Kuitse, Roelf S. (1925-2007)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2007 Feb 26 p. 3

Birth date: 1925

text of obituary:

Dutch mission worker, AMBS professor dies

By Mary E. Klassen

Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

ELKHART, Ind. — Roelf S. Kuitse Sr., Dutch Mennonite missiion worker, professor and pastor who taught at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, died Jan. 24 in the Netherlands. He was 82.

Kuitse was professor of missions and director of the Mission Training Center at AMBS from 1978 to 1991, alternating with Robert Ramseyer in serving in this position and doing mission work.

Kuitse studied anthropology and theology in preparation for mission work, eventually earning a doctorate in theology from the University of Amsterdam. In 1952 he went to Indonesia, where he taught at the theological school of the Mennonite Church in Java.

He and Juliette Sebus were married in 1960 by proxy while he was in Indonesia and she was working as a nurse in the Netherlands. When efforts failed to get an entry visa for her to join him in Indonesia, he returned to Europe, and they had a church wedding in Rome.

They were invited to Ghana to serve in a project related to understanding and witness to Islam. They served there from 1962 to 1969, when Roelf was called as pastor of a Mennonite congregation on the island of Texel, North Holland.

He took a four-year teching assignment at AMBS in 1978, which stretched to 1992. He also taught at a seminary in Pune, India, for a semester. AFter retiring from AMBS, he served Eighth Street Mennonite Church in Goshen as interim pastor for several years before returning to the Netherlands. Juliette Kuitse died in 2000.

Ben C. Ollenburger, professor of Old Testament theology at AMBS, described Kuitse as "an extraordinary gift to AMBS and to the church of Christ. Many in Indonesia know the name of Jesus because of Roelf. . . .

"He coould ave taught, competently, in any of our three departments. He read Hebrew and Greek, and he could converse about [theologian Karl] Barth and his critics. Roelf had a deep and firsthand knowledge of Islam — he was fluent in Arabic — and he spoke with wisdom, to a public audience, when Islamic fundamentalism first became a phenonmenon and a fear, long before 9/11."

Kuitse published several books in Dutch and Indonesian and numerous articles in English, Dutch and Indonesian on Islam and Christianity.

He is survived by three children, Roelf Jr. and his wife, Debbi, of Goshen; Johan and his wife, Amy, of south Bend; and Jifke and her husband, Alex, of Zaandam, the Netherlandss; and four grandchildren.