It is with great sadness that we share the news of the passing of Peter Patterson, former Business Director at Wycliffe College. The funeral is being held July 9 and details can be found here: https://hoglefuneralhomes.com/book-of-memories/5723537/PATTERSON-PETER/index.php
We are deeply grateful for the innumerable ways that Peter Patterson served Wycliffe College over the course of many decades. We continue to benefit from and build on the investment he made in the administration and operations of the College during his years as Business Director as well as the many other ways he supported Wycliffe through the years. Our prayers are with the Patterson family. May Peter rest in peace and rise with Christ in glory.
The following tribute has been written by our former principal, Dr George Sumner who served closely with Peter at Wycliffe College for nearly two decades.
Dr Kristen Deede Johnson
Principal and Helliwell Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Culture
***
Peter was a son of the vicarage, his father a priest for many years in the north. (I was impressed by his offhand comment that when he was young, nighttime winter hockey on the frozen lake was only cut short once, because the cold was dangerous). I think this contributed to a deep, broad feel for the Anglican Church.
Peter embodied what we liked to talk about concerning ministry at Wycliffe. He had successfully run a large insurance company, and as a result, so much of administration came naturally to him. A whiz at numbers, Peter was, I believe, one of the very few human beings who understood the TST/U of T funding formula. He brought all that skill as a gift to the College- staff, insurance, property, budget, risk, university relations, etc. He agreed to stay on for a few months to get me started as principal, and stayed for two decades (pro bono, in every sense). He once said that he had aimed to run the insurance company so that how people were treated would attest to the Gospel, and Wycliffe was like that too. For example, he created an annual staff strategic planning process, in which everyone had a say about what we did well and what we could do better. He had a heart for students, not least in teaching them about managing money. And Peter was steady, even in a SARS protocol session or a post-2008 budget triage.
Nowadays, evangelicals like to talk about the ‘holistic,’ where feeding the hungry and preaching the word of grace are inseparable. Peter lived out the Gospel whole at Wycliffe, Stonegate, World Vision, and St. James in a way that was upbuilding for all of us, led to friendships across institutions, and reminded us as evangelicals of our roots.
The burial office in the Prayer Book talks of the ‘sure and certain hope’ of eternal life in Christ Jesus. Peter believed in that, as do we. This sense of hope is consistent with grief and sadness, for his family, as well as among us, his friends. I am reminded in a novel of C.S.Lewis', how Aslan urges his comrades on heavenward, to go "higher up and further in." Now, no tribute to Peter would suffice without some reference to baseball (I once saw him writing a report while following six games simultaneously on split screen). "Higher up" doesn’t mean the 500-seats! Peter’s in the boxes, in the midst of the action, where His Lord has organized the chorus of countless throngs in endless praise.
George Sumner
Past Principal and Professor Emeritus
