Annual Report Support Foundation St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute 2021

 Annual Report Support Foundation St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute 2021

 

Introduction

In 2021 the Support Foundation of  St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute continued doing its job of supporting the St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute in Moscow. 

Below you find the summary of the work in the year 2021.

 

Support Foundation and its Board

At regular and irregular moments members of the Board of the Foundation met bilaterally, in small circles or in an official Board meeting and exchanged views on several issues. By the beginning of December (6th of Dec.) a formal online meeting was held by the Board plus the advisor to the Board. 

At this meeting we received an update of the activities and conferences organised and the books published at St. Andrew’s during the year. 

We talked about the new contact of our treasurer with the representative of the Ann Orlov Rubinow Trust, Mr. Jeffrey Kantor, in the USA. The Ann Orlov Rubinow Trust will support our foundation with an non-earmarked annual contribution to strengthen our support of St. Andrew’s. We discussed the administrative and financial matters of our foundation and confirmed the review the constitution of our Foundation. The constitution is stated in Dutch, but a general translation is provided.

We welcomed a new member to the Board of the foundation, Willemijn Lammers, The Netherlands, who will become the secretary from 2022 onwards. She will succeed the present secretary Jaap van de Sar who was thanked by the chairman for managing the secretariate of the foundation for many years. Jaap, as one of the founders of the foundation was acknowledged as being one of the central and inspirational members at the heart of our board. Jaap will continue as a member of the Board.

The Board continues to consider the way it has worked as effective and efficient; as a consequence, we will continue this working style as much as possible.

St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute 2021

Despite corona, St. Andrew’s could almost act in a normal way:

• The summer school was very good. There were 25 participants. Encouraging was the participation and quality of the teachers.

• The conferences organised (see below) were very interesting although only a part of the participants could attend physically. The other part was present via the cyber. 

• The translation of books as well as the selling of books continued quite well this year. 11 new books were produced, among them the third edition of the new translation of the Bible in the home language for St. Andrew’s. 

An important observation is that, despite a general lack of cash (corona!), still quite some people take the decision to buy from the bookstore of St. Andrew’s. Obviously, there is a need for these books. People are more interested in spiritual life.

St. Andrew’s has to operate as a quite small organisation. The staff of the organisation is limited, but fortunately teachers and students from different places are supporting the work and participating in the events.

Financial Support

We are proud that we have been able to support the work of St. Andrew’s for quite some years now, also since good relations have been established between some agencies and the rector of St. Andrew’s. It bears fruit.

The work of the Support Foundation was focused towards the work of St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute. The cooperation with the Free University in Amsterdam was continued and the rector of St. Andrew’s worked as a guest researcher since the 1st of January 2021. 

During the year the following projects were realised:

• ‘Theology of Community: Theologically Rethinking Post-Modern Societies’ (28th of September – 1st of October in Bose, Italy (jointly with the Monastery of Bose) – partly physical, partly online

• ‘Religion and Social Justice’ on (10th –11th of December in Moscow (jointly with VU Amsterdam and Pokrovskie Vorota Cultural Centre). – partly physical, partly online.

• ‘A Feast in Time of Plague: Feast Images in Theology, Philosophy and Culture’, 11th Symposium in Memory of Natalia Trauberg (10th of April in Moscow)

• 26th St. Andrew’s Readings on Contemporary Theological Issues (12th of December in Moscow).

Finally, we would like to thank our donors as well as individuals, which have supported us in our work. It is an encouraging part of the support which could be generated for St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute. 

  

Official Information

Name:               Stichting Steun St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute

Address:           Bowlespark 32

                         NL – 6701 DS Wageningen

Telephone:       +31 (0)317 420900

E-mail:              willemijn@kpnplanet.nl  

Bank account:  NL76 RABO 0148567282

BIC:                  RABONL2U

Chamber of Commerce:   09182091

Fiscal number ANBI:       819357108

At the end of 2021 the following persons were members of the Board:

Mr. Wolfgang Lenz (Solingen, Germany) – chairman; 

Mr. Jaap van der Sar (Wageningen, The Netherlands) – secretary;

Mr. Fred Bogaards (Wageningen, The Netherlands) – treasurer;

Mr. Rüdiger Noll (Berlin, Germany) - member. 

Mr. Walter Lüssi (Zürich, Switzerland) – member.

Mrs. Willemijn Lammers (Wageningen, The Netherlands) – member. 

Mr. Alexei Bodrov, rector of St. Andrew’s Biblical Theological Institute, is advisor of the Board.

The members of the Board don’t receive any compensation for their work; they are committed to the work, which they all do on a voluntary basis. In general costs are covered by themselves.

Wageningen, 8th of April ‘22