Fides Quaerens Intellectum

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 →]

“Who stands fast?

…the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. 

Where are these responsible people?” 

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Over the years I have consistently been amazed at a particular organizational dynamic that emerges within nonprofits, and how that dynamic drives–and in some cases determines–hiring decisions.  That dynamic is urgency.  “Let’s get someone to fill the position asap!”  Just get a body in there.  Interestingly, urgency in these situations often breeds passivity.  Far too often leaders and managers are on autopilot in the way they think about hiring.  Write up a job ad, post it on the website and a few other places and let’s see who applies.  In most cases, a new hire should be here in 2-3 months if we get a decent stack of resumes’.  What?!! [Read more →]

The past 10 days has been one of the most exhilarating travel experiences of my life.  As I write this blog entry  I’m sitting in the middle of Budapest, Hungary, at the regional headquarters of the International Mission Board (IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Eric Turner (IMPACT 360 Associate director for operations) and I have been traveling around central Europe visiting with missionaries from the IMB who will host our students for their month-long international service experience in January ’08.  Site visits have included three cities in Hungary (including Budapest), two cities in Czech Republic (including Prague) and Bratislava, Slovakia.  We were also able to take a day trip to Vienna, Austria.  Amazing! This was my first trip to this part of the world, and I’m already looking forward to the next one. [Read more →]

Since I started graduate school in 1997 I’ve appreciated the thoughtfulness that University of Chicago scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain has brought to bear on seemingly countless topics of faith and culture.  In my most recent wanderings through an as yet unread book on faith and learning in my personal library (although I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I didn’t read it as soon as it hit the store shelves…the editors are two solid guys for whom I worked as a Ph.D. graduate research assistant at Baylor U’s Institute for Faith and Learning), I came across a chapter written by Elshtain entitled “To Serve God Wittily, In the Tangle of One’s Mind.”  The creativity of the title drew me to it, and her insights in one paragraph in particular were too valuable to keep to myself.  [Read more →]

The spirit of an organization is created from the top. 

The proof of the sincerity and seriousness of a management is uncompromising emphasis on integrity of character.  This, above all, has to be symbolized is management’s “people” decisions.  For it is character through which leadership is exercised; it is character that sets the example and is imitated.  Character is not something one can fool people about.  The people with whom a person works, and especially subordinates, know in a few weeks whether he or she has integrity or not.  They may forgive a person for a great deal; incompetence, ignorance, insecurity, or bad manners.  But they will not forgive a lack of integrity in that person.  Nor will they forgive higher management for choosing him.*

Peter Drucker, The Daily Drucker:  366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done.