Fuller’s Dean Scott Sunquist Installed at Special Service

A special service celebrating the official installation of Scott W. Sunquist as Fuller’s Dean of the School of Intercultural Studies was held Tuesday, October 2 at First United Methodist Church of Pasadena.

“We celebrate today a new source of creative, energetic leadership in the person of Scott Sunquist,” Fuller President Richard J. Mouw said in his welcome address to an audience of Fuller students, faculty, staff and family members.

Sunquist’s four children read Scripture passages from Deuteronomy, the Psalms and Revelation. The church was filled with music as the audience was led in worship to sing a chorus that proclaimed “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”

“It is our purpose today on this august gathering to celebrate your calling to lead the school in the next phase of its mission,” Provost and former Dean of SIS C. Douglas McConnell said.

He charged Sunquist to build on the foundation laid by past leaders of SIS by being faithful to the calling he received from God; rekindle in Fuller a passion for evangelism and church planting; lead the school in renewing its commitment to critical missiological reflection through teaching, publishing and actively participating in the global conversation; and to embrace the mission to make all the diverse resources of Fuller seminary to all students.

After a series of questions for Sunquist as candidate for dean of SIS, Fuller Trustee Clifford Penner declared him “duly installed as dean of the School of Intercultural Studies.” Later, prayers were offered by the deans of the School of Psychology and Theology and associate dean of the School of Intercultural Studies.

“In three years we’ll celebrate 50 years of an institution, which I believe has been more influential in global mission than any other single institution in the last 50 years,” Sunquist said in his installation address titled “Christian Existence: Mission as Participation in Christ.”

In his message, which included an endorsement for students to attend SIS classes, Sunquist reaffirmed the school’s purpose to be more effective in reaching those who have not yet heard the gospel and to plant churches in un-churched areas, but with new ideas on what it means to reach others.

“Innovation in mission today will require technical approaches and statistical studies,” Sunquist said, “But the heart of innovation will now be the transformation of human hearts. The world needs little Jesuses more than it needs professional missionaries and technical scholars…This is not a call for less academics but for more vigor and consistency.”

Sunquist said that his wish for Fuller SIS students is that they will “become embedded in godless communities inhabited by the unloved” and to not stop “praying and fasting and loving and serving until they see the total conversion of these cultures or until Jesus returns.”