Interview by Ruth Ann Leduc · Faculté Jean Calvin · March 2021
Paul and Alison Wells on 40 years of service with Faculté Jean Calvin. Auto-generated transcript of the full interview from the YouTube captions. Light caption cleanups applied; treat as a reading aid, not a polished manuscript.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqnsWmyhJRY
On this site: Dr Paul Wells and Alison Wells: 40 years of service with Faculté Jean Calvin
paul and allison it's wonderful to be with you here today i'm sitting here in Aix-en-Provence and you're in liverpool england and uh having served 40 years at faculty here in the so could you just tell us a bit of your story and how the lord led you from living in england to teaching at a small reformed seminary in the south of france well our beginnings were at the university here in liverpool studying french of all subjects um we both got our degrees in french called it a masters in french spending a year in geneva
i spent a year in france so we both had a a taste of the french speaking world but what paul really wanted to do was to go to westminster seminary to study theology and so off he went and i joined him and uh he graduated in 1972 not very clear what he wanted to do but in the meantime uh Ed Clowney who was the pre the president of westminster seminary at that time got wind of a project that was let's see in preparation in france to start a new seminary the old pastors and some lay people wanted to start a seminary but
they didn't know anybody who could teach and Ed Clowney said well i do and came back and said to paul paul you have to go to france we go well what four and he goes well there's maybe a project and you could help okay so off we went um paul was asked by this uh small group of pastors and lay people to go and teach for a year and uh during that year he traveled around france with gene boyer teaching in different places including in ex and one year and during that one year the project went ahead a little bit but paul
knew that it wasn't a young man from liverpool who was going to get her faculty off the ground in france so he thought of one particular person who was pierre cultial he was a pastor in paris in one of the biggest churches in france and paul went off with gene boyer and knocked on his door and said uh mr pastor pierre would you be willing to come and teach at the faculty in Aix-en-Provence that doesn't exist yet and to his great surprise pierre paltial said yes and so uh in um february march 1974 peter jones came
to teach professor of new testament right and pierre cortier came as the future dean and as the professor of practical theology so in 1974 faculty was was launched wow but six students um had wanted to start the year before that so it had actually started in 1973 unofficially so that's basically how we ended up staying 40 years after having committed to one yes in fact uh we would have been totally surprised uh the first year we went to Aix-en-Provence if someone had told us you're going to stay 40 right but after the
first year they said well we like this what you're doing stay second year and then after the second year they gave me uh a contract and then of course the faculty was starting and the amazing thing was that this was before england was in the european union so you know we had to have a visa and all of that to go and work in france but it's all worked out and right the lord sort of all that very well right so god got you down to Aix-en-Provence and what were your primary roles at the seminary while you were there paul
well uh i think you can sum it up in three points first of all the teaching obviously year after year i had new students growing in number at the beginning very rapidly and with that teaching there was also lecturing responsibilities elsewhere in i'm preaching in various churches in france and in fact i ended up by being the president of the association of french evangelical theologians uh for six years between 2006 2012 so there was quite a bit of teaching work outside the seminary as well second work was publication
the faculty edits the revere for me i was editor of this for 30 years pierre marcel who gave the revere for me to the seminary and then uh there was the edition kerygma a little publishing branch of the seminary which publishes books like this uh calvin's commentaries confessions of faith so i was very much involved in publishing because i was responsible for the adcr charitma as well then the third aspect would be traveling because i did my doctorates at the free university of amsterdam when i arrived in x i had lots
and lots of contacts in holland so i went to holland regularly to represent the seminary to dutch churches fundraising and of course this led to uh more things like um writing a column in a dutch daily newspaper uh which i did for uh seven or eight years once a month then there were teaching responsibilities that opened up in other places africa uh eventually korea and finally indonesia so i was able to represent the seminary in korea and indonesia for instance which which was very fine it gave us access to students
and of course to donors for the seminary so that's about my responsibility great i think um certainly that we did um was published calvin's institutes in french um a new translation in 2010 and i did this with madame zelda betraying who was the academic secretary of the faculty and a former student but this was a new translation and i think this will be a kind of flagship publication which makes the seminary known for the coming years and well i've just finished a small well it's about the size of wayne grudem systematic
theology in french which will be published later in the year so i'm still involved in writing in french and this kind of project as well so that's a new uh new um french translate a french book on uh theology that you've written yes it's a systematic theology yes yes great good to know about thank you yeah so how do you see your ministry contributing to um building up and strengthening the church in france yes um it's difficult to notice impact uh in the church and pierre courtier when he arrived in in acts thought
that we were going to change the reformed church of france and reform it uh that didn't happen but the other people who came to the seminary pierre berto bill edgar peter jones uh myself we all thought that we were in for the long haul and i don't think the effect of the seminary's ministry will be seen uh in our generation very much with the idea that we were planting it for the future and preparing for the future church in france and of course we thought that it was very important to pray for the revival of the churches
in france and in a way the lord answered our prayer in a wonderful way because over the last 50 years in france a big factor in church life has been the growth of the evangelical movements and i think uh the the faculty at voson the evangelical faculty and our faculty we were two vital reference points for the formation of this evangelical movement which is now grouped together in the connect the national council of french evangelicals and there's been an explosion of evangelicals uh in france and i think uh it's difficult
but i think the faculty has had through publication through professors speaking in various places through work in the churches i think we've had an enormous impact on the french evangelical movement as such so i think uh that would be very positive yeah right well that is encouraging so um thank you for sharing with us even just briefly about and testifying to god's faithfulness to you and to the seminary over so many years and we look forward to seeing how god will continue to use the seminary um in the growth of
his church in france and also the how the Huguenot Fellowship can partner with Faculté Jean Calvin hearing x yes well we much much appreciate the partnership of the Huguenot Fellowship and of course allison didn't mention it because Ed Clowney was the founder of the Huguenot Fellowship and yes who had the vision for the work in france so it's his fault we were there it's an amazing legacy and the work goes on and we're so thankful thank you so much thank you bye
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