Trinity welcomes our new tutor, Dr Taido Chino

We are incredibly pleased to be able to announce that in January 2022, Dr Taido Chino will be starting as our new Tutor in Christian Doctrine.

“It is a privilege for Trinity to welcome a theologian of Taido’s calibre and maturity to our team and to the Trinity community. In addition to an impressive track record of teaching and publication, Taido has many years experience of local church leadership and ministry. We are excited about the theological wisdom he will bring to his teaching, and the personal warmth and heart he will bring to his pastoral and formational work here.’

Sean Doherty, Principal

Taido is no stranger to the UK having completed his PhD at the University of Aberdeen, with whom Trinity works in close partnership for our research degrees programme. His PhD was in Systematic Theology, exploring how Karl Barth and Benjamin Warfield have shaped Reformed understandings of scripture.

Taido was awarded a teaching fellowship at the University of Tübingen in its Institute for Hermeneutics and Cultural Dialogue. Most recently, he has been serving as a teaching fellow in the religion department at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.

Alongside the academic achievements, he has served in church leadership for much of his Christian life. He became interested in ministry shortly after making a profession of faith in late adolescence and discerned a call to vocational ministry towards the end of his first degree in psychology. His initial interest was in continuing to work with students, and he spent a number of years engaged in the spiritual formation of students and ministry leaders.

He spent time at a Chinese Baptist church in Seattle as a student pastor which shifted into young adult ministry. Later he was called back to his home church where he spent 10 years as an associate pastor at Fellowship North in North Little Rock, Arkansas. Friends and colleagues there were key in helping him and his family discern moving to Aberdeen to take up his PhD.

While in Aberdeen and again in Tübingen, he regularly provided support to their churches through preaching and leading of services, but he most values the deep and lasting friendships they made in Scotland and Germany.

Taido is originally from California, USA, born from Japanese-American heritage. He feels like his appointment here is providential in that it draws together his ministerial and academic experience in ways that fulfil his vision to train people for ministry and scholarship in various ways.

Taido is married to Alison who is a freelance writer and editor. As a family they are keen hikers and Alison particularly enjoys leading guided walking trips so Bristol is likely to be a congenial location for them. They have four children, but will be moving over from the US with their youngest son, Simon, who is 15.