It is when we recognise our own "unworthiness" that God is able to use us best, according to the new principal of the London School of Theology.

"I came full of fear and trepidation, unsure I was cut out for this kind of thing," said Dr Calvin Samuel of his arrival in Britain in 1993 from his home in Antigua in the West Indies.

"I discovered quickly I was right. I was unworthy. I am unworthy. I discovered that God knows that – and it is because we recognise that we are unworthy that God is able to use us. We serve a God who loves us despite our unworthiness, our shortcomings." 

Samuel, a Methodist minister, had expected to return there after arriving in Britain to train for the ministry at Nazarene Theological College in Manchester in 1993.

God had other plans.

His potential was quickly spotted. He is moving to LST after six years at St John's College, Durham, first as director of the Wesley Study Centre and then as academic dean.

Joel Edwards, who retired as general director of the Evangelical Alliance in 2009 and who has spent the last four years studying under Samuel at St John's, said the role of a Bible college such as LST is to create "ambassadors", to bring people together with God and to God.

"There really isn't a higher calling," he said at the induction at Emmanuel Church in Northwood. "So often in the Christian world we are about power, about who has the upper hand. A wise public ministry seeks to reconcile, not score points. A wise public ministry does not necessarily talk about people leaving Islam or coming in from sin. It is more concerned about people coming to God."

He criticised the "point-scoring" approach to evangelism focused around the "I was 'that' and now I am 'this' approach."

He said: "God did not call us to pull down Mohammed, but to lift up Jesus Christ."

There are times in the current cultural context where Christians find themselves "having to learn to share space with other spiritualities". There should be no "aggression" in Christian ministry. "A wise public ministry makes an appeal to the world, not a demand." 

The London School of Theology was founded during World War Two as an interdenominational, evangelical college.

The aim of the ministers, missionaries and business leaders who set it up was to counter the rising tide of liberal scholarship in Western universities.

Phenomenally successful from the start, it expanded rapidly and by 1970 had moved to Northwood in north west London onto the campus previously occupied by the Church of England's London College of Divinity. 

In 2004, it changed its name to the London School of Theology.