Graduate Faculty Ministry

Faculty Pursue God’s Truth

AD-16225 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 21:17:15 +0000

Abi Christian

Faculty Pursue God’s Truth

“I look at the campus as its people. It’s not just buildings or structures. It’s the students, faculty, and staff who need to know Christ.” said John Foubert, an Associate Professor of College Student Development at Oklahoma State University (OSU) in Stillwater.

John moved from Virginia to Oklahoma two years ago and soon connected with a growing group of evangelical Christians on faculty. They wanted the help and resources a national organization could provide, and last September they became a faculty community with ��ñ��. “A big part of our mission is letting students and faculty know we exist and we’re active,” said John. “We want there to be a visible presence of Christian faculty alive and well on campus.”

Articulating a Vibrant Faith

When John arrived in Oklahoma, a Bible Belt state, it seemed there were Christians everywhere. “In coastal areas, you either are a Christian or you’re not. And it isn’t cool to be a Christian. Here it’s the norm,” said John. Despite a pervasive Christian culture, John found that many students and faculty still could not articulate what it meant to follow Christ as their Lord.

Now called the ��ñ�� Christian Faculty Association, the fellowship provides a place for faculty to grow in and explore their faith by hosting monthly forums. Local pastors and faculty members are invited to speak on following God’s call on campus and in research. For Dale Fuqua, OSU’s Regents Professor of Educational Studies,the forums are thought-provoking, allowing opportunities for him to integrate faith with his professional role. “Sharing the joys of a life lived through Jesus Christ has encouraged many of us in an environment too often hostile to our beliefs,” said Dale.

The fellowship uses their Facebook group to make their presence known on campus and sends handwritten notes of welcome when new faculty join OSU. They plan to start a Bible study for faculty and are considering other ways to reach out with the gospel to their peers and better support their students.

“We need to be about leading people to Christ,” said John. “When you have faculty in leadership positions on campus, standing on principles of biblical truth, you can be a redeeming influence on campus.”

With Truth on Our Side

In his own work, John pursues areas of research where he can make a positive difference, such as in the prevention of sexual violence, an area where few Christian voices are heard. Some people assume that victims of sexual violence are at fault by placing themselves in risky situations, but that often is not the case. In both Christian and secular venues, John has opportunities to educate people on the causes of sexual violence, particularly the way the pornography industry perpetuates systems of violence.

“I can speak about sexual assault as a professor who has done research and as someone who has seen men in the Church destroyed by the effects of pornography,” said John. Because he is motivated by Christ’s love for the vulnerable and builds on the credibility of past research, he believes he “can be dangerous to the porn industry.”

As John and other fellowship members explore ways to honor God through their work in various fields and among their students, they hope the presence of biblical truth will prevail over postmodern thinking in the university’s culture. “My faith is the center of my world. I believe there is absolute truth. That’s in opposition to postmodern thinking, and it puts me at odds with some people in higher education who believe truth is personally intuited and all relative,” said John. “In some sense, I’m called to be at a secular campus where the battle can be engaged.”

The new community is a thriving place for Christian faculty to grow in community and in their faith. “It’s an exciting adventure to see where God will lead the fellowship,” said John.

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Graduate Faculty Ministry

The Wide Open West

webteam@intervarsity.org — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 05:00:00 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

The Wide Open West

Lynn Gill calls it “the big gaping hole” of ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty ministry (GFM), the 16,000 graduate students at the University of Southern California (USC) who are un-served by ��ñ�� or any other campus ministry. As the only area director in GFM’s western region, supervising the other four GFM staff in the region, Lynn offers USC as one example of the opportunities available for GFM in the region.

“That’s been one of my prayers for eight years now,” she said. “Who’s going to come to USC? With 16,000 grad students, that’s more than a lot of campuses have of undergrads.”

Lynn thinks of a USC grad student she once met who dropped out of school because there was no one to support and encourage her. “People can thrive, if there’s a community for them,” she said. But Christians attending grad school don’t always find community, and grad studies can become a difficult and lonely existence. “The local church doesn’t always know what to do with grad students,” Lynn added.

Undergrad ministry connects
When Lynn was a junior at the University of Rochester she felt an emptiness in her life. She had friends involved in ��ñ�� who invited her to a Bible study. “I could see all the people in the room had some sort of hope and joy that I didn’t have, and I wanted that,” she remembered.
She had grown up in a church and thought she was a Christian, but she realized it was time to be honest with God. “I said ‘God, I don’t know if you consider me a Christian or not at this point, but I want to follow you with all of my life.’ That was for me the transition point.”

The next year Lynn was leading her own Bible study group. After completing a double major in Chemistry and English, she enrolled in graduate school at Purdue and found a fellow student who had been involved in an ��ñ�� grad chapter at Ohio State. They started meeting together for prayer and Bible study, and by the end of the year their group had grown to seven.

Launching a grad fellowship
Lynn and others in the prayer and Bible study spent a week at Cedar Campus that summer and returned to Purdue with a vision for starting a grad fellowship. Lynn remained active in the fellowship for the next four years, leading small groups and serving as the small group coordinator, while she completed work on her PhD in analytical chemistry.

“I think I was so passionate about small groups because that was how I had come to know Christ,” she said. But the fact that many of the other grad students were in the chemistry program, a little farther along than she was, was also helpful, because they could encourage her with specific information about her program. “They helped me stick it out in grad school,” she said. “It was a community where I could grow spiritually, learn to serve others, share my faith with non-Christians and to learn how to integrate my faith and discipline.”

Lynn worked in the Pharmaceutical industry for awhile, volunteering with ��ñ�� in her spare time. But when her husband entered grad school at North Carolina State to work on a mechanical engineering degree, she had an opportunity to get more involved in campus ministry. “I felt God was saying, ‘Take a step of faith. Do the fund-raising, and I will provide.’”

Joining ��ñ�� staff
God did provide. Lynn worked with grad students at North Carolina State for three years and then moved to Albuquerque eight years ago, where she now lives with her family. She was given responsibility for four grad chapters at schools in southern California (later expanded to seven) and became an itinerant campus minister. “I would be out for ten days at a time, going from San Diego to Santa Barbara and hitting everything in between where we had grad student ministries,” she said.

She enjoyed being an itinerant staff member. The fellowship at the University of California—San Diego tripled in size to 50 during her time with them. Many people observed that itinerating was similar to the type of work done in the early days of ��ñ��, when staff were few and campus fellowships were quickly growing in number.

But as much as she enjoyed working on campus, Lynn realized that the biggest need in the region was an administrator who could hire more staff to work on more campuses. So she became area director two years ago.

Lynn has counted 330,000 grad students and 95,000 faculty on the 100 larger campuses who are not served by any campus ministry. Finding the right staff to work with grad students and faculty at all of these schools will be a long process. The “big gaping hole” at USC may not even be one of the first openings filled. Existing GFM chapters in Berkeley, San Diego, and elsewhere are currently unsupported by staff. In the west region there are a total of 17 GFM chapters. Only four schools have GFM staff.

“It’s a wide open opportunity. If we’re living out ��ñ��’s vision we need to be at these schools,” Lynn concluded.

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Graduate Faculty Ministry

��ñ�� alumni - Mark Edwards

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:00:00 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

��ñ�� alumni - Mark Edwards

Faculty members have all heard the stories about dying grandmothers and various other reasons that students can’t make it to class or complete an assignment. In many cases, they are just stories. In some cases the death of a grandmother, or another family tragedy, actually occurs and affects a student’s ability to complete assignments.

Students Need Someone to Listen

“I’ve been surprised at the number of times I’ve had students in my office who will be in tears about something,” said Mark Edwards, a Sociology professor at Oregon State University. “Students do have difficult things going on in their lives. Being able to listen and pay attention to them has a big impact.”

Mark recalled counseling first generation college students whose parents were out of work and the student was struggling to stay in school. Gay and lesbian students shared about how lonely and hurt they felt. One student showed up at his office drunk and in tears because his wife had left him. At those times Mark reflects that being a professor is not that different from being an ��ñ�� staff worker.

“Over the years I felt like what the Lord was leading me to do was actually to engage students in more of a pastoral way, in more of a ministry of mercy or compassion,” he said. “Students are surprised when they’re treated with respect or civility or with a little bit of generosity. That has been the most effective way for people to detect that perhaps there’s something different about me as a Christian.”

Attracted to Academia

Mark was a student at the University of California—Davis when he first got involved with ��ñ��. He graduated with a degree in Food Biochemistry in 1984 and joined ��ñ�� staff. During the six years he was on staff, he discovered how much he loved the university and being around students.

He also met several Christian sociology professors who he admired for the way they engaged moral issues in their field in a professional way, but also provided a vibrant Christian witness in the classroom. Rather than pursue a career as a food scientist working for a large corporation, he decided to stay in academia and become a sociologist.

Today he also serves as the faculty adviser for the ��ñ�� chapter at Oregon State University, and he is a lay leader in a local church. “I find that the kind of skills that ��ñ�� gave me as a student and staff worker are also the skills that my pastor says that he needs to see more in the church,” Mark said.

His academic research most recently has focused on hunger and food insecurity. He’s concerned about families which are struggling to put food on the table. And he’s pleased that organizations dealing with hunger issues have been able to use his information in their dealings with lawmakers to initiate programs that help low income families. “I’ve chosen to do projects that are not high-powered, big academic projects but are simple research projects that are trying to deal with social justice questions in our state,” he said.

Renewing the Campus

After spending all of his adult life on campus, as a student, staff worker, and now a professor, Mark is thankful for the presence of a campus ministry like ��ñ��.

“The university does a good job identifying where there are problems, helping students to maybe even care about them. But often we don’t have solutions to offer the students, except maybe some new government program or something that isn’t very practical for students. ��ñ��’s programs and activities are helping the university fulfill its mission, even if it doesn’t know that ��ñ�� fellowships are doing that.”

Because of his ��ñ�� experience, Mark’s students have a professor who cares about more than just what he can teach them about Sociology.

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��ñ�� alumni

Oregon State University

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Bold Faith as a University Administrator

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 17 May 2010 05:00:00 +0000

Alumni Profile

News

Gordon Govier

Bold Faith as a University Administrator

Santa Ono now serves as president of the University of British Columbia. When this article was written, he was working at Emory University as Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.

“Senior Vice Provost Santa Ono won the Brit Katz Senior Appreciation Award for his involvement in the Emory community and his ability to serve as a role model and friend to the senior class.” – The Emory Wheel newspaper, May 6, 2010

While working with Emory University students as Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs, Santa Ono also continues the medical research for which he trained at McGill University and Harvard. An article in Emory Magazine reports that his team at the Emory Eye Center’s Dobbs Laboratory is investigating the role of the immune system as the team looks for treatments for macular degeneration and other forms of eye inflammation.

Santa serves as faculty adviser for ��ñ��’s three chapters at Emory: Emory Christian Fellowship, Asian Christian Fellowship, and B.A.S.I.C. (Brothers and Sisters in Christ, for African-American students). He also enjoys being faculty advisor to Emory’s Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity, a chapter with strong ties to Greek ��ñ��.

Santa admits that holding two full-time jobs at the same institution can be challenging. “Especially, if on top of that you’re trying to connect with students and faculty. But I love every aspect of what I do with my life. I feel very blessed to be at an institution like Emory, to be able to interact with students of the caliber that we have. It enriches my life to interact with them, not only through ��ñ�� but through other organizations.”

The Path to Faith

Santa Ono’s path to faith began in his dorm room as a freshman at the University of Chicago. His roommate, Steve Barry, was involved in the ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship chapter. Steve invited Santa to Bible studies and large group meetings, and they talked a lot about faith. As a child of Japanese immigrants Santa was not without faith in God but he described himself as uninformed.

His journey to faith in Christ started slowly, anchored in the witness of his roommate. Their visits to Bond chapel on the University of Chicago campus encouraged him to investigate further. “Steve would take me there. I felt immediately touched by being in that space. I felt like I had never felt before in any other place growing up,” Santa said. “That was the beginning of my search for and eventual finding of Christ.”

During his graduate studies at McGill University in Montreal, his faith in Christ continued to grow through the witness of a friend named Wendy, who became his wife, and their local fellowship, Westmont Baptist Church. After receiving his PhD in Experimental Medicine, he received a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, focusing on gene regulation in the immune. He held faculty and administrative positions at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard, and University College London before arriving at Emory in 2006.

Known for his Faith

The “transformative” witness of his ��ñ�� friends at the University of Chicago has allowed Santa to fully embrace ��ñ��’s vision for renewing the campus. He not only accepted the invitation from campus staff member Glenn Goldsmith to become ��ñ��’s faculty adviser, he has also become one of the most high-profile Christians at Emory.

“I actually think it’s very healthy for the university community to know of the religious beliefs of faculty and administrators,” he said. “I see no reason why I as a Christian should hide Christ in my life, as long as I show respect for those with different faiths.” He recalled a phrase used by a faculty friend who was a priest, “stealth Christians,” which applies to many Christian faculty members. “Students learn from diverse perspectives across the university community and they can only learn from the richness of a multi-faith community if they can actually see people thinking about, struggling with and practicing their faiths.”

He thinks students are willing to accept the fact that some faculty are followers of Christ, and that others are Jews or Muslims. “Students know that faculty members and administrators have religious beliefs but they rarely see that side of these individuals. I know that many students look to faculty and staff as role models, and seek conversations with them about their faith.”

Santa is energized by his interaction with students, especially those who are in the campus fellowships. “It’s really beautiful to watch them worship and see the fellowship they have with each other and with Christ,” he said. “They’re not shy in talking about the role of Christ in their lives. The students have it figured it out.”

Santa Ono realizes that at some point he may have to make a decision between advancing his administrative career and continuing his medical research. But for now he is thankful that God has blessed him by allowing him to continue both paths and to interact with some of America’s brightest students. He has also served on ��ñ��’s Board of Trustees.

UPDATES:

In June 2010 Santa Ono was named Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Cincinnati.
In 2011 Santa Ono addressed ��ñ�� Graduate and Faculty Ministries Staff Conference on the topic, The Future of the University.
On October 23, 2012, Santa Ono was named President of the University of Cincinnati
On June 15, 2016, Santa Ono was named President of the University of British Columbia, where he is also involved with a local congregation.

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Watching God Work at Harvard

webteam@intervarsity.org — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:00:00 +0000

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Watching God Work at Harvard

As Jeff Barneson prepared to graduate from Stanford University in 1978 he received a job offer for “a plum job at a small firm at Newport Beach, overlooking the water.” It was the kind of job he had been hoping for when he decided on Civil Engineering as his major. But he turned it down.

Earlier in his senior year the Christian groups on campus had presented the Francis Schaeffer film series, How Should We Then Live. Schaeffer’s comment, “Of course the dominant values of American culture are personal peace and affluence,” had been haunting him for months. Walking across campus one evening he was surprised to see some Christian students he knew protesting Stanford’s investments in apartheid South Africa, and being hauled away by police. He also lost his girlfriend to cancer.

“All that began to spin around in my head,” he recalled. “I thought, if that’s how quickly life can be over, why do something I’m only marginally good at, that may not matter that much in God’s bigger mission.”

Called to Campus Ministry
Although God does call some people to serve Him through engineering, Jeff felt God calling him to campus ministry. “Meeting with students, talking about Jesus, and reading the Bible seemed more important,” he said.

He applied to work as a chaplain with the Baptist Home Mission Society and was assigned to the University of Colorado. At Colorado, and at Harvard when he moved there in 1983, he often worked together with ��ñ�� staff. In 1993 he joined ��ñ��’s ministry to graduate students at Harvard, where he has served ever since.

Alternatives to Business as Usual
Working with graduate students in law, business, government, theology, and design, Jeff and his ��ñ�� teammates focus on creating a counter culture on campus. “I hope we can create a community that looks different from the rest of the campus,” he said. “Most of the time students don’t see an alternative to business as usual.”

The Harvard Graduate Students Fellowship prioritizes spiritual formation, community, witness, and justice concerns. “Academic faith integration (justice concerns) and witnessing are the two dominant things for us,” Jeff said. “The Lordship of Jesus Christ permeates it all: our vocation choice, how we spend our money, where we choose to live, what we do when we play, how we let our friends in.”

Being a part of the New England region’s annual spring trips to New Orleans to help repair hurricane Katrina damage offers a good illustration of how campus ministry is being done. ��ñ�� students sign up for a week of work and invite their friends along. This year ��ñ�� is partnering with the Humanist Students Association on the project.

Creating a Culture of Opportunity
“What I like about it is that there’s an extended period of time doing an activity everybody can lean into,” he said. “It’s like setting the table for a long conversation with people about things that matter. We could go to the beach for evangelism, but it would not be as effective. This creates a culture of openness and service, which enables other things to happen.”

Participants get invested in late night Bible studies at Starbucks, and often they don’t want to stop when they get back to Boston. Every year at least one person in the group decides to follow Jesus.

“Jeff does not shroud the generosity of the gospel,” observed Kevin Bauder, ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries Northeast regional director. “Jeff has a rare and wonderful combination of being sharp, creative, winsome, challenging, welcoming, persistent, and fun.”

Looking for Evidence of God at Work
As Jeff works on campus, looking for evidence for the many ways God is at work in the lives of faculty and students, he sometimes decides to audit or enroll in a class. Along the way he’s gotten a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, and served as a teaching assistant in the Graduate School of Design. He’s also the faculty adviser for the Harvard Cycling Team.

It’s not the plum job he had once wanted but it’s the job that allows him to see God at work in the lives of future world changers attending Harvard University. And that is pretty satisfying.

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Campus Ministry

Following God in Career Choices

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:00:00 +0000

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Marc Baer

Following God in Career Choices

At the beginning of the school year, when students consider the choice of a major and a career they may pursue after graduation, Hope College history professor Marc Baer offers guidance on how to follow God through our career choices.

To answer the question, “What is Calling?” recognizes two different types of calling for the Christian. All believers share a primary calling to love God and follow Him. I experienced that when I was 25, a few weeks after I had passed the comprehensive exams for my PhD program.

I had grown up in a non-believing family, completely outside the church. I wasn’t seeking salvation: I had no sense I needed it. But I was challenged by an undergraduate student to read the Bible, and over many months I encountered such profound truths that I was simply overwhelmed.

Don’t forget your neighbor
In addition to our primary calling to love God, we have a secondary calling to love and serve our neighbor, according to the Greatest Commandments that Jesus introduced in Mark 12:28-31. Our secondary calling is usually related to our job or career. Each secondary calling is different.

How does God call us to a vocation? Here are some examples from the Bible:

God calls us directly: Abraham and Paul.
God places a desire in my heart: Isaiah (“Here I am; send me”).
God takes some people along a path they would not have chosen: Daniel.
God offers an attractive option: Stephen was called as one of the seven in Acts 6.

Pay attention to others
In the case of the latter two calling examples, notice the role of others. Very often God uses other people to call us. If you read the 22 personal narratives of living out the Christian faith in the academy included in Paul Anderson’s Professors Who Believe: The Spiritual Journeys of Christian Faculty, you’ll find many who heard their call through a professor who knew them well.

We may be God’s agents in calling someone. Consider the British abolitionist William Wilberforce. God used three different men to call Wilberforce: the prime minister, William Pitt, who was a non-believer; John Newton, Wilberforce’s spiritual mentor; and John Wesley. In the early 1790s Wesley wrote Wilberforce to encourage the younger man to hang in there in leading the campaign against the slave trade:

“Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils; but if God is with you, who can be against you? Oh, be not weary in well-doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall banish away before it.”

This was the last letter Wesley ever wrote; he was 88 years old and died six days later.

Another case, closer to home for me was Herbert Butterfield, an eminent early 20th century Cambridge University historian and Methodist lay preacher who had neatly divided his world between the two until he was asked by his university’s divinity faculty to give a series of lectures on Christianity and history. He told his eventual biographer he trembled “at the thought of proclaiming before a university audience what he considered to be the ‘intimacies’ of religion,’ things he had only uttered previously in the seclusion of Methodist chapels.”

Even at age 49 Butterfield was intimidated by the anti-Christian bias of his colleagues. But he accepted, thereby uniting his spiritual and professional worlds, and out of the lectures came a path-breaking book, Christianity and History.

Os Guinness thought after his conversion that he should be a pastor. A 10-minute conversation with a service station attendant caused him to understand his work was outside, not inside the church, and he became a public intellectual.

Let someone, besides a parent, know you well. In fact, let several people know you well. Consult them. Turn your face to God; pray really hard; read the Bible deeply. Read Christian writers as well.

Know thyself
And read yourself. Look for these six signs:

Passion: What motivates you?
Talent: Understand your gifts, and then seek work that matches them well.
Life experience: Think of John Bunyan or Alexander Solzhenitsyn in prison.
Opportunity: Is there an open door?
Community: Listen to the voice of others.
Joy—not happiness; joy.

As Dallas Williard puts it in Divine Conspiracy, “The deepest longings of our heart confirm me in my original calling.”

Calling—because it is so vital—presents us with moral challenges:

First, our work should not drive us: Vocation is not about doing, but being.

Second, our work should not trump family. A healthy sense of calling ought to lead to wise choices via good boundaries.

Vocations, careers, jobs, and work flow from the primary calling. Although our secular-minded friends, family, and neighbors wish it were not so, there is no calling without a Caller. Because there is a Caller, you have a calling.

^{Marc Baer is ��ñ��’s faculty adviser at Hope College and teaches courses in modern British history. He also teaches a senior seminar called Exploring Faith and Calling. This article on calling is condensed and adapted from a presentation at “Flourishing in the Academy,” the national gathering of ��ñ��’s Emerging Scholars Network at the 2008 Following Christ conference in Chicago. A transcript of the complete talk is posted online.}

^{If you’re exploring God’s calling for your life, you may want to check out ��ñ��’s Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference in St. Louis, December 27-31,2009. In years past God has spoken to many Urbana attendees about their life’s calling. For more information, go here.}

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Graduate Faculty Ministry

Ministry in Daily Life

Discipleship

Grad and Faculty Ministry

webteam@intervarsity.org — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 05:00:00 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Grad and Faculty Ministry

At the beginning of 1990, ��ñ��’s New York/New Jersey region hosted a Marketplace conference at the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. Surveying the 350 students attending, who were anxious to learn more about how to follow God in their chosen careers, and looking out over the New York City skyline, Bobby Gross eagerly anticipated beginning his new appointment as regional director.

“I wanted to live in a city and wanted to be a part of what God was doing,” he said. “The Marketplace conference represented something that I was eager to continue, getting students to think about how to be part of Christ’s renewing presence in the city.”

Bobby’s 13-year tenure as the New York/New Jersey regional director was the longest time he has held one position in his 32-year career with ��ñ��. His career path includes stops as a campus staff worker at the University of Florida, chapter planter and then area director in south Florida, and most recently a national field director based in Atlanta. As of July 1, 2009, Bobby became the director of ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry (GFM), succeeding Cam Anderson.

GFM’s Unique Challenges
��ñ�� invested more and more resources in ministry to graduate students during the 1990s. For three of those years Bobby had the additional job of acting director for the staff working with graduate students at Columbia University and developed a better understanding of how working with graduate students and faculty is different than working with undergrad students.

“Our staff who are working with undergrad students are investing in men and women who are in a preparatory period,” he said. “Working with graduate students, particularly those who are past the two-year Masters degree program, is working with people who are already on their vocational path, already immersed in their vocationa.”

Even though the transition from national field director to GFM director is almost a lateral move, Bobby is excited about his new position. “Some of the things that I’m most passionate about can be summed up by the phrases whole life discipleship, vocational stewardship, integration of faith and learning, the life of the mind, and the renewal of the University. Those passions are at the forefront of the GFM vision and ministry,” he said.

Building on a Strong Foundation
Although ��ñ��’s specialized focus on graduate students and faculty has two decades of history, it has only had six years as its own entity within Collegiate Ministries. Bobby is eagerly anticipating of building on the foundation established by earlier leaders Cam Anderson and Randy Bare.

“I come into GFM at a key point in its history as a movement within ��ñ��,” he said. “Tremendous progress has been made under Cam Anderson and his team over the last six years, but we need to complete that basic work of getting a full-fledged structure in place.”

Bobby sees ��ñ��’s vision for renewing the campus most strongly reflected in the work of GFM’s Faculty Ministry and the Emerging Scholars Network. But he sees potential for an even stronger emphasis across the fellowship.

“We should all have an eye for those men and women students who have potential to be faculty, and scholars, and university administrators, and raise a strong and compelling call to them to serve Christ in that sphere, because that’s our sphere,” he said. “We want to see all of ��ñ�� have a vision for increasing numbers of men and women being a part of universities across the country. That’s critical to renewing the campus. It should be clear that we’re particularly passionate about sending people into the university world.”

Connecting GFM and the Rest of ��ñ��
Jim Lundgren, ��ñ��’s senior vice president and director of Collegiate Ministries, is Bobby’s supervisor. “There is a great connection between Bobby’s core values and the core values of the GFM vision,” he said. “His broad experience in the field prepares him well to strengthen connections between GFM and the rest of ��ñ��. His spiritual maturity and servant leadership perspective will serve GFM well.”

During his 13 years as regional director in New York/New Jersey the number of students involved and the number of staff doubled. “I built on a strong foundation,” he said. “I inherited a healthy region.” Now he has a new foundation to build on, and he’s ready to go to work.

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God at Work at Harvard

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 05:00:00 +0000

News

Katie Montei

God at Work at Harvard

With about 1,000 students being reached through ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty chapters at Harvard, this ministry has transformed its focus for engaging the campus.

A Thriving Ministry
In Kelly Monroe’s book, Finding God at Harvard, the author sets straight the myth that Christian faith cannot thrive in a rigorous academic environment. While some may believe that it’s hard to find God at Harvard because it’s a secular institution, the evidence suggests otherwise.

��ñ�� has about 1,000 students and faculty on the mailing list for Harvard’s graduate schools alone. There are nine chapters, with students from every school involved. Some of the chapters boast higher numbers of active students than others, but every chapter has members just as serious about their faith as they are about their studies. And even more exciting, they are dedicated to being salt and light on campus and in the world.

Jeff Barneson has been working in ministry on the Harvard campus since 1983. In 1993 he began working with graduate students and faculty for ��ñ��. Now he oversees four Graduate and Faculty staff workers. Over the past few years he has been a part of the transformation of the Harvard Grad and Faculty chapters from being internally focused groups to outwardly focused groups; and has watched as the students take seriously their role as part of God’s bigger mission on campus and in the world.

A Transformation
One challenge staff workers have faced is the tendency for graduate students to become so wrapped up in their studies that they lose their identity. Harvard tempts students with the allure of prestige, scholarship, and success. Because of this allure, the chapters’ transformations to a ministry with a missional focus has taken a few years and a lot of prayer.

��ñ�� encourages students to find their identity in Christ and encourage them to live out the gospel in their whole life – in school and in their future careers. Jeff said, “It’s easy for the institution to tell students who they are, but ��ñ�� teaches students that followers of Jesus have him as the key to their identity, not Harvard.”

Missional Christians have been stepping into roles of leadership, helping to guide other students into the understanding that they are on campus to advance God’s mission and bring him glory through their scholarship and their outreach to others. ��ñ�� is not on campus to encourage personal fulfillment but to serve the campus and bring others into relationship with Jesus.

Kim Kreiling, the campus staff worker serving students and faculty from the schools of Arts and Sciences and the School of Design, said, “If you asked any of the student leaders the purpose of ��ñ��, they would all talk about reaching the campus, they know that ��ñ�� exists for God’s purposes on campus and in the world.”

The Set-Up
��ñ�� has a chapter for each school because students in every academic discipline look different. Each chapter has a weekly meeting organized to match the focus of each school. So the business school will often have CEOs talk about how they integrate their faith in business, the Law School will have lawyers who share how their faith influences their practice.

Having a testimony and discussion format provides a place for students, Christian and non-Christians alike, to talk about the intersection of faith and scholarship. This non-threatening environment has made for an effective outreach.

Once a month all the chapters gather together for a monthly worship night. They also join together several times a year for retreats and missions projects. And once a year they do a campus-wide event – this year it was the Veritas Forum (a discussion forum that raises tough questions in an interactive format. This year the theme for discussion was beauty). These events help to keep the chapters connected, remind them of their larger purpose on campus, and invite them to participate in what’s going on in the world.

New Life
On a mission trip to New Orleans this past spring, Leif, a non-Christian student from Norway, met many people in New Orleans who had spiritual needs he didn’t know how to fulfill. Leif was prompted when he returned from the trip to look further into the person of Jesus. When Kim, Leif’s staff worker, shared the gospel with him, Leif eagerly accepted Jesus. Since then, Leif and Kim have been meeting twice a month to read through the gospel of Mark.

Graduate students and faculty offer something unique to ��ñ��’s ministry. They are further along the road of adulthood, often more serious in their attitudes and goals, and are certainly more focused. They have made significant choices and sacrifices to be in the academic programs that they are in. This focus also provides ��ñ�� staff with opportunities to help graduate students consider how the gospel relates to their subject.

Reflecting on her work with graduate students at Harvard, Kim said, “Knowing that so many of these students will eventually assume positions of influence contributes toward making the work very rewarding. It’s such a privilege to be around people who are really seeking to submit their vocation to God wholeheartedly.”

Clearly, God is not hiding at Harvard.

___

You can make a direct financial donation to support ��ñ��’s work among graduate students and faculty at Harvard by following this link.

News Keywords

Graduate Faculty Ministry

Campus Ministry

FC08 Prize Winners

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

News

FC08 Prize Winners

The integration of faith and vocation, the foundation underlying ��ñ��’s Following Christ 2008 conference, was promoted at the conference in the Bosscher-Hammond awards competition. Twenty-five semi-finalists received free registration to the conference, December 27-31, 2008, in Chicago. Three winners of the award were announced on the final day of the conference.

The winners each offered a unique proposal for expressing their faith through their occupation to the benefit of others.

A team from Baylor University, led by engineering professor Walter Bradley, proposed a plan to develop more economically beneficial uses for the coconut. Noting that coconuts are abundant in many of the poorer regions of the world, the Baylor team believes that the application of engineering, distribution, manufacturing, and business resources can develop markets that will improve the financial yield from the shell, the husk, and the inner parts of the coconut.

“It is exciting to think that this abundant renewable resource has been provided by God to help the poorest of the poor, if we can just see the value that God has put into this fruit and figure out how to get that value out,” their proposal said. “We set out to discover the technology that would allow us to start a triple bottom line company called Whole Tree, Inc. around coconuts, one that would make a profit, make a difference in the lives of people most in need, and be good stewards of our planet.”

Stephanie Gehring’s goal is to write orthodox theology in the form of poetry. “As an artist and a Christian, it is part of my practice of belief not to ask questions as though they have no answers,” she wrote in her application. “The balance between clarity and mystery is one I’m struggling to find.” Stephanie recently received an M.F.A. degree from Cornell University.

A public health initiative in the state of Arkansas focused on working with both white and black churches in an effort to improve information and motivation related to healthier living practices. Two important principles in Karen Hye-cheon Kim’s proposal were, “God cares about your health and we cannot be healthy by our own strength.” Karen works for the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and has also won government grants for her initiative.

Each of the winners received a $2,000 prize.

The competition is named after Peter Bosscher, a former professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who passed away in 2007, and Pete Hammond, a former senior staff member and vice president at-large with ��ñ�� Christian Fellowship who passed away in December 2008. Both men committed their lives to the integration of faith, learning, and practice. Bosscher was the organizer of a chapter of Engineers Without Borders on the UW-Madison campus. Hammond founded and led ��ñ��’s Ministry in Daily Life Resource Group, originally known as Marketplace.

Two more reports on Following Christ 2008 are online: Honoring God at Work and Human Flourishing.

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Graduate Faculty Ministry

Ministry in Daily Life

Conferences

Human Flourishing

webteam@intervarsity.org — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0000

News

Gordon Govier

Human Flourishing

In the midst of a world that doesn’t currently seem to be flourishing, the aspiration to flourish burns even more brightly. As the theme of ��ñ��’s Following Christ 2008 conference (FC08), held in Chicago, December 27-31, 2008, human flourishing was presented as God’s design and desire for humanity.

Almost 1,000 students, faculty, and professionals attended FC08. It was sponsored by ��ñ��’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry, and ��ñ�� Press.

“God’s new creation not only happens to you, it also happens through you,” said Anglican bishop N.T. Wright, one of the plenary speakers. He added that Jesus Christ, being fully divine and fully human, was the fullest expression of what God intended us to be, the ultimate flourishing human being.

Flourishing varies in context
Attendees at FC08 learned about human flourishing from many perspectives, including from separate discipline-specific tracks that looked at the meaning of human flourishing in the context of the arts, law, business, science, healthcare, etc. In each context flourishing is expressed in its own unique way but has in common God-designed benefits for the individual participant as well as broader society.

Plenary speaker Jeff Van Duzer, dean of the Seattle Pacific University School of Business and Economics, described how business contributes to human flourishing. “The organization exists, from God’s perspective, to serve its employees and customers,” he said, suggesting that the business decisions made solely to maximize profit, which led to the current economic upheaval, were short-sighted and ultimately unsustainable.

Human flourishing sustains.
Those who flourish approach work as an opportunity for expression, and as an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to society, often in relationship with others. Many people feel a calling from God to work in a specific field; human flourishing acknowledges and supports that call.

“Science contributes to the way we flourish,” said another plenary speaker, Francis Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project. “It answers our questions and helps solve our problems. Science is a joyful form of worship.” Collins said that he felt that his own success as a scientist was God-given.

“At a great moment of cultural and social upheaval,” human flourishing is now more in demand than ever. “The big dreams of the last 200 years have let us down,” said Bishop Wright. “Now we have the chance of a lifetime to rethink those dreams.”

^{Audio from FC08 plenary sessions featuring Bishop N.T. Wright, Jeff Van Duzer, Francis Collins, and other speakers, can be heard and downloaded at ��ñ��’s audio resources page.}

News Keywords

Graduate Faculty Ministry

Conferences

Graduate Faculty Ministry

Faculty Pursue God’s Truth

Faculty Pursue God’s Truth

The Wide Open West

The Wide Open West

��ñ���� alumni - Mark Edwards

��ñ���� alumni - Mark Edwards

Bold Faith as a University Administrator

Bold Faith as a University Administrator

Watching God Work at Harvard

Watching God Work at Harvard

Following God in Career Choices

Following God in Career Choices

Grad and Faculty Ministry

Grad and Faculty Ministry

God at Work at Harvard

God at Work at Harvard

FC08 Prize Winners

FC08 Prize Winners

Human Flourishing

Human Flourishing

��ñ�� alumni - Mark Edwards

��ñ�� alumni - Mark Edwards