Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Something new that I’ve been learning ever since I came on board with IMPACT 360 in January ’06 as a consultant (then in May ’06 full-time) is the notion of a high performance team in the workplace.  Among other characteristics, a high performance team is one whose synergy with all members produces an exponentially greater output than each individual team member could accomplish alone.  Desiring that outcome is one thing; accomplishing it is quite another, I’m finding.  We’re well on our way, thanks to solid leadership within the organization, including leadership mentoring from the Chick-fil-A (CfA) execs at the corporate office.  [Read more →]

 The students and staff of IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) had the privilege of hosting Os Guinness for three days.  His topics were numerous–everything from The Call (the book our students read in preparation for his time with us) to globalization to leadership.  He was one of the most gracious guests we’ve had on our campus, and he engaged our students in ways that brought ought even the most withdrawn personalities.  During his time on campus I took the opportunity to interview him for an audio series we’re producing.  One of my questions to the Oxford-educated sociologist was basically this:  “How do we overcome the assumption that there is a bifurcation between the secular and the sacred in public life and what does this mean for inspiring a new generation of leaders in this country?”  His response below comes straight from the interview transcript. 

Today was something of a landmark day for me.  It was the first time I had ever spoken up in a congregational meeting (for shame, I know, I know).  Interesting as I look back on the experience that I had to choose the annual budget meeting to speak up.  What was the issue?  There really wasn’t any “issue” as such…just seeking clarity on something that just about no one ever wants to discuss (at least in most churches)–pastoral staff compensation packages.  To be sure, like the rest of us I come to the issue with some baggage, being raised a preacher’s kid myself and being all too aware of how delicate these matters can be, both for the church as well as for the pastor’s family hanging in the balance.  All that said, I raised a question about the “philosophy of raises” for pastoral staff, [Read more →]

Perhaps the most powerful objection to a thoroughgoing faith/learning academic environment (i.e., in the classroom itself) and its supporting arguments is an argument from academic freedom. More than a few well-meaning professors put it this way: “Faith/learning integration in our classrooms ought not be imposed on us from the powers that be, because while intellectual growth, faith, virtue and citizenship are concepts compatible with the long-standing doctrine of academic freedom within the academy, ‘faith’ of the Christian variety tends to weaken academic freedom by imposing certain restrictions and codes of belief and conduct upon faculty.”[1] [Read more →]

Several weeks ago the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from Union University (www.uu.edu), Dr. Gene Fant, came as an IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) guest professor.  Union U is IMPACT 360′s academic partner, and our students are technically Union students by virtue of the articulation agreement.  Like my alma mater, Erskine College (www.erskine.edu), where I now serve on the board, Union U is a full member of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.  As a brief note of trivia, Union and Erskine are the two oldest CCCU institutions, with the former being slightly older (1823) than the latter (1839).  All that said, Dr. Fant’s area of teaching and research competence is English literature, thus it was altogether fitting that he introduced our community to a rather helpful book (featured above) in the quest to help our students understand how the academic disciplines in  the arts and sciences are meaning-full.  More to the point, they are meaningful to the degree that the disciplines themselves reveal the purposes of the universe’s Designer.  Conversely, these disciplines turn out to be altogether meaningless if Darwin’s materialistic theory of natural selection is correct.  [Read more →]

In the course of my dissertation research, I recently picked up a book by John R. Mott, leader of the Student Volunteer Movement of the early 20th century.  Mott was one of the first heroes of orthodox Christian faith whose passion for spreading the gospel led him to inspire thousands of college and university students to serve in posts of evangelism both stateside and overseas.  He also championed the growth and strengthening of the American church at a time when the Protestant liberals and conservatives were warring against one another for the religious heart of the republic.  The book that I began to peruse over Thanksgiving, entitled The Future Leadership of the Church, was published in 1908.  On the first page he identifies a problem with which we continue to struggle 100 years later.  May God give us the discernment to find the solution to this pandemic and the courage to follow it through. [Read more →]

I recently picked up Dinesh D’Souza’s new book at the urging of a friend and colleague, and I’ve been very pleased with it thus far.  The chapter on the problem of evil is required reading for the IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) students for next week, which is when we rollo out the module on evil and suffering.  Although D’Souza isn’t saying anything new by way of explanation of the problem of evil and suffering–much of what he says has been said in the past by C.S. Lewis and others–he does present fresh examples (the recent VA Tech shootings) and challenges atheists to come up with a viable explanation for how atheism can realistically claim any meaningful sense of human injustice.  [Read more →]

More than a few authors of late have chronicled the history of American higher education with a view toward restoring the foundational role that the Christian religion once played in educating students.  College presidents of yesteryear, including John Witherspoon (Princeton),  Noah Porter (Yale), and Francis Wayland (Brown) recognized that their institutions were not educating students primarily for the sake of increasing their earning power upon graduation.  Although they did not discount the importance of earning a living, they knew that the primary purpose of a college education was preparation for life as a whole.  For these leaders, “education” and “preparation” were not to be equated with “training,” which is the purpose of trade-schools in Great Britain as well as the present-day American technical colleges whose focus is practical skills training such as computer technology, auto mechanics, and nursing.  To be sure, there is a place for such centers of learning, but let’s be clear:  an honest-to-goodness preparation for life must begin with asking ultimate questions…not prematurely jumping into the “how-to’s” of skills training without the benefit of exploring those ultimate questions.  Skills training divorced from ultimate questions and answers invites the question–”skills training for the sake of what?”–a question that skills training alone cannot answer.  If one grants this premise, then the natural follow-up question is “what is the basis for determining what the ultimate questions are?”  My simple answer?  Human nature itself–specifically the imago dei.  How else can we even account for why we ponder certain questions at all?  [Read more →]

If our universities are to become more than professional schools, their rationalism needs to be in dialogue with other “traditions of inquiry.” For the most important matters in life include such matters as hope, depression, trust, purpose, and wisdom.  If secularism purges such concerns from the curriculum for lack of a way to address them, the public may conclude that the football team really is the most important part of the university.  But if they are taken up, we will find ourselves using terms that seem to belong in a religious discourse.  We have dodged this issue by saying that true, good, just, are all political, meaning that they can’t be discussed but only voted on.  But in fact they could be discussed if our discussions were to recognize a dimension of ultimacy.  It will do wonders in drawing attention and respect to our universities.  And it ought to make religion itself a less frivolous thing than it has become.

~C. John Sommerville, The Decline of the Secular University (New York:  Oxford University Press, 2006):  22.

Last week at IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) we had the privilege of hosting our first guest professor for the year, Dr. JP Moreland (http://www.talbot.edu/faculty/faculty_profiles/profile.cfm?n=jp_moreland).  A Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology (Biola University, CA;), Moreland taught and mentored none other than yours truly during the years 1997-1999.  Those two years were a critically formative time for me with respect to my own worldview as well as in my new marriage, and his three-day teaching session last week reminded just how influential he was on me.  [Read more →]