Faculty

Dallas Willard’s ��Ƶ Ministry Roots

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 13:45:24 +0000

September 24, 2019

Gordon Govier

Dallas Willard’s ��Ƶ Ministry Roots

��Ƶ’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries marked its 30-year anniversary at the GFM annual staff conference this year but the story of Dallas Willard shows that ministry to graduate students and faculty is buried much more deeply in the DNA of ��Ƶ. This was celebrated earlier in the year during a meeting of the faculty fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW). As the faculty members and administrators gathered at the University Club, they were regaled with memories of the days when Dallas was a UW graduate student.

Dallas received his Ph.D. in philosophy at the UW, living and studying in Madison from 1959 to 1965. He was hired at the University of Southern California (USC) in 1965 and taught philosophy there for the next 47 years, until just before his death in 2013. Along the way, Dallas also became a leading evangelical writer and speaker, influencing many thousands through books like The Divine Conspiracy.

Gary Moon’s biography, Becoming Dallas Willard (��Ƶ Press), describes the five years spent in Madison as a graduate student and lecturer as a critical time for Dallas. Despite having previously attended three Christian colleges, being ordained in a Baptist Church in 1956, and pastoring at two churches, Dallas still looked for a transformational faith. “I was almost terminally ignorant about God and soul,” he said later.

Discovering Spiritual Disciplines

At UW, Dallas discovered a new dimension of faith through the practice of spiritual disciplines. “What I had thought were merely the discarded practices of futile religion were actually things that, if rightly used, would help people change,” he observed.

One of the spiritual disciplines that Dallas practiced was the regular Sunday night fellowship with a handful of other graduate students in the home of UW Geography professor John Alexander, who was the ��Ƶ undergraduate chapter faculty sponsor, and soon to become ��Ƶ president.

"He (Alexander) felt that there was a need for something for the grads; he opened his home on Prospect Drive for us,” recalled Mary Daniel, emeritus professor in the UW Department of Spanish and Portuguese. “At Dr. A’s house nothing was off limits. You could ask anything.”

In the foreword to the study guide for The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas attributed many of the basic teachings from the book to this formative period. “Part of the first chapter comes from graduate school days when I was active in ��Ƶ Christian Fellowship,” he wrote.

What Dallas appreciated about ��Ƶ, he said at another time, “was that capacity to be biblically serious, to hold to the central teachings of what Lewis called ‘Mere Christianity,’ and yet to be open enough to be willing to discuss anything.”

The Dilemma

Dallas faced a hard choice as his time at UW came to a close. He received his Ph.D. in 1965, and during the previous year he had not only been a UW lecturer, but he also pastored the Arena Congregational Church in a small town outside of Madison. Would he return to the pulpit as a full-time pastor or follow philosophy into the academy? What would it be, the pulpit or the classroom?

Finally, the answer came. “The Lord said to me, ‘If you stay in the churches the university will be closed to you. But, if you stay in the university, the churches will be open to you.’ I knew the Lord said it to me because I sure didn't have enough sense to understand what it meant at the time,” he concluded.

So Dallas accepted the invitation from USC to move to California. He became a fixture in the philosophy department, chairman from 1982-1985, and recipient of the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1977.

Joe Thackwell, ��Ƶ’s Director of University Partnerships, got to know Dallas and his wife Jane as he planted a graduate student and faculty chapter at USC. He learned that Dallas would write his phone number on the board and tell students they could call anytime, “although if it was dinner time he may not answer.” Joe noted, “The call to pastor through his professorship was a family call that implicated his whole life in the way that missionary and pastor’s families often experience.”

Dallas spent hours and hours listening to students in his office and made a habit of long lunches with students and faculty, engaging them deeply. “He also made himself available to the whole Christian community at USC,” Joe said. “When he taught at the Trojan Christian Faculty and Staff Fellowship the numbers swelled.”

Working with former students and current USC staff, Joe established a memorial plaque that now hangs in Mudd Hall, the home of the USC Philosophy Department. The plaque lists four worldview questions that Dallas used in his lectures and listed in his book, Knowing Christ Today. Joe believes that it is the only such memorial to a professor on the USC campus.

Dallas almost never said no to an invitation to speak. Through his counseling, books, and lectures about Christian living he was able to disciple as many people as a professor as he could have as a pastor, maybe more. And the formative fellowship he attended during his UW days illustrates the importance of graduate student ministry.

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Bearing Burdens Together: The Power of Prayer and Flourishing Faculty

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 13:48:04 +0000

April 24, 2019

Gordon Govier

Bearing Burdens Together: The Power of Prayer and Flourishing Faculty

May Kealoha, a nursing professor at Oahu’s Kapiʻolani Community College (KCC), was used to praying about big decisions. But as a member of a faculty committee that was facing a big decision affecting the future of KCC, she did not want to pray alone.

Brennan Takayama had just moved to Oahu to become an ��Ƶ Area Director. Prayer was part of his plan as he envisioned planting ��Ƶ chapters on more Oahu campuses to reach more students with the gospel.

But neither expected how well their hopes and prayers would come together when they discovered each other at their church in Honolulu and began to talk about campus ministry.

Brennan said he would help Professor Kealoha start a faculty prayer group. But a week later, when he returned from a conference, he found a message from her saying that she had already contacted other Christian faculty and administrative staff whom she knew and planned a meeting. She invited Brennan to come.

“We got together, shared prayer requests, and then we prayed,” Brennan said. “There was not a dry eye in the room. It was so significant. They were praying with other faculty and staff, on campus, in the middle of the day, to Jesus—something that they had never experienced before, and never imagined could happen.”

The KCC prayer group has been meeting almost every Friday for the last year-and-a-half. “We have so many struggles,” Professor Kealoha said. “It’s such a blessing. We call it a little heaven at the end of the week.” Answers to prayer have included financial support for a medical outreach and chemistry research, as well as healings.

Terry Lock, an elementary education professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, attended last year’s celebration of ��Ƶ’s 70-year history in Hawaiʻi because all three of her children had been, or are currently, on ��Ƶ staff. When she heard about the KCC faculty prayer group, she knew she wanted to start one on her campus.

“We’ve been meeting regularly every other week to pray since September and it’s been incredible,” Professor Lock said. “God quickly revealed to us that he’s been present on this campus all along and that we were now joining him in his efforts. Now we don’t have to bear the burdens of our work by ourselves and we pray for the souls of faculty, staff, and students across our university system.”

Professors Kealoha and Lock are not only working with Brennan but also now with Dan Stringer, a Campus Staff Minister with ��Ƶ’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries (GFM) who has returned to Honolulu after three years at the University of Southern California (USC).

“It’s amazing that there’s so much traction with faculty already,” Dan marveled. “Often you hear stories in GFM that it takes a long time to get started with faculty ministry.”

A year ago, in the spring, an annual dinner tradition was begun aimed at fanning the flames for more faculty prayer groups and fellowships on Oahu. “Now it’s a bonfire,” Brennan said.

Professor Kealoha observed, “When we pray, we strengthen whatever God has put in each of us as leaders. We are strengthened and we can flourish, because we have prayer.”

Will you partner with ��Ƶ and our 2030 Calling so that faculty on more campuses can experience the power of praying together and partnering with God for his mission on campus?

Be a part of our 2030 Calling

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Both Feet in Faculty Ministry

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 20:06:31 +0000

July 9, 2018

Gordon Govier

Both Feet in Faculty Ministry

Deciding to join Graduate and Faculty Ministries (GFM) staff was not without its painful moments for Charles Barker. Specifically, it was the sunburn he endured from long hours of conversation on the dock at ��Ƶ's Campus by the Sea during the West Coast Faculty Conference.

Charles had been invited to the conference by Lynn Gill, at that time the GFM Regional Director, when he had contacted her expressing an interest in faculty ministry.

During almost three decades on the pastoral staff at Pasadena Covenant Church, including 17 years as senior pastor, Charles was wary of getting caught up in the institutional life of the church. “I always felt like I was a pastor of a local church with one foot in the church and one foot in the local community,” he said. But after 27 years he prayed, “God, could I have both feet in the next season in my life in the secular world? Could I be a pastor to the non-Christian world with both feet?”

He wasn’t sure what that would look like. And when a friend suggested campus ministry with ��Ƶ, he was dismissive. Working with undergrad college students seemed to him like a job for a younger person. But out of curiosity he went to ��Ƶ’s website, and for some reason the initials GFM caught his eye.

And then he read the GFM ministry vision: “We are planting and building communities of deeply thoughtful, grace-filled graduate students and faculty to join together to bring Christ’s redeeming influence among the people, the ideas, and the structures of the university and professions.”

Charles thought, That’s exactly what vocational discipleship should be about. When he discovered all of the campuses in California without GFM ministry, he knew he had to respond. And that was how he ended up in long conversations with professors attending the 2009 West Coast Faculty Conference, sponsored by ��Ƶ GFM.

One conversation represented the challenge of faculty ministry particularly well. The professor told him, “I experience a profound double loneliness. I am a leader in my church and I love my church, but none of the things that I spend 55-60 hours a week dealing with on campus are in conversation at my church. Similarly, I have wonderful colleague friends on campus. But what informs my thinking about my research and my field—my Christian values, my Christian worldview—all of that feels like it’s off limits. And I really want to talk about that.”

Charles quickly realized he wanted to work in that academic environment, to help faculty members have the opportunity to connect their faith with their discipline and their campus. He wrote in his prayer journal, “This would be a privilege, a high and holy calling.”

Charles was initially assigned to The Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven independent, adjacent campuses in Southern California. “We have a lively, active, large fellowship there,” he said. “It’s been kind of the hub of regional ministries in Southern California.”

The faculty fellowship at Claremont includes Francis Su, a highly regarded mathematician; ��Ƶ Press authors Mary Poplin and Stephen Davis; Dave Vosburg, chemistry professor and spouse of ��Ƶ Campus Staff Minister Kate Vosburg; and many more who often speak at ��Ƶ events in the region.

The weekly faculty fellowship meetings typically draw 25-30 faculty and administrators from a group of about 75 and a total mailing list of about 200. “That’s remarkable growth in the last 10-12 years,” Charles said. “It’s been a time of God raising up and bringing to us wonderful, brilliant scholars who are Christians.”

Students are also being influenced. One Harvey Mudd College student shared her story at a faculty fellowship several years ago. She took Dave Vosburg’s organic chemistry class and appreciated his focus on green chemistry, addressing environmental challenges, and other aspects of his teaching. Curious about some of the things he said, she went online and found his blog, where he talked about how science and Christian faith are not at odds and how he holds the two together.

The student wanted to know more about Christianity and met with Dave during his office hours. For five or six weeks he answered her questions, and then connected her to an undergrad Bible study in her dorm. From there she joined the ��Ƶ student chapter, where she met other Christian students, and was eventually baptized into the faith.

“I want to continue my education and return to campus,” she told the faculty gathering. “But I don’t want to be just a professor or researcher. I want to care holistically for people, as Dave does.”

Several years after he began working with Claremont faculty, Charles also began to plant a faculty chapter at California State University, Los Angeles. In addition he codirects ��Ƶ's West Coast Faculty Conference, which is now held every summer on the campus of Westmont College.

In 2009, when Charles first visited the faculty conference, there were about 30 attendees. Now attendance runs around 165-170. About half are from schools with chapters of Christian faculty, and half from schools without.

“I think of this as an intensive experience of being a community of Christian scholars who are practicing vocational discipleship,” he said. “There’s a profound thing that we do in ��Ƶ that requires that faculty leave behind functional dualism that says I have my family life, and my friendships, and my church volunteerism, and my spiritual growth, and that’s in this corner, and then I go to work and do my work there, and those two things never meet.”

In the academic world with both feet, Charles’s prayer is being answered as more and more faculty see their faith and academic worlds come together.

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Summer Conferences: Refreshed Faculty

gordon.govier@intervarsity.org — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 20:09:15 +0000

News

September 29, 2017

Gordon Govier

Summer Conferences: Refreshed Faculty

A gift that ��Ƶ’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries offers to faculty members across the country each summer is the opportunity to meet together with other Christian faculty in an informal setting, to explore connections between their faith and their work. This past summer, professors and their families gathered in Brevard, North Carolina; Kingston, Rhode Island; Santa Barbara, California; and at ��Ƶ’s Cedar Campus in Cedarville, Michigan.

Discussion topics were different at each location. In North Carolina, ��Ƶ alumnus Carl Ellis and ��Ƶ Board member John Inazu talked about the unique challenges and opportunities for Christian faculty working in pluralistic environments, and the need to acknowledge differences and model tolerance, humility, and patience.

In California, ��Ƶ’s Scripture Engagement Director, Lindsay Olesberg, led a daily, in-depth Bible study of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Presentations by professors Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, Talithia Williams, and Francis Su stimulated discussions on cultural issues affecting life, ministry, and work in academia. Artist Molly Zakrajsek guided the faculty in the creation of a colorful mural (seen in background of West Coast conference attendees photo below).

At Cedar Campus, retired ��Ƶ Press Publisher Bob Fryling and his wife, Alice, led sessions aimed at improving the listening process: listening to God, listening to others, and listening to the heart.

In New England the speakers were Alice Brown-Collins, Associate GFM Regional Director, and Robert Chao Romero, a UCLA professor whose grandfather was a leader in the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students movement in China.

Faculty who attended the conferences enjoyed a nourishing and enriching time of fellowship and recreation. “It was great to meet other faculty following Jesus, and I treasured conversations regarding faith and work,” one said. Another thankful attendee responded, “I knew I needed to go to a conference that didn’t give me more work to do, but one that gave me the rest and spiritual care that I needed. And I had heard that this was that kind of place. That’s why I signed up to come, and it did not disappoint.”

Deb Clark, Associate Director of Faculty Ministry, said, “These faculty conferences offer a rare and safe space for faculty and their families to engage with a supportive community, and receive significant interaction with Scripture and discipleship topics. This setting is a contrast to the loneliness and isolation often felt both in the university and the church. What a joy to observe how God uses these conferences for healing, encouragement, and restoration.”

A total of 115 faculty, administrators, and scholars attended this summer’s four conferences, expanded for the first time to four regions of the country. Total attendance (including ��Ƶ staff and families of faculty) was around 300.

More than 2,000 faculty were involved with ��Ƶ one way or another on U.S. college campuses this past year. Thousands more are served through ��Ƶ’s online publications: The Well and the Emerging Scholars Blog.

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Emerging Scholars Network Launches

webteam@intervarsity.org — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 06:00:00 +0000

News

February 29, 2004

Emerging Scholars Network Launches

After a careful planning process of nearly two years, on March 1, 2004, ��Ƶ launched the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) — an endeavor of interest to all Christian scholars from undergraduates to senior faculty. Building upon the insight and guidance of a diverse advisory council of university and college faculty and ��Ƶ staff, the ESN Director, and a work group of faculty and staff eagerly open the doors on this thirty-year vision. In the words of the ESN Mission Statement:

“The Emerging Scholars Network is called to identify, encourage, and support the next generation of Christian scholars, at all stages of their academic careers, who will be a redeeming influence within higher education.”

Included in the launch events are:

the opening of free, online registration for new members
an opening slate of online resources at EmergingScholars.org for members and non-members alike
brochures and brainstorming flyers that will be distributed to all ��Ƶ staff, among others
presentations about ESN to ministry leaders inside and outside of ��Ƶ
an upcoming panel presentation at the conference, “Christianity and the Soul of the University”

Stan Wallace, Director of ��Ƶ’s Faculty Ministry and of the Emerging Scholars Network, welcomes scholars at every career stage to join, and hopes that the Network will be a rich opportunity for collaboration among campus ministers as well, within all of ��Ƶ and beyond.

For more information, please contact the Emerging Scholars Network.

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