Our Critical Role in the Grander Story

For a multitude of compelling reasons, the university is a strategic institution for the cause of the gospel, as well as for the flourishing of our country and the world. Correspondingly, the Christian faculty member is positioned to play a critical role in God’s plan to redeem and bless the world through having a privileged seat in one of the most strategic mission fields in the world. 

Our Particular Critical Role

Every believer makes a specific contribution to the mission and work of God, but he uses Christian professors in a truly strategic mission field: the university.  

One of the professors who has shared his professional journey in this series of Missional Moments frequently comments that he is absolutely certain that the university where he serves as a full professor is the most spiritually dark locale in his entire state: “If you could make a infographic to chart spiritual darkness, I’m certain our university would be in the center of the biggest black dot in the state.”  

Yet, for decades this professor has counter-intuitively made the great people and the fine institution he serves, his family and his home.   The university is often both a spiritually dark place and a place for significant Kingdom change.  It has always been so.

So much of what we love and cherish is downstream of the American university: 

• Every child and grandchild, for generations to come, will be shaped in our universities. 

• The belief systems and values of our nation flow largely from our universities.

• Almost all of our civic, judicial, and business leaders are shaped in our universities. 

• The greatest challenges and crises facing our nation and the world are addressed through research in our universities. 

• Scholars in our universities serve as primary arbiters of what is good and true for the rest of our society., 

Other reasons could be offered as well. It is difficult to conceive of an institution with greater potential to shape (and bless!) the world than the American University. 

In Luke 6:40 Jesus remarked, “everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (emphasis ours). Personally, we wouldn’t have concluded this; we would have suggested: “Everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teaching.”

But according to Jesus, teachers indelibly shape students.

There are two sides to this coin:

• If students become like their teachers, what are the ramifications of generation after generation of university students graduating without ever having met a single professor they knew to be a Christian?
• Conversely, what would be the impact if every university student in America had the opportunity, at least once, to study under a Christ-following professor?

This reason alone, that our universities shape every future generation, is decisive evidence for the critical importance of the university as a mission field. 

--Rick Hove and Heather Holleman