Dr. Howard A. Snyder  

   Distinguished Professor, Chair of Wesley Studies

    hsnyder@tyndale.ca
    416-226-6620 ext. 2106
    Campus: Ballyconnor
 

BA, Greenville College, 1962
BD, Asbury Theological Seminary, 1966
PhD, University of Notre Dame, 1983

Areas of Specialization: Wesleyan Theology, History and Theology of Mission, Church Renewal, Historical Theology.

Howard was born in 1940 in the Dominican Republic where his parents, Edmund and Clara (Zahniser) Snyder, served as Free Methodist missionaries. From the age of four he grew up in Spring Arbor, Michigan; his father taught at Spring Arbor Junior College from 1944 to 1953.

Howard is a graduate of Spring Arbor Junior College (1960), Greenville College (1962) and Asbury Theological Seminary (1966). In 1962 he married Janice Lucas of Smith Creek, Michigan.

After graduating from Asbury Seminary, Howard pastored the Detroit Redford Free Methodist Church for two years. During seminary, his time in Detroit, and his ministry in Brazil, Howard developed a deep interest in the church and in renewal movements which has continued to the present.

Howard earned the Ph.D. in historical theology at the University of Notre Dame in 1983, completing a dissertation on church renewal movements under John Howard Yoder. From 1968 to 1975 he served as pastor and seminary professor in São Paulo, Brazil, with the Free Methodist Church.

His books include The Problem of Wineskins (1975), The Community of the King (1977; rev. ed., 2004), The Radical Wesley and Patterns for Church Renewal (1980), EarthCurrents: The Struggle for the World’s Soul (1995), and Radical Renewal: The Problem of Wineskins Today, a revised edition of The Problem of Wineskins (2005). He is the editor of Global Good News: Mission in a New Context (Abingdon, 2001) and co-author of Decoding the Church: Mapping the DNA of Christ’s Body (2002). Recent works include Populist Saints: B. T. and Ellen Roberts and the First Free Methodists (2006) and “Live While You Preach”: The Autobiography of Methodist Revivalist and Abolitionist John Wesley Redfield (1810–1863), which he edited (2006).

Dr. Snyder came to Tyndale in 2007 from Asbury Seminary, where he served for 10 years as Professor of the History and Theology of Mission in the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism. Previously he taught at United Theological Seminary and has pastored in Chicago, Detroit and São Paulo, Brazil, where he was also a seminary professor.

Dr. Snyder frequently speaks around the world, including at the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, the 1991 Evangelism 2000 Conference in Hong Kong, and the Mission Korea 2000 Conference in Seoul.

He and his wife Janice have four grown children (Mark, Jerilyn, Howard, and Jonathan), all married, and twelve grandchildren. Howard's leisure interests include running and hiking, bird-watching, travel, and reading history, biography and fiction. He and Janice are active in the Wilmore Free Methodist Church.