FOND MEMORIES OF PAUL HIEBERT FROM A GRATEFUL DISCIPLE

Steve Strauss, Director, SIM USA

As a young missionary in Ethiopia, struggling with the relationship between the Bible and culture, I was introduced to the writings of Paul Hiebert. Over the next years Paul's thinking on form and meaning, critical contextualization, and critical realism became the building blocks of conceptual highway that showed me the way through the tough missiological issues I was facing.

When I was completing my Ph.D. at TEDS I was thrilled that Paul was willing to serve on my dissertation committee. The day came for the oral defense. Everyone was there...except Paul. After waiting for about ten minutes, my major advisor sent someone to remind him that he was due to grill me on my thesis. Ever the absent-minded professor, Paul had gotten so engaged in his latest project that he had simply forgotten the time. But even though his day-timer might have been disheveled, his mind was certainly not. No sooner did he sit down than he began asking piercing, penetrating questions that demonstrated he understood the implications of what I had written better than anyone else in the room...including me!!

Paul continued to be a friend, mentor, and guide in ministry after I left TEDS, and his writings will be a staple of my own thinking (and that of my students!) for years to come. I spoke to him on the phone a week before he entered glory, and he couldn't wait to go Home. Thanks, Paul, for being an example of faithful servant-scholarship and of Christ-likeness right up to the moment of entering His presence.

Published in the special issue “A Memoriam of Paul G. Hiebert”

www.globalmissiology.org April 1, 2007