Meet The Director
The work of the Centre is under the direction of the Director, Dr Robert Strivens. Robert has served in pastoral ministry in Banbury and latterly in Bradford on Avon. He was Principal of London Seminary from 2008 to 2017.
Robert Strivens practised law as a solicitor in London and Brussels for fifteen years, before training for pastoral ministry at London Theological Seminary (as it was then called). On completion of his studies in 1999, he was called to the pastorate of Banbury Evangelical Free Church. He began to teach New Testament Greek and New Testament studies at LTS and in 2007 was appointed Vice-Principal and then, in 2008, Principal of the Seminary. During his time at Banbury, he completed a ThM degree from Westminster Theological Seminary in church history and then began doctoral studies under Professor David Bebbington at Stirling University, which he completed after moving to London Seminary. In 2017, he moved to Bradford on Avon to take up the pastorate of the long-established Baptist church there. He remained there until 2026, when he became Director of the Reformed Baptist Study Centre.
Robert continues to teach church history at London Seminary and at a variety of other institutions preparing men for pastoral ministry. He has published articles on a variety of historical and pastoral topics. His current research and writing projects include an examination of evangelical attitudes to learning and the mind and a book on church discipline. Robert is married to Sarah and they have three sons and several grandchildren.
The 1689 Handbook: A Chapter-by-Chapter Introduction to the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (Grace Publications, 2025).
Philip Doddridge and the Shaping of Evangelical Dissent (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).
Training for Ministry in Calvinistic Baptist Colleges, 1700-1900. Strict Baptist Historical Society, Bulletin 2025, no. 52 (Strict Baptist Historical Society, 2025).
‘Roots of Anti-Confessionalism in Contemporary Evangelical Hermeneutics’, Ad Fontes (Spring 2023): 24-29.
‘Moderation in Early Eighteenth-Century English Dissent: Philip Doddridge and His Academy Curriculum’. History of European Ideas (2024), 1–14.
‘English Congregationalism’ in Jonathan Yeager, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism (New York, NY: OUP, 2022): 57-74.
‘Ministry Crises and Evangelical Opportunity in the Ministry of Philip Doddridge (1702-51)’, Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 10 (2022): 515-29.
‘Dissent and the Origins of the Evangelical Revival’, in D. W. Bebbington & D. Ceri Jones, eds., Evangelicalism and Dissent in Modern England and Wales (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021): 28-45.
‘Dissent and Religious Liberty in David Bogue’s and James Bennett’s History of Dissenters’, in Andrew Atherstone & David Ceri Jones, eds., Making Evangelical History: Faith, Scholarship and the Evangelical Past (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019): 63-80.
‘Andrew Gifford, Sr. (1641-1721)’ in Michael Haykin, ed., Bristish Particular Baptists, Vol. 1, revd, edn. (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 2019): 297-313.
‘Bernard Foskett (1685-1758)’ in Michael Haykin, ed., British Particular Baptists, Vol. 4 (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 2018): 87-103.
‘Evangelical Spiritualities in Early Eighteenth-Century English Dissent: Philip Doddridge and John Gill’ (paper delivered at the Andrew Fuller Conference, 24–25 August 2009, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY).