Council of Advisors

The Council of Advisors exists primarily to assist in developing and maintaining continuity in the GCF’s vision and activity. With an ever-changing student body, the Council of Advisors is an essential, foundational element of the GCF. Please meet the current advisors below.

Ard Louis

Ard Louis is a Professor in the Department of Physics and leads an interdisciplinary group researching theoretical physics. He sits on the board of directors of BioLogos and has been involved with the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. He has spoken at the DCM conferences in Oxford and at other Oxford pastorate events.

Catherine Dilnot

Catherine Dilnot is a senior lecturer in accounting at Oxford Brookes University and a part-time PhD student at the Institute of Education, University of London, looking at fair access to elite universities and the professions.  She and her husband Andrew are members of St Andrew’s Church, Oxford, where she co-chairs the working group on children, young people and families.

 

Stuart Judge

Dr Judge is Emeritus Reader in Physiology, University of Oxford.

 

Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh, Methodist minister, historian and theologian, resources weekly sessions open to all postgraduates wishing to obtain a historical understanding of Jesus, Paul, and the book of Revelation.

 

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).

 

More formally stated, the Council of Advisors fulfils the following functions for the GCF:

 

1. To be a locally based team of visionary encouragers of the Oxford Graduate Christian Forum (GCF).

2. To meet periodically with the members (and especially the Committee) of the GCF, 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.

3. To help ensure that the GCF maintains continuity through a capable new Committee with at least three office bearers (President, Secretary, Treasurer) appointed each year in accordance with the GCF constitution, early in May (for the following academic year), and entrusted with a vision for Graduate Christian Ministry.

4. To always acknowledge and protect the identity and ownership and of the GCF as being a student/university-based and student-led organisation.

5. To seek out and connect Christian faculty members in Oxford with the GCF in common vision and partnership.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. To encourage through the GCF, ‘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]

10. 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.