On Monday 5th November Grant Porter successfully defended his PhD thesis on Church Planting Practices among Muslim and Druze Communities in the Near East. Grant is the fourth IBTS Centre researcher to graduate in 2018 bringing the total of successful candidates to eleven since our relationship with the Vrije Universiteit was established and we relocated to the Netherlands in 2014. Grant is pictured below with family members following his defense.
In September two other researchers from IBTS Centre, Alex To (Canada) and Henrikas Zukauskas (Lithuania) also successfully defended their PhD theses. Alex’s dissertation charted the life and influence of Lam Chi-fung’s in shaping Hong Kong Baptist Life between 1950 and 1970. Henrikas presented a thesis exploring the role of the Holy Spirit in the God-World relationship in the theology of Yves Congar. Both were well received and commended for the thoroughness of their research.
In a different context altogether we heard of the success of Sergiy Sannikov in defending his post-doctoral habilitation thesis on the subject of “The Phenomenon of Water Baptism in the context of contemporary Baptist Sacramentology“. Sergiy’s success marks only the second post-doctoral habilitation dissertation in Theology the history of Ukraine. This is another important milestone in the development and recognition of the significance of theological studies in Ukraine.
Our congratulations to all four, not just for their personal success but also for their contribution to the scope of theological investigation and learning.
