“I’m never more myself when I am most in Christ”, “the resume of a man is not written on papers but on the face of his wife” are the two teachings that Jim taught us which have a lasting impact on my life. Thank you Jim, for your joyful exile as a “worldly Christian.”
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Janet Taylor
1982, Regent College, University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, Canada
I was a summer school student and was taking my first course from Dr. Houston (and yes, he was hard to follow at times in his lectures because he bounced all over the place!). Anyway, we had coffee together and he heard my story of being the Prodigal Daughter. And with my somewhat reluctant permission, he arranged for me to speak in chapel and share my story. This felt like a very vulnerable thing to do as divorce was still high on the Sin List in the Evangelical world. But I did it and I discovered that people were impacted by my sharing my story so candidly. And that became one more step in my healing journey. Regent became a major part of my spiritual formation journey for the next several decades. Thank you, Dr. H for giving me a kick-start!
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So sorry for your loss while at the same time celebrating a wonderfully bountiful legacy. My condolences and thoughts are with you.
My first experience of spiritual direction was with Dr. Houston while I was a student at Regent. This was a seed sown into me becoming a spiritual director and supervisor, a trainer of spiritual directors, and facilitator of spiritual formation and retreats.
Much gratitude along with continued prayers for you and yours, Dianne Mantyka
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I’m so grateful for Jim’s advice, delivered in the car while waiting at traffic lights, when he was driving me into downtown, to “look for God’s initiative in everything that happens in your life”.
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Dr. Houston’s words and presence have continued to work their quiet magic in me, even years and decades later. I have been deeply blessed through his transforming friendship with God, and through the depth and authenticity of the life he lived.
Thank you, Jim, for helping me move toward becoming more real before God.
With deep gratitude and prayers for peace to Dr. Houston’s family. Your generosity in sharing him with so many has been a blessing to us all.
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Dr. Houston was part of my first experiences at Regent back in 1980, as I was assigned to his advisee group. I tried to attend today's service but ended up fighting with the bus system until after 3 p.m. -- without reaching First Baptist! It then took until after 5 p.m. to get home. This was my own fault, as I didn't call for directions before leaving.
It looks like the service was wonderful, based on the outline; I deeply regret missing the event, but wish to express my sympathies to all who knew and admired James M. Houston.
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A very great and humble man whose life pointed to Christ. Condolences.Tim & Margaret CunninghamPs. 17:15
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I haven’t had the privilege of personally knowing Dr Houston, but from what I know of him as a fellow First Baptist Church member, he was truly a remarkable man of God, beloved husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather, and friend to so many, and graced so many lives in his journey. The memorial service was a wonderful tribute of beautiful joyous memories, and I was honored to be part of this celebration of his life.
I pray God’s comfort and blessings on all the family and friends as you grieve this loss and miss him.
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My heart goes out to all close family, and members of a wider and equally wonderful “family” of friends grieving the loss of dearest Jim and celebrating his remarkable life and legacy. I count myself among very many whose lives are touched and transformed by the gift of Jim’s generous friendship, prophetic insight and tangential thinking that became the vehicle for a surprising return to the Throne of Grace and new awareness of God’s voice of personal intervention. Jim, you remain treasured by many generations and missed by all.
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We are extremely GRATEFUL Jim became a friend with Jesus so we could become friends with Rita and him…and subsequently thru Our Great God we were led together as friends to begin the CS Lewis Institute, now celebrating 50 years of fruit around the world for His glory!!! We thank God how our lives were transformed like many others by Jim’s faithfulness to the Spirit of God’s leading. Our love, Jim and Lorraine HISKEY
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Jim and Rita touched so many people in so many different ways. Our sincere thank you to the family for sharing the lives of Jim and Rita over so many years. Our sincere condolences to you on Jim's passing. May you know the Lord's comfort.
We first met Jim and Rita on the first night we arrived in Vancouver to discern if Regent was where we were called to study. Rita made up our room and cooked a lovely meal. Jim sat us down, one by one in his study, and asked us questions. I was dazzled with new words and new concepts at his evening lecture. I remember his words in the car " Truth is relational".
Seventeen years later, we were in their apartment celebrating Jim's 90th birthday. We let them know we were expecting our first child. Jim told us the importance of choosing a child's name carefully, and unexpectedly went on to tell us the story of their son Jonathon. Little did he know that this was the same name we felt the Lord had given us for our first born. It was a powerful moment, one of so many the Lord has blessed his people with through the hospitality of heart offered by Jim and Rita.
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I remember Jim with much warmth and gratitude. He was indeed both a humble and a remarkable man. I loved his great sense of humour and his joyful laugh as well as his quiet attentiveness and wisdom in private conversation.
His great hope that Regent would be a place where we, as students would be thoughtful and competent in our faith and be transformed was, I sincerely believe, realised so wonderfully, and I’ll be ever grateful for Jim (and Rita’s) example and teaching, which have influenced my life and ministry greatly in the years since.
With heartfelt thanks, and prayers for the your whole family, Andrea (Penglase) Harwood - (Regent 1997-99) from Australia, though now Wiltshire, UK
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Dear Houston family,
I arrived at Regent from Virginia in 1989 as an eager and hurting student and my conversations with Dr. Houston were life-giving. As professor, many of his lectures were wonderfully profound and spiritually meaty and we students would scribble notes as fast as we could, then walk out of the classroom commenting to each other that we understood perhaps half of what we had just heard. My friend Mary and I joked that we needed to publish a “translation” of Dr. Houston as soon as we figured it out. He was a teacher to the end…I even took a few notes during the beautiful memorial service! Thank you so very much for the sacrifices you made so he could spend time loving us and for broadcasting the service to his world of friends.
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To Jim’s family- and particularly the Crosby’s-a remarkable man, and truly a life well lived. Sincerely, David and Barbara Chalmers.
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Thank you for making the memorial service of Dr. Jim Houston available for those of us who could not be with you in person today. It was a beautiful service reflecting so much of who Jim was in his life here on earth.
I met Jim as a student at Regent College in 1986 in his class, "The Christian Spirit." Through his classes and especially his assignments, I felt a special call into the contemplative life and so into the growth of my spiritual relationship with God. Over the years I found myself continuing to walk this road of discovery with Jim through his books and occasional connecting. I have a special memory of a lovely visit with him and Rita in Oxford on the green of Wycliffe College where I was taking Regent summer courses in 2001. After his 100th birthday he e-mailed me to encourage me in my ministry of teaching parish nurses thus demonstrating his personal interest in his students.
The characteristic in Jim that stands out for me throughout this journey is his humility. I could hear this trait underlying all that was said about him this afternoon. His eyes were on the Lord who had called him rather than on his own accomplishments.
May all Jim's loved ones be blessed with peace and joy as we remember him.
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What a joy to be able to join in the memorial service from Boston. Jim's voice was the prophet/pastor/spiritual director I needed coming into Regent from some ministry burnout. His weekly early morning men's group shaped my years there, and my life. Thank you Houston family for the service today and the way you brought us into your lives!
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My prayers for the Houston family in their loss . May you continue to treasure the beautiful legacy of your parents.
Our families were friends back in Granville Chapel days, and when I was at UBC in the IVCF group, I was one of those at the Sunday Lunches. Those deep conversations were foundational in my Christian walk. I remember the warmth of both your parents, and the laughter and love shared as well as the deep conversations. Dr Houston (not sure I ever called him Jim - just that generation!) spoke at my Aunt Grace McPhee’s memorial service, and captured her wonderful servant heart in his words. (She housed many Regent students in her home over many years, and loved them like they were her own sons.) I’m grateful we have Jim’s writing to continue to learn from him. The service was a beautiful tribute to your father and grandfather - I’m sure lives were touched by your words as they have been by his faithful walk over so many years! Blessings, Jane McPhee
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Doug Harder
1990, Regent College, University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, Canada
I remember when I first took a course from Jim Houston at Regent on Spiritual Formation. I had never heard anyone speak like him, and in those first weeks I just kind of sat their in awe, unable to grasp all that he was talking about. When I shared with him my inability to master all the content, he assured me I should just take the bits God impressed on my heart and let the rest go. As the weeks went by, I was overjoyed with the insights into spiritual life in God that came from the Desert Fathers, and many saints I'd never heard of before, who lived and walked with God long before the Reformation. Jim set me on a trajectory of digging deeper into life with God than I had ever imagined possibe. Through all these years since, wherever I have gone in the world, I remain grateful for those months together with Jim Houston at Regent College. My life has been deeply impacted, and still today I'm more in love with Jesus than ever before.
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Dr Houston befriended me when I arrived at Regent as a very young 20-year-old away from home for the first time. That friendship encouraged and sustained me throughout my time in Vancouver— as Jim and Rita took me into their home during my second year there. I am so grateful for Dr Houston’s insights and his prayers, and I thank God for His faithfulness through the Houston family. May God hold you all in his everlasting arms especially now in this time of grief.
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Thank you Dear Jim Houston for seeking to ‘fan the God spark in everyone you met’
Mae.
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Thank you for the gift of joining from Boston. Two of my favorite Dr. Houston quotes: "Haven't you had enough for one day, my dear?" and one that many will recognize "We know ourselves in the face of the other [for good or ill]." Rita... as I was a young mother and a student, she was a breath of fresh air and warmth and realism. I learned the "right" way to pour tea, to love scripture anew with simple bible study, and wisdom imparted while gardening, because that is how I figured out how to spend time with her. Thank you, Houston family, for sharing your parents and grandparents with us. We receive it as a gift of generous and sacrificial love... you, their grounding, their deepest love next to Jesus.
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My deepest condolences to all of Dr Houston’s family. I was a geography
student at Hertford from 66 to 70. I went on to a career as a geography teacher and have much to thank Jim for. I heard of his passing with great sadness. What a moving memorial service.
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Few people have had the experience and privilege, as I have have, of benefiting from one hour tutorials with Jim. Teachers and lecturers instruct students. In preparation for a tutorial I prepared an essay on a mutually-agreed subject., which I read in the tutorial. Jim never instructed me or criticized me. He listened to me and we engaged in constructive discussion. His style was to open the door for me to realize what was within me.
I particularly remember that after reading one essay on "Transport and Entropy", he asked me if I had written it, similarly as a tutor may do today in the age of AI. Of course, I had, but Jim had stimulated me to excell myself.
I am sure that Jim was influential in me being allowed to seaminglessly move from BA to DPhil and migrate to Canada.
May he rest in peace.
My condolences to his family.
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