God did not create the Christian life to be a solo flight. He placed us into what the Bible calls a body, gave us gifts that others do not have, and made us desperately needy of the gifts of other people (Eph 4:1-16, 1 Cor 12:12-27). In community with others, we find strength and encouragement (1 Thess 5:11), wisdom (Col 3:16) and love (1 John 4:7).
We desperately need other Christ-followers — perhaps more so in a place like the academy. Yet all across the country, we encounter Christian academics who wonder if he or she is the only Christ- following professor in the entire university.
Apart from individually growing in Christ, a Christian professor’s greatest need is to connect with other like-minded Christian academics—a reality that runs counter to the radical independence often found on campuses.
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The ideal place to begin is a local church. In most university towns, there are evangelical-leaning churches already attended by other Christian academics. From our experience, it is the nature of these churches to typically view “university missions” as missions to undergrads only. But such a church can be primed to see the whole campus – undergrads, graduate students, professors, and research/ideas – as a noble mission. Professors have the ideal platform to champion this vision of caring for and engaging the whole campus.
Here are some suggestions:
- Why not ask the church to adopt the entire university as a focused emphasis?
- And, correspondingly, why not commission university professors to play the lead in this effort?
In one nearby church, I (Rick) discovered that there are perhaps 30-40 professors, serving at the universities of Duke, the University of North Carolina, NC State, Elon, North Carolina Central and others. These are gifted intellectual leaders, committed to Christ.
- What would happen if there was a strategic gathering of these academics around purposefully reaching out to the university community?
- Could you imagine if these professors gathered as a movement of Christ-centered faculty—deeply committed to God, their calling as scholars, and their mission of helping others do the same?
More on this next week.
Rick Hove and Heather Holleman