21 August 2012, Bracknell, United Kingdom [Helen Pearson] The Newbold College Alumni (1970-85) Reunion began quietly with Vespers in Moor Close Lounge on Friday 17th August. Before, during and after Vespers and Sabbath morning services there were sidelong glances at faces and furtive looks at name badges as Newbold College alumni and staff who hadn’t seen for over 30 years struggled to recognise faces. The atmosphere mounted throughout the day to a banquet with a riot of reminiscences on Saturday night. The weekend came gently down towards earth on Sunday morning as alumni shared brunch and left for the four corners of the globe from which they had come just for this weekend.
The Friday night Vespers speakers, Drs Harry Leonard and Mike Pearson used teachers’ stories – gospel teaching stories and their own – to focus on the importance of our asking good questions and to think about why we’re asking them. ‘Be prepared,’ they said, ‘to examine your motives for questioning and then to be disturbed, shocked even by the answers.’ Once the questions are answered – and many cannot be – ‘Go and live the answer,’ they said. ‘An unlived answer is no answer at all.’
The honoured guests for the weekend were Kari and Jan Paulsen whose time at Newbold, when Dr Paulsen was a Lecturer in Theology and later principal, coincided with the student years of many alumni present. Dr Paulsen subsequently went on through various offices to become Seventh-day Adventist world church president until 2010. But it was as Pastor Paulsen that he preached twice on Sabbath morning. He, too, talked about the rights of people, young and old, to ask questions. ‘You don’t have to park your intelligence outside before you enter the church,’ he said. He recognised that people’s freedom to respond to the invitation of Christ and ask questions means that many Newbold graduates, ’park Jesus somewhere along their life’s journey.’ But that is not the end. ‘God’s most important gift to us and ours to each other is ‘the gift of a second chance’,’ he concluded. Hear the full sermon online at http://vimeo.com/47873353
On Sabbath afternoon, alumni gathered for a cream tea in sunlit Moor Close gardens and in the evening 115 people attended the banquet in Salisbury Hall. The live-streamed programme ably MC’d by Victor Hulbert included testimonies to Newbold’s power to change lives, email and Skyped messages from absent contemporaries, pictures and reminiscences, interspersed with updates on Newbold today. Friends called in from the USA and Australia to hoots of recognition from those in the Hall and a variety of allegations and counter allegations about responsibility for various student pranks in the 70s and 80s. Erik Somme described the manoeuvrings of the ‘ox ‘in Moor Close and Bryan Webster knew the details of how the bucket of water meant for a fellow student fell instead on Dr Leonard.
This long-awaited Newbold Reunion was voluntarily organised by Director of Student Life, Pastor Henrik Jorgensen, a 1982 graduate. He and his army of student and alumni helpers were left in no doubt as to the gratitude of the participants for what the reunion and their time at Newbold had done for them. Taste more of the flavour of Newbold and the weekend at https://www.facebook.com/groups/195239577242347/
[tedNEWS]
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Reunions always end with calls for more. Anyone who wants to be involved in organising an alumni weekend should contact: [email protected]
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