DR. THOMAS L. ROBINSON | Senior Minister
About Us
Thomas Robinson is one of the elders and the senior minister
of our congregation. He is the husband of Sonja Hals Robinson,
a school administrator at the Buckley School here in New York,
and is the father of three: Johanna, Alexandra, and Thomas.
The Robinsons have been part of the congregation since 1979
when they moved to Manhattan from Cambridge, MA, and Tom became
a teacher at Union Theological Seminary near Columbia University.
There Tom taught graduate courses in New Testament interpretation,
ancient Greek, early Christian history, and Greco-Roman culture
and literature.
During the nine years that Tom taught at Union Seminary, he became a deacon of the Manhattan Church and education director. In 1993, he became one of the elders of the congregation and in 1994 began serving as associate minister with Jim Petty. In 1996 when Jim retired, Tom was ordained as senior minister.
Tom was born in Beaumont, TX in 1945 to Quinton and Lena Robinson. His father was the minister of the Church of Christ in nearby Port Neches, TX at the time. Tom grew up (with four siblings) in various towns in Texas and Montana where his father served as minister. Meanwhile, Sonja Hals, his future bride, grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada near the tiny town of Bengough. Neither of them ever imagined that they would become denizens of far off New York City.
 Tom went to college at Abilene Christian College (now University) in Abilene, TX where he earned a B.A. in Bible and an M.A. in New Testament and Patristic Greek. During his college years, Tom began preaching for churches first in Voca, TX (beginning June, 1964) and then in Cottonwood, TX (1965-69). During these years, Tom was privileged to study with some of the most outstanding Bible scholars of the Churches of Christ including Abraham Malherbe, Everett Ferguson, Thomas Olbricht, J. W. Roberts and many others.
Tom and Sonja met at ACC in early 1968 and were married in Bengough, Saskatchewan on December 31 of that year. Yes, it was a cold, cold day for a wedding—18 degrees below zero--but they knew their hearts were very warm. They both graduated from ACC in 1969, Sonja with a B.A. and Tom with an M.A. They moved that year to Princeton, NJ where Tom began three years of study at Princeton Theological Seminary. During those years Tom served as the minister of the Liberty Street Church of Christ in Trenton, NJ. Here he began learning in earnest what it meant to preach in an urban setting in the Northeast rather than in a small town in Texas.
At Princeton Seminary Tom won awards for his work in New Testament studies and in preaching and graduated in 1972 with an M.Div. (Master of Divinity) degree. During that time Tom decided to train to become a New Testament scholar to teach at the University or Seminary level. He and Sonja moved to Cambridge, MA where Tom began work at Harvard University toward a Ph.D. in "New Testament and Christian Origins." The program proved to be wonderfully challenging and stimulating, led by some of the outstanding New Testament scholars in the world. Tom and Sonja were active in the Brookline Church of Christ led by Bob Randolph, which was also a wonderful experience.
During his years of study at Harvard, Tom became one of the regular instructors in Greek at Harvard Divinity School as well as a teaching assistant in a number of university courses in religion and classics. Tom and Sonja saved their meager incomes during those years and set off in 1976 for a year of travel in the Near East and Europe. They worked on an archeological dig at Caesarea in Israel and lived in Jerusalem while Tom studied Hebrew. They also visited biblical sites throughout Israel. During that year, they also traveled to many of the cities mentioned in the New Testament that are located in Greece, Turkey, and Italy, and they traveled widely in Europe.
About a year after their return to the U.S., their first daughter Johanna was born, and Tom and Sonja soon moved to Manhattan so that Tom could teach at Union Theological Seminary. The years of seminary teaching were stimulating and challenging and a time of a great deal of growth and thought for Tom. The result, however, was that he felt himself called more and more back toward ministry in the church rather than toward a career in academia. He began working also as a writer and editor of books on the Bible that were intended for a wide audience, mostly books produced by the book division Reader's Digest Publications. He served as a writer and/or editor and consultant for a number of books such as The Complete Guide to the Bible (1998),
Illustrated Dictionary of Bible Life and Times (1997), The Bible Through the Ages (1996),
Who's Who in the Bible (1994), Jesus' Story (1993), After Jesus: The Triumph of Christianity (1992), Jesus and His Times (three-part video, 1991),
ABC's of the Bible (1991),
Mysteries of the Bible (1988), Jesus and His Times (1987). He also published The Bible Timeline (1992, now available through Barnes and Noble) and several articles. Since beginning his work as Senior Minister, Tom has also written A Community Without Barriers: Women in the New Testament and the Church Today (2002).
Service as an adjunct faculty member of Union Theological Seminary continues to claim Tom's energies from time to time. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School and at Pepperdine University. He has been a speaker at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures in Malibu, CA, the Abilene Christian University Bible Lectures in Abilene, TX, the Jubilee Lectures in Nashville, TN, the Rochester Bible Lectures in Rochester, MI, and the Ministers' Sermon Seminar in Austin, TX. Tom served on the "Visiting Committee" that advised ACU faculty during the establishment of their Graduate School of Theology at ACU. He is deeply interested in the education, training, and mentoring of ministers and church leaders for the future.
As vice president of the board of trustees of Shiloh Ministries, Tom has been active in developing Shiloh's outreach both as a summer camp and a neighborhood program to urban children affected by poverty. He is also deeply involved in the development of Mission:NYC, a plan to develop new church-planting teams for the greater New York metropolitan area. He has been a mentor and adviser for the church-planting team that has established a new congregation in the Bronx: The Bronx Fellowship of Christ.
Tom feels greatly blessed by God to be allowed to minister with the Manhattan Church of Christ. His principal responsibilities are as the regular preaching minister for the congregation, as one of the elders leading the congregation, as a teacher in adult classes, as a pastoral counselor working with individuals and couples, as mentor and supervisor for the church staff, and as president of the church corporation. He says that it has been a continual challenge and thrill to serve Christians from such diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and with so many gifts and such wonderful faith. He treasures the close relationship that he has with Paul Stelzer, Lark Mason, Angel Reyes, and David Swearingen as fellow elders of the congregation. Tom is especially proud of the wonderful staff that serves with him in the Manhattan ministry. Above all, Tom feels blessed to be strengthened by his wife Sonja and their children. Sonja is very active both in the life of the church and in her own career as an
educator and administrator in one of the most respected schools in New York.
One of his principal aims in ministry, Tom says, is to help the Manhattan Church grow as an urban community of faith, deeply rooted in the Gospel, empowered by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel and to serve others, and thoroughly integrated and united across all boundaries of class, ethnicity, gender, and race. As the Manhattan Church reaches toward the 200th year since the "Church of Christ at New York" was established in 1810, it still has great challenges before it to be a witness to the transforming power of the Gospel in one of the greatest cities of the world.
|
|
DR. THOMAS L. ROBINSON
tlr@manhattanchurch.org
Associated Ministries:
Faith & Film
Mission:NYC
International Missions
Christ's Church for Brooklyn
The Bronx Fellowship of Christ
World Trade Center Relief Fund
|
HOME