Asbury Theological Seminary President Timothy C. Tennent took office on July 1, 2009 and was inaugurated in November of the same year. He previously served 11 years as Professor of World Missions and Indian Studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. Prior to his work in Massachusetts, Dr. Tennent taught missions at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, where he was honored as teacher of the year in 1995. He has also ministered and taught in China, Thailand, Nigeria and Eastern Europe. Ordained in the United Methodist Church, he has pastored churches in Georgia, and preached regularly in churches throughout New England and across the country.
Dr. Tennent is the author of several books, including Building Christianity on Indian Foundations, (ISPCK, 2000); Christianity at the Religious Roundtable, (Baker Academic, 2002); and Theology in the Context of World Christianity: How the Global Church is Influencing the Way We Think About and Discuss Theology, (Zondervan, 2007). He is the co-author of Revitalizing Practice, which is about challenges to theological education in North America (Peter Lang, 2008). Dr. Tennent is also the author of a missiology textbook entitled Invitation to World Missions: A Missiology for the 21st Century, which was published in 2010. His most recent book, For the Body: Recovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuallity, and the Human Body was published in 2020 through Zondervan.
Dr. Tennent’s wife Julie (Myers) is an accomplished organist. She graduated from Gordon-Conwell with the M.E.M. degree in 1984 and has a B.Mus. in Organ from Westminster College. They have two children, Jonathan and Bethany.
Education: Dr. Tennent received his M.Div. in 1984 from Gordon-Conwell; the Th.M. in Ecumenics, with a focus on Islam from Princeton Theological Seminary; and did graduate work in linguistics (TESL) at the University of Georgia. He completed his Ph.D. in Non-western Christianity with a focus on Hinduism and Indian Christianity in 1998 at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is also one of four graduates from a new leadership development program. The mentor project in academic leadership was developed and supported by the Lexington Seminar (a Lily endowment).