1950 there were fifty students enrolled in the collegiate division, bringing the total number of students at Grace that year to 194. During its first ten years, the seminary’s faculty was considerably augmented. Professor Homer A. Kent, Sr. became full time in church history and Old Testament in 1940. In the following years others, including John M. Aeby, Harry Sturz, and Robert D. Culver, served for various periods as full-time instructors in their respec- tive fields of competence. Mr. Aeby taught Christian theology during several terms when Dr. McClain was prevented by illness from fulfilling his academic responsibilities. Mr. Sturz served as seminary librarian and instructor in New Test- ament Greek for two years before answering the call time to a full-time pastoral ministry. Pro- fessor Culver was in charge of Old Testament and Hebrew from 1945 to 1951. During the years of Dr. McClain’s illness in the early 1940’s Professor Hoyt assumed the presi- dent’s administrative duties, and one year after joining the faculty as professor of homiletics and apologetics in 1947, Dr. Paul R. Bauman became executive vice-president. In the same year Dr. Hoyt was made dean, and in 1951 Dr. Bauman gave up all teaching responsibilities to become

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The curriculum was not only becoming more comprehensive. It was bound to become tougher. As the school entered its third decade the Th.B. (Bachelor of Theology) program, which had required only two years of college prepara- tion, was “phased out.” This tightening of en- trance requirements led to a temporary decline in enrollment, but as the school advanced into the 1960’s, it could look forward to a rapid rise in qualified applicants. On March 5, 1962, Dr. McClain requested re- tirement to take effect on August 31, 1962. This request was complied with, and thus Dr. Mc- Clain brought to a close twenty-five years of ded- icated teaching and leadership. In his honor the seminary building erected in 1951 was named “McClain Hall.” In the wake of Dr. McClain’s resignation, Dr. Herman Hoyt, who had been serving as dean of both College and Seminary, was chosen presi- dent, and separate deans were appointed for the two schools, Homer Kent, Jr. for the Seminary and E. William Male for the College. The past five years have witnessed many ad- vances in the seminary program. In 1963, Profes- sor Paul Fink joined the faculty to develop the fields of homiletics, practical theology, and Christian education. Professor Fink has been able to make significant strides in these departments. The alumni association was encouraged to con- tribute to the equipping of the homiletics depart- ment, and now top-quality tape-recorders are available to students for sermon-recording and sermon-listening. In 1967 the seminary student body has chosen for its fund-raising project a fifteen-hundred dollar video-tape system for re- cording and studying film-tapes of practice ser- mons. Other innovations in recent years have been full and definite Christian service requirements for all students, an annual Christian education confer- ence presented by students for area pastors and Sunday school workers, a pastor’s conference in which successful pastors present insights and methods to the seminarians, and a Palestinian archaeological field program for selected post- graduate students. This last development perhaps owes most to Professor John Davis, who joined the faculty of Old Testament and Hebrew in 1965. For some years the World Missions Fellow- ship in both the College and Seminary has spon- sored a week-long Fall Missionary Conference, presenting to both student bodies leading mis- sionary spokesmen from around the world. In more recent years the Seminary has seen its curriculum strengthened by Professor Paul Dowdy, who has added several helpful courses in missionary theory and practice. On the side of the physical plant, most of the building on the Grace campus in recent years has been in connection with the expansion of the Col- lege. The new library, to be completed in 1967, will be of tremendous benefit to the Seminary. The upper floor will be reserved almost exclusively for seminary use. The impact of the Seminary on the evangelical Christian world. As of June, 1966, almost eight hundred alumni have passed from its halls into far-flung positions of service. Well over one hundred of these men and women are currently serving in the cause of foreign missions. Many are teaching in theological seminaries, colleges, and Bible institutes in America and abroad. The total number of pulpits which have felt the in- fluence of men molded by training at Grace is impossible to estimate. Briefly reciting the history of Grace Theologi- cal Seminary can convey only the vaguest im- pression of what kind of a school it really is, of what atmosphere and attitude actually prevails within its halls and classrooms. As an institution whose chief purpose is the training of men and women for ministries within the National Fellow- ship of Brethren Churches, but whose doors are open to qualified men of evangelical Christian convictions, regardless of denomination, Grace provides openness of discussion along with a posi- tive presentation of Brethren distinctive beliefs and practices. Most importantly, Grace Theolog- ical Seminary continues to be known throughout the world as a school where Biblical orthodoxy, careful scholarship, and victorious Christian liv- ing are not divorced from one another. May it be so until Jesus comes again!