Dear Friends,
In an age when the church has become progressively unmoored from its roots and unable to speak with conviction, the Davenant Institute is committed to re-integrating past and present and re-integrating Word and world.
Over the past few months, I have returned to this vision statement again and again as it became clear that the work of Davenant and my own sense of calling and mission in the world were inexorably intertwined—and I know I am not alone.
Like you, I have lived through the moral and intellectual collapse of once-vaunted institutions that used to command respect and allegiance. I spent the first six years of my life as an ordained minister working on my doctorate in systematic theology while serving in the Church of England’s diocese in Europe. While there, my wife, Liza, and I saw firsthand how years of neglect within the institutional church had left entire generations ignorant of the riches of the Protestant intellectual tradition. People who inhabited these great cities, who studied in these storied institutions, and who even were ordained into these historically faithful churches were often ignorant of or indifferent to the traditions they had inherited.
I discovered the Davenant Institute about six years ago. Since that discovery, I have come to see Davenant as one of the most encouraging, thought-provoking, and spiritually nourishing Christian institutions of our time. In the midst of the cultural confusion that began around 2015, I—along with the rest of the Christian world—was forced to rethink all sorts of fundamental assumptions about the culture, the Church, and, in many ways, the faith itself. Confronted anew with a decided shift in culture—what has been helpfully labeled as a shift from the “positive” to the “negative” world—I was searching for clarity and wisdom: as a son, a husband, a pastor, and a father. I wanted to discover how best to honor my patrimony, lead my church, shepherd my family, and understand myself in light of contemporary challenges to the faith I had sworn to uphold and defend. During that time, I dusted off old books that I had read long ago, reconsidered historical doctrines whose fire had grown cold, and providentially stumbled on the work of the Davenant Institute. Through the work of Davenant, the received wisdom of the Protestant church helped to guide, to equip, and to strengthen my hand for the plough.
Would you please consider a year-end gift to continue the work of the Davenant Institute? We are committed to intellectual and historical retrieval, not only as an academic enterprise but also as a missional one. God has given each generation leaders of wise counsel and insight for the sake of the next. We stand in the line of transmission as grateful recipients and faithful stewards, renewed and encouraged by the wisdom of the past for the work of the present: for the upbuilding of the Church for the sake of the world.
The Rev. Dr. Jady Koch
President of the Davenant Institute