Our Teacher: Jim Edwards

Our Primary Teacher:

Jim Edwards letter of introduction to Pathfinders. I am grateful to the leadership team of Pathfinders for inviting me to succeed John Goodale—and a long line of illustrious teachers—to become the lead teacher in Pathfinders.

            By way of self introduction, I was born and raised in Colorado Springs, where I attended Cheyenne Mountain High School, after which I attended Whitworth University, and Princeton Theological Seminary.  While at Princeton, I married Mary Jane Pryor in 1968, who is also a Colorado Springs native.  After Princeton, Janie and I went to Switzerland for year where I studied theology at the University of Zürich.  From Switzerland we returned to the States where I served as Minister of Students at First Pres from 1971-78.   While on staff here, our two children, Corrie (1973) and Mark (1975), were born, and I earned a Ph.D in New Testament from Fuller Theological Seminary in California.  In 1978, I left the staff to become Professor of Religion at the University of Jamestown in North Dakota (1978-1997), after which I became Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington (1997-2015).  In 2023, Janie and I returned to Colorado Springs and began attending First Pres.

            I have been blessed with many seminal and lasting influences in my life.  These include Young Life (both as a high schooler and college student, when I lead a large Y.L. club); skiing and mountaineering; life-long study of Biblical languages (Greek and Hebrew); research sabbaticals at the universities of Tübingen, Greifswald, and Berlin in Germany, Tyndale House in Cambridge, England, and the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton; participation in church visitations to communist East Germany prior to the Fall of the Wall in 1989; and leading tours of both students and church groups to Germany, Israel, Turkey and Greece.  Above all, and through all the foregoing interests and influences, Biblical scholarship has been the strong and wonderful north star that has oriented my life.

            Janie and I are both looking forward to joining the Pathfinders class and serving according to the gifts that God has given us.