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| Clear heads and passionate hearts |
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With Mike Ovey as Principal of Oak Hill, what will be the direction of the college over the next few years? We spoke to Mike and asked him about his path to faith, his ministry, and his hopes for the future of the college.
Tell us about your own family background.
My two sisters and I were brought up in a Christian, churchgoing family in Southampton. By the age of 13, I had more or less decided that Christianity wasn’t true. However, I kept going to church partly to keep my parents happy and partly because of a rather nice brunette in the youth club! Fortunately, we had a very faithful minister who kept on preaching the gospel and, at the age of 15, I realised I had made a dreadful mistake: that Christianity was true and that I needed to acknowledge Jesus as Lord.
I went to university as a committed but immature Christian, and it was there that I first became involved with the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, largely because a lot of my fellow law students at Balliol were also committed Christians and were members. When I left Oxford I went to London to study for the Bar and, given that I was sharing a flat with a number of people from St Helen’s Bishopsgate, it seemed natural for me to go along.
It was there that I really learned to study the Bible properly, and grew hugely and decisively in my Christian understanding. (Dick Lucas was the rector at the time.) While there, I also met Heather: we were leading a Bible study group together, and you can’t get more romantic than that!
I went on to train for the Anglican ministry at Ridley in 1988. After leaving college, I served for four years with Andrew Cornes at All Saints Crowborough and then, from 1995 to 1998, worked as a junior lecturer at Moore College, Sydney. (One of our children was therefore born in Tunbridge Wells while the other two were born in inner city Sydney.) From 1998 onwards, I have been at Oak Hill.
During the various stages of your ministry, what have you learned that has helped you prepare for this new role?
There have been a number of Christian ministers who have decisively shaped both me and my outlook. One of them is Dick Lucas, with his enormous commitment to the word of God and its power. I remember vividly some of his sermons and the way in which the Bible, when he explained it, addressed and answered the questions that as a modern Briton I had.
When working as a curate, I had the example of Andrew Cornes, my vicar. I learned a lot of things from him, but in particular he modelled a hugely sacrificial attitude towards his congregation. There were occasions on which Andrew would say that he had wept over the people in his charge, and that was a great demonstration of what pastoral care should look like.
While at Moore College, I was mentored in teaching doctrine by Peter Jensen, and I realised that this was a man of enormous intellectual gifts and real humility – his gifts really were used for the good of others and not to make himself look good.
And then there’s David Peterson. Over the years that he has been Principal here, he has demonstrated godliness, patience in adversity, bravery and a continuing trust in God.
I’d like to be a mix of all four when I grow up – because I will need to be!
How would you assess the current state of Oak Hill?
As I look at Oak Hill at the moment, I see visible answers to our prayers: large numbers of hugely impressive students with all kinds of abilities, who are taught by a faculty to die for. In that sense, God has been very good to us. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that we could do better, and in many ways that is the nature of a Christian institution: you look back and see the signs of God’s blessing, but you should also look forward and recognise that there are things that God would still have you do.
When I look at the college course at the moment, I see something that makes ministers of my generation green with envy. There is a seriousness about engaging with the text of the Bible, and that is marked out by the way that study of the original languages has become such a feature of the course. There is a theological depth from the Doctrine and Church History courses, and a real ability among our students to deal with some of the profoundest questions about God, human beings and salvation.
There is also a realism in our material on Church and World which I think equips people for evangelism in an increasingly hostile and uncomprehending culture.
What will be your particular emphases during your first couple of years as Principal?
I think the emphasis I shall inherit from David is of a college that wants to be radically biblical and I’ve no intention of doing anything other than pursuing that. Just as one of the mottos of the Reformation was semper reformanda, being radically biblical is going to involve us in the same dynamic process of trying to order more and more of our lives and thinking in line with the will of Jesus Christ. We’re going to go on being radically biblical.
I would say this, though: that we want to be a college which is known for its students growing in faith. Faith is in an interesting idea. It captures, in its biblical sense, both knowledge and trust. It’s something that involves both the head and the heart and so we want to be a college where people are grounded, confirmed and increased in what they know of God and his will through his word, but where their hearts and affections are correspondingly warmed towards him. Faith involves both.
It would be wonderful if our graduates took out into the churches where they are working that kind of faith: clear heads that know the truth and hearts that are passionate about Jesus and making him known.
Assuming that in God’s providence you are Principal for the next 10 years, how would you like the college to be regarded at the end of that time?
I would love the college to be an encouragement to faithful evangelical Christians around the world. An encouragement in many ways: encouraging them to be faithful in their own following of Jesus and their own proclamation of the gospel, encouraging them that Jesus really is true and that, whatever brickbats are thrown against the gospel by unbelievers from whatever quarter, God has provided adequate means for his people to stop the mouths of these objectors by honest and intelligent argument.
The corollary of that is that I would love the college to stand as a challenge to those who seem too ready to conform their faith to the demands of the world rather than the requirements of God. |
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