Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 12:35 AM
As Lilian’s former doctoral mentor at Southern Baptist Seminary I cannot help but now reflect on her important contribution to the church and the Asian Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary Consortium and our conversations over the years. We often talked about the role of women in the church and the seminary both during her time at Louisville and even this year when she visited us in Tennessee and as we planned to return to Singapore in July to teach students there and counsel her doctoral faculty concerning supervising graduate students on thesis writing. She was always planning for the development of others.
When she learned of her immanent surgery she asked us to postpone our coming until she would be well and could care for us. Now, however, she has gone to be with Jesus who cares for us all. But she has left a legacy and we need to remember that legacy. As Lilian and I often reflected on her role as a woman leader and on the difficulties that my wife and my daughters-in- law have also encountered in the church, I can not help but thank the trustees in Asia who gave her the opportunity to become the President of the ABGTS consortium. I know she did not disappoint you in her representing of you as an effective leader who could keep in her heart all the seminaries in Asia and present your case in North America as well. She was bold, humble and convincing in her representations, a great model of leadership. And she loved people and she loved her work. But she was always conscious of the frailty of her life. God grant us such a wholesome approach to reality. David Garland (the Interim President at Baylor University), who also knew her as a doctoral student, has written that she was a Baptist “saint.” That is highest honor that any one can pay to another Christian. But we must remember that we as humans often treat dead people as saints but fail to recognize their roles or recognize their significance while they are with us.
May we take the model of this “Woman of God” as a challenge to all of us and treat women with both respect and honor and provide them significant places of church service in the future.
Cordially in Christ
Jerry Borchert
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