Paul D. Wolfe
December 2020
“Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy...”
It’s that most wonderful time of the year, when our hearts and minds turn to the announcement of good news.
And as the President of the Huguenot Fellowship, I get to make an announcement here!
I’m thrilled to report that the governing board of Faculté Jean Calvin (FJC) has officially named the seminary’s professorship in Apologetics “The William Edgar Chair of Apologetics.” Hand in hand with that happy step, we at the Huguenot Fellowship have now created a special fund which will be devoted to supporting the Edgar Chair at FJC for years to come. This transatlantic partnership of our two organizations fulfills a desire to honor a dear brother and faithful servant who has been vital to both!
Over the course of a distinguished, decades-long career of teaching and writing, Bill Edgar has labored faithfully and fruitfully in the field of Christian Apologetics. Bill taught at FJC for eleven years before moving his family to the United States in 1989 to teach at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. In the thirty-plus years ever since, he has continued to be a devoted supporter of the seminary in Aix: serving as the President of the Huguenot Fellowship until 2019, as well as traveling frequently to FJC to teach there in person. Bill is now an internationally-renowned expert in his field, and a beloved member of the extended FJC family. To top it off, he and his wife Barbara have lovingly lived out together the faith he has taught and defended all these years, by their warm hospitality and gracious encouragement of countless friends and strangers around the world.
The theological discipline known as “Apologetics” involves the explanation and defense of the Christian faith in a world in which that faith is sometimes regarded with misunderstanding, or skepticism, or opposition...and sometimes all of the above! Apologetics brings together a wide range of subjects and interests—everything from theology to philosophy to popular culture to interpersonal relationships—in order to answer questions concerning Christianity and to show its truthfulness. Because Bill has devoted his life to this worthy calling, putting his name on the FJC chair of Apologetics was an irresistible fit—especially since he once occupied that professorship himself. This means that FJC Apologetics Professor Yannick Imbert, who once studied under Bill at Westminster, is now the first occupant of the Edgar Chair. Parfait!
We’ll have more to say about this new initiative in the months to come. But we wanted to get the word out here at the close of 2020. Like I said, it’s the time of year for good news. We couldn’t wait.
Want to get involved?
Then www.huguenotfellowship.org is the place to go!
There you’ll find a link (“Announcing the William Edgar Chair of Apologetics”) where you can learn more, make an initial contribution (including by stock donation), and sign up for email updates. We’d love to keep in touch with you via email and save some trees.
Our goal is to raise up to $1,000,000 over a multi-year campaign. This would enable us to contribute annually a portion of the salary for the Apologetics professorship. Now that we’ve hit the ground running, we should be able to support the Edgar Chair in this way beginning early in 2021. As I’m sure you can imagine, the events of 2020 have put FJC in a tight financial spot, so this new campaign presents us with a golden opportunity to keep the seminary going at a time when its message is so needed.
Please consider joining us as we honor our dear friend and seek to advance the cause of truth that he himself has served so well for so long.
Oh, and Merry Christmas too! Good news of a great joy, indeed.
Yours,
Paul D. Wolfe, President
The Huguenot Fellowship