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—From Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality Through the Christian Year (Baker, 2004)

"Bob Webber pointed many evangelicals to the church fathers. But for Bob, reading the early Christian writers was not an end in itself. It was about equipping today's Christians for their encounter with a pagan society."

—David Neff, executive editor of Christian History & Biography and editor of Christianity Today

***

"Bob Webber never led a large organization, but he will stand as one of the most influential leaders of evangelicals in our time. Attend any emerging-church conference today, and you'll find that much of the discussion started 30 years earlier in Bob Webber's classroom. He made two great contributions:

1. He broadened our sense of church history. For many evangelicals, church history consisted of not much more than The Book of Acts, the apostle John on the Isle of Patmos, a loooong gap, and then the small-groups movement. Bob got evangelicals to read about and care about the diverse and glorious history of the church, especially its first five centuries.

2. He broadened our approach to church worship. Some evangelical church services offered little more than special music and an evangelistic sermon. Bob opened the minds and hearts of many leaders to see that worship gathers the people of God around Word and Table, that it is and can be far more rich than we had imagined.

"In college I took two of Bob's classes, and like all his students I enjoyed his charismatic lectures. More important, I changed—and a changed life is the only worthy measure of a great teacher. The fact that I was brought to faith through a Youth for Christ club in my high school and today am ordained in the Anglican Church of Rwanda (a set of circumstances that even I find bizarre) must in large part be attributed to the life-shaping influence of Bob Webber."

—Kevin Miller, Vice President of Resources, Christianity Today International, and a senior editor of Christian History & Biography

***

"I took Dr. Webber's historical theology class during my sophomore year at Wheaton College and it was one of my favorite classes. Right now I am pursuing a Ph.D in historical theology with an emphasis in Patristics and early Christian history, and I would say that the origins of this interest began in Dr. Webber's class. In other words, I owe much of the inspiration behind what I am doing right now to Dr. Webber."

—Jason Scully, graduate student at Marquette University

***

"I first encountered Robert Webber four years ago when his former student, Jason Scully, shared with me the book Ancient-Future Faith. I took Dr. Webber's book, and in true evangelical Christian fashion, read, analyzed, and discussed the work with two Christian friends. In Ancient-Future Faith, Webber introduced us to the early church and its worship practices and argued that, in our postmodern age, the time is ripe to revive the Classical Christian way. captionhough we tried to read the book methodically, internally we were excited and captivated as Webber pulled back the curtains to reveal our Christian heritage. It wasn't long before we found ourselves among the traditional Anglicans in our community, basking in the beautiful liturgy found in the Book of Common Prayer.

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