Let me encourage you to serve your students by being available to speak to Christian groups on campus.
You probably have students who enjoyed you as a professor. They’ll be naturally curious to hear what you have to say about the Christian faith in the 21st century. The Christian students especially will be edified by the content of your talk, based on your wisdom, your faith and your skills in Biblical exegesis.
And even if they don’t remember the talk, your student audience will be encouraged that you took a stand; that you as a faculty member were willing to identify with them; that you’re willing to give an imprimatur to what they’re doing in a Christian student group.
If you are a decent public speaker, great. If you’re not, learn to be one.
I’ll be really frank with you: I know how little I retain from listening to some of the best preaching in the country, so how can I expect students to retain what I have to say about the Christian faith? But this I know: Students at the University of Virginia inhabit an institution where the major problem that they face is not that their professors have set their minds against the God of the Bible. They teach as though the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob simply doesn’t exist.
In a way it’s worse than saying Christianity is false. It’s saying that Christianity is irrelevant.
So if you are available to Christian groups on campus, the students will realize that you’re one for whom the whole apparatus of Christianity is not irrelevant; it’s your focus, the anchor of your life. It’s the Gospel to you; it’s good news.
Kenneth Elzinga
University of Virginia