George and Manya Egerton
"We trust Regent will become a training centre for leaders that will replace our generation. We want to see that sustained."
Few know that the 110-year-old Steinway D concert grand piano in Regent College’s chapel was rebuilt and is maintained by a long-time friend of the College. This is one of the many ways that Dr. George Egerton and his wife Manya have helped Regent become not just an academic community but also a community of worship.
In 1972, George and Manya moved from St. John’s, Newfoundland, so that George could teach history at UBC. They soon developed friendships with several Regent faculty and staff, including Ward and Laurel Gasque and Carl and Betsy Armerding. Over the years George and Manya have been encouraged by much that has happened at Regent, but especially by Regent’s contributions to Anglicanism through the Anglican Studies Program, and by the importance Regent places on caring not just for the minds of Christians, but for their whole persons.
Manya sees pastoral care and prayer ministry as critical to the life of the church, and so she values the teaching and writing of instructors such as Maxine Hancock, Susan Phillips, and Marva Dawn.
“Developing a theology of relational wholeness is critical in a culture that encourages the fracturing of the self,” she says. “The Regent faculty do a good job of encouraging sexual and relational wholeness as understood in the traditional Christian and biblical teaching.”
George agrees. “We’ve put Regent in our wills because when seminaries are becoming wastelands, we want to see training that is for the ‘one holy, catholic and apostolic Church’… and we trust Regent will become a training centre for leaders that will replace our generation. We want to see that sustained.”
