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The Council of Advisors exists primarily to assist in developing and maintaining continuity in the GCU’s vision and activity. With an ever-changing student body, the Council of Advisors is an essential, foundational element of the GCU. Please meet the current advisors below.
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Jim Baynard-Smith
Jim Baynard-Smith, MA, is a full-time voluntary Christian worker with the NGO Initiatives of Change (IofC), mainly involved with Africa for 42 years. He supports reconciliation programmes in conflict situations, between and within Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Kenya. He is addicted to all forms of sport-following! With his wife, Sally, he is a St. Andrew's sidesman. Two married sons, Peter and Chris, work with a Relief and Development Agency and in Education for overseas students.
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Nishan deMel
Nishan is a founding member of the GCU, and currently a DPhil candidate and Lecturer at Oxford in Economics. He says: "The GCU is not a pietisitc group. It is connecting students and faculty in an exciting endeavour: to live-in the Christian Story in all that they think at University, so that they can live-out the Christian story in all that they do in the world."
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Hemara Earl
Description pending.
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Cathi Fredricks
Cathi is a programme manager for Health and Social Care at Oxford Brookes University. The motto 'All Truth is God's Truth' long ago inspired her to want to enable people to integrate faith and all of aspects of life, including the areas of study. Her personal interest of study is literary analysis of the Biblical text.
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Tom Houston
Tom Houston is a Scot, retired and resident with this wife, Hazle, in Oxford, England. They have a grown daughter and son and two grandchildren. He has served as a pastor (1951-1971) in Scotland and for twelve years in Nairobi, Kenya. He has served as the Chief Executive Officer with The British and Foreign Bible Society, (1971-1983) World Vision International (1983-1988) and The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. (1989-1994) and as Lausanne Minister at Large (1994-1998).
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Ard Louis
Dr. Ard Louis is a University Lecturer in Theoretical Physics. Until recently he taught in Chemistry at "the other place", where he was on the advisory council for the Cambridge Christian Graduate Society. Ard was born in the Netherlands, but raised in Gabon, central Africa. After his first degree at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), he did his PhD at Cornell University (USA) before heading to the UK. He is international secretary for Christians in Science and on the advisory boards of the Templeton Foundation and Arca Associates, an international development organisation. Ard is also working closely with Friends International to help support work with post-graduate students nationwide (see: for more details).
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Ken Barnes
Rev. Ken Barnes: Before moving to Oxford Ken combined a career as an international business executive with parish-based ministries both in the United States and England. In his “spare time” (whatever that is) he earned advanced degrees in Theology, Divinity and Philosophy from New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and the University of London (KCL). In early 2007, Ken happily surrendered his Blackberry (“free at last, free at last…”) and with the help of the GCU, and various local churches formed the Oxford American Mission (www.igniteuk.org); a ministry to U.S. scholars studying in Oxford. He is married to CCM recording artist Debby Barnes. They have three grown children, Bernadette, Christian and Julia.
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Leslie Marsh
Leslie Marsh, historian and theologian, specialising in the historical understanding of Jesus, welcomes everyone to a weekly open seminar ('THE GIST', The Historical Event - Getting It Straight Today) 8.00 pm. Thursdays at 12 Norham Road.
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Joe Martin
What connects Little Rock, Harvard, Princeton, L'Abri, computers, barn dances, ukuleles, & Oxford? Answer: Joe Martin. Joe delights in giving space & time (& lending books) to encourage students to think Christianly in their work. (He also loves helping them to have fun).
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More formally stated, the Council of Advisors fulfils the following functions for the GCU.
- To be a locally based team of visionary encouragers of the Oxford Graduate Christian Union (GCU).
- To meet periodically with the members (and especially the Committee) of the GCU, individually and/or as a Council, in order to learn about, encourage, and challenge them in dreams, ideas and plans for the exercise of Christian faith in their own lives, and for fostering the graduate Christian community in Oxford.
- To help ensure that the GCU maintains continuity through a capable new Committee with at least three office bearers (President, Secretary, Treasurer) appointed each year in accordance with the GCU constitution, early in May (for the following academic year), and entrusted with a vision for Graduate Christian Ministry.
- To always acknowledge and protect the identity and ownership and of the GCU as being a student/university-based and student-led organisation.
- To seek out and connect Christian faculty members in Oxford with the GCU in common vision and partnership.
- To work together as a Council to form ideas, produce position papers and engage Church leaders and other Christian leaders in Oxford towards a united vision and cooperative activities in connection with Graduate Christian Ministry.
- To reach out to Christians involved in Graduate Christian ministry beyond Oxford, both nationally and internationally, in establishing cooperation, connections, and ideas for Graduate Christian ministry.
- To encourage dialogue and engagement amongst Christian students and faculty for working out and living out the Christian world-view and faith (Romans 12:1-2) with regard to:?(a) The various subjects of study in the fields of Social Sciences, Humanities, Physical Sciences and Arts, and the vocations associated with such study. (b) Complex moral questions and choices that Christians can expect to face in these vocations and in the course of their lives.
- To encourage through the GCU, ‘conversations’ that creatively engage the University with the transforming reality, centrality, supremacy and challenge of the historical Jesus and what it means for Christians to believe in, love, and follow the Triune God revealed in the Bible (Colossians 1:15-20). [the Veritas Forum in US universities is an example]
- To encourage concern and activism amongst students for justice and mercy (Isaiah 58:6-7; Jeremiah 9:23-24; Micah 6:6-8) rooted in the Biblical partiality towards the marginalised, voiceless and oppressed (Psalm 82:2-4; Isaiah 1:17; Luke 4:17-21), particularly in countries and regions represented in the student body.
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