Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

tings of the EBF Councils in Varna, Bulgaria (1991); High Leigh, England 16 (1992); Kishinev, Moldova (1993); Tallinn, Estonia (1994) and Vinodolosky, Croatia (1997) that the then leader of the German Baptist Union, Eckhard Schaefer, described issues around IBTS as like being on a ‘slalom ski course’. 17 With hindsight it can be seen that countless difficult and complex issues were affecting European Baptist life and IBTS as an institution all at one time. Nevertheless, throughout it all, the Trustees of IBTS sought to hold true to the Sadler vision of a quality academic theological programme to equip pastors, missionaries, and seminary teachers for a rapidly transforming European and Middle East 18 mission reality. How this was to be achieved proved a challenge. Initial conversations before moving to Praha included detailed discussions with the Protestant or Evangelical Faculty of the historic Charles University. 19 The Protestant Faculty had offered an enhanced version of the University of Zurich arrangement, whereby a student completing a five-year Master’s degree validated internally by IBTS to appropriate upper quartile standards could be admitted to the Faculty doctoral programme, with a supervision team which could include an IBTS faculty member who had a full doctor of philosophy degree from a suitable institution. 20 What was clear to many in the EBF was that such a classic requirement of a five-year Master’s level degree covering all the traditional departments in theology with a heavy accent on learning Biblical languages no longer fitted the missional reality of the new Europe. The emerging free national Unions of disliked the policies of the Board and had a distrust of IBTS, see Paul Pressler, A Hill on Which to Die (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1999). 16 For accuracy, though the EBF Council was hosted by the Baptist Union of Great Britain, which has its national resource and offices in Didcot, the actual venue for meetings was High Leigh in Hertfordshire and not Didcot, as stated by Woodfin, p. 209. 17 Woodfin, p. 312. 18 Though the owners of IBTS are the European Baptist Federation (EBF), the member bodies of EBF in the 1990s stretched from North Cape, Norway to Egypt in northern Africa and from the Azores to the Pacific including countries such as Turkey, Israel, Armenia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. 19 Charles University is one of the oldest in central Europe, founded in 1346 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. After the collapse of communism in the Velvet Revolution of 1990 three Faculties of Theology - Catholic, Hussite and Protestant - were readmitted to the University having been ejected after the Second World War by the communist government. 20 This agreement was signed by the Dean of the Faculty and the Rector of IBTS, Dr John David Hopper. It is held in the archives of IBTS, Baptist House, Postjesweg, Amsterdam. Jones, A ‘Mistake ’ which Became a Triumph