Dear Colleagues:
I am honored and humbled to come to you in my new role as president of IBR. I have admired the significant work of my predecessors in this role, and especially Daniel Block who has been most helpful in passing on the baton to me and who continues to offer use full and gracious counsel regarding the various activities of the Institute. Dan has accomplished a lot of legal work for us that now permits us to advance the mission of IBR in better ways than was possible before and he deserves our heartfelt appreciation. One of my first observations in this new role is the number of capable persons serving in leadership on our Board. They are all very capable and dedicated workers and I am honored to join them in carrying out the mission of IBR. I will list them all below.
We welcomed some 30 new members to the IBR in Washington DC during our November annual business meeting. I have welcomed them all and I do hope that you will as well and continue to invite others to consider membership in IBR. I have been a member of IBR for thirty years now and have always enjoyed the fellowship as well as the academic stimulation from colleagues in our gatherings. We appreciate the important and stimulating papers presented in Washington DC by Klyne Snodgrass, Gary Knoppers, and Robert Stein as well as the capable responses to the papers from Craig Blomberg, Bill Arnold, and Craig Evans. Bruce Waltke was a special blessing to all as he shared the Word and his heart with us in our Sunday worship service.
We are working on several items already that will eventually prove quite useful to our work. As some of you have heard, we have relocated our website and are now trying to make it more attractive and also include more useful information for our members. If you have any information or suggestions to share with us about our website, please con tact Lynn Cohick and Ted Hildebrant and share it with them. They are working on it and we are especially grateful for Ted’s careful work here on getting our website up and running. It will take a while, but it is coming!
Below are the current officers of IBR and I hope you feel free to contact them concerning any issues or suggestions you would like to discuss.
Officers:
| President | Lee Martin McDonald, Acadia Divinity College |
|---|---|
| Secretary | Michael Holmes, Bethel University |
| Treasurer | Jeffrey Weime, Calvin Seminary |
| Program Chair | L. Daniel Hawk, Ashland Theological Seminary |
| Past-President | Daniel I. Block, Wheaton College Graduate School |
| Editor, BBR | Richard Hess, Denver Seminary |
| Board Members | Bill T. Arnold, Asbury Theological Seminary Daniel I. Block (as Past President), Wheaton College Graduate School Jeannine Brown, Bethel Seminary Lynn H. Cohick, Wheaton College Andy Johnson, Nazarene Theological Seminary Elaine A. Phillips, Gordon College Brent Sandy, Grace Theological Seminary Graham Twelftree, Regent University |
Thank you for your participation in the IBR and for telling others about the Institute. Each year we are blessed to have more biblical scholars join with us to advance biblical scholarship in the evangelical tradition. If you know of others who might be interested in IBR membership, please do not hesitate to contact Michael Holmes with their names.
Later in the year we will let you know more of the specifics about our the program and the participants scheduled for our November meetings in San Diego, but we can share with you now that Bishop N. T. (Tom) Wright will be leading us in the homily during our worship service scheduled for Sunday morning.
Blessings to you all in your journeys of faith and pursuits in biblical research,
Lee M. McDonald, President