Dr. Niel Nielson

We regularly use a phrase around Covenant that expresses our understanding of the pathways of life and service, both for us who teach and serve at the College and for our students and alumni: extraordinary callings in ordinary places.

The principal point of the phrase is to remind us of the primary way in which God has from the beginning accomplished his redemptive and reviving work in the world: through the faithful, day-by-day, most often mundane work of his people, most often in “ordinary” places and through “ordinary” means, as by his mercy and provision they fulfill the extraordinary callings to which he has called them.

Once in a while he raises up extraordinary leaders whom he uses for dramatic, history-changing purposes – the apostle Paul, Martin Luther, C. S. Lewis, and of course many others across the centuries. But even they seem to come to their historic uniqueness of leadership through rather ordinary means: as hard-working scholars or faithful churchmen or teachers or accountants or whatever, carrying out their daily duties without much sense of God’s grander design for the outcomes of their efforts.

I recently came across a brief essay, written by pastor Kevin DeYoung, which offers further reflection on this theme (“The Glory of Plodding,” originally published in the May 2010 issue of Tabletalk magazine). DeYoung writes: Click to continue »

How the years do pass! We’ve come to the conclusion of another academic year at Covenant, with our 55th Commencement exercises scheduled for this Saturday, May 8, with Dr. Sinclair Ferguson as our speaker. It’s a special commencement for our family with the graduation of our youngest son, David; we’ve finally arrived at this major transition in our family’s life.

This has been a remarkable year at the College, particularly in light of how things looked a year ago – economic crisis, budget worries, enrollment questions, fund-raising uncertainty. After careful planning and difficult decisions, accompanied by a sense of anxiety which affects even those who trust in a sovereign and gracious God, we began the year with strong student enrollment. The fall also brought surprising strength in gifts, including the largest single gift the College has ever received, from the estate of long-time Covenant friend Lowell Andreas. Spring enrollment and giving have remained on or above goals as well, so that, as we look to the end of our fiscal year on June 30, we are anticipating a positive budget outcome and solid financial position entering the new year. Click to continue »

Regardless of one’s work or ministry context, understanding mission is critical. Just last week I attended a seminar on our campus, sponsored by our student-led Business Club and led by a very experienced investor, who relentlessly made the point that he had to learn, sometimes the hard way, that he must always follow his disciplined investment approach, rather than allow himself to chase returns or pursue trendy strategies.

Churches often struggle with missional focus as well, as do business enterprises: There’s always a “success story” out there that can tempt us to leave behind what we know we are called to be and do. And it’s true of colleges, including Covenant, as the competitive demands of the “higher education marketplace” provide ample opportunity for trying to look like other institutions – even at the risk of losing clarity about our distinctive mission.

One of the questions that I am occasionally asked by prospective students and their parents is this: “How does Covenant’s program in ________________ (insert academic area) compare with ___________________ (insert name of other college/university)?” Click to continue »

A few weeks ago, our chapel speaker was Rev. David Helm, senior minister at Holy Trinity Church, in Chicago. I’ve known David for many years, from when he was one of our pastors at College Church in Wheaton, IL, to when he, his family, and some fifty others moved to the Hyde Park area of Chicago more than a decade ago to plant Holy Trinity Church, to in these recent years when our oldest son, Jon, served as a ministry intern at HTC under David’s mentoring leadership. I have been taught and inspired by David’s gospel vision for the city of Chicago and his focus on ministry training for younger pastors and church leaders.

For one of his chapel messages, Rev. Helm spoke from John 10:22-39, where Jesus confronts the Jews with their unbelief, bearing witness about himself through both his true words and his good works. When he declares that he and the Father are one, “the Jews picked up stones again to stone him (v. 31).” Jesus asks, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” – to which the Jews respond, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”

The Jews’ response here is, as Rev. Helm pointed out, crucial for our understanding of the church’s gospel mission in the world. Click to continue »

In a recent blog posting, I addressed the view, expressed by the authors of an article about secularization at Christian colleges and universities, that education, including Christian education, should be “open-ended,” that is, it should not proceed with goals or ends in view. Here is their selected quotation from Parker Palmer, which expresses this perspective:

A spirituality of ends wants to dictate outcomes of education in the life of the student. It uses the spiritual tradition as a template against which the ideas, beliefs, and behaviors of the student are to be measured. The goal is to shape the student to the template by the time that his or her formal education concludes. Authentic education wants to open us to truth – whatever truth may be, wherever truth may take us. Such a spirituality does not dictate where we must go, but trusts that any path walked with integrity will take us to a place of knowledge. Such a spirituality encourages us to welcome diversity and conflict, to tolerate ambiguity, and to embrace paradox.

Here was my response:

Regarding the Christian educational enterprise, we can and must recognize the essential aspects of genuine education: willingness to explore, to ask questions, to be open to new ideas and directions. But Christian education is not, and was never intended to be, unqualifiedly open-ended, and thus Parker Palmer’s “authentic education” is not Christian education. The Bible itself presents from its opening chapters a spirituality of ends, and the entire Scriptural storyline is eschatological, i.e. it unfolds with its final consummation in view. In contrast to Parker’s and the authors’ recommending “any path walked with integrity,” the Bible points us again and again to one path, one way, one gate, one ending to the story, and one Savior and King.

And then I made this further comment:

It’s important to add that, while declension is not myth, open-endedness certainly is, as if any education or any educator is free from starting-points and presuppositions – what Palmer calls a “template” — that shape and direct, and in large measure determine, the learning outcomes in students’ beliefs and values. I will address the myth of open-endedness in my next posting.

In this blog post, then, I want to comment briefly on this point, that open-endedness is a myth. Click to continue »

Two recent books, which I heartily recommend, highlight the importance and delight of participation in the local church.

In Why We Love the Church, authors Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck contend that “being part of a church – and learning to love it – is good for your soul, biblically responsible, and pleasing to God.” They lean hard against a collection of contemporary voices who, often despairingly or cynically or angrily, describe the institutional church as outdated, irrelevant, dead, and even harmful. With wit and reference to their own personal experiences, DeYoung and Kluck draw deeply on the Scriptures, theology, church history, and the examples of thriving and gospel-purposeful churches to present a compelling case for the structure, discipline, preaching, community, and mission of organized churches.

In The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love, author Jonathan Leeman contends that “insofar as the gospel presents the world with the most vivid picture of God’s love, and insofar as church membership and discipline are an implication of the gospel, local church membership and discipline in fact define God’s love for the world.” This book is an extended explication of the love of God realized and displayed in and through the life and historic practices of the local church, and, with DeYoung and Kluck, Leeman provides a profound and arresting response to those who propose that the church is either irrelevant or antithetical to God’s saving and sanctifying love.

I suppose that a primary reason why I appreciate these two books is that their themes connect with Covenant’s historic church-related identity and commitment. Covenant is formally part of an ecclesiastical community: we are owned by the Presbyterian Church in America, and we exist foundationally to serve families and churches of the PCA as well as of other like-minded and like-hearted church fellowships. So, while Covenant is itself a college and not a local church, our guiding theological convictions and our covenantal responsibility for the education we provide are aligned with and supportive of our overseeing church body. Click to continue »

The Winter 2010 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review includes an article titled “A Slippery Slope to Secularization? An Empirical Analysis of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities,” by Samuel Joeckel and Thomas Chesnes, both on the faculty of Palm Beach Atlantic University. The article presents the authors’ analysis of results of a 2007 survey of 1,900 CCCU faculty, concluding that “these institutions are hardly descending a slippery slope to secularization.” They go on to argue that “overzealous vigilance against secularization proves counterproductive” to the appropriate ethos and aims of higher education.

The authors claim that their data “suggest that faculty at CCCU institutions are firmly committed to Christian higher education,” basing that judgment, at least in part, on the following responses:
• 98% strongly or somewhat agree with “My college/university should maintain its Christian identity”;
• 94% strongly or somewhat agree with “I have a good idea of what is meant by the phrase, ‘the integration of faith and learning’”;
• 84% strongly or somewhat agree with “It is not difficult for me to integrate faith and learning in my discipline.”

They also claim that their data “suggest that CCCU institutions are places where faith is nurtured and strengthened,” with 79% reporting that, “as a result of the time spent at their college/university, their faith has either become much or somewhat stronger” (sic).

So here is their conclusion:

Based upon our data, we conclude that the dangers of secularization, insofar as they apply to the CCCU, have been overstated. Survey participants overwhelmingly endorse the Christian identity of their institutions; participants also understand and practice the integration of faith and learning.

Finally, they quote approvingly an author who refers to “the myth of declension” which “has cramped our thinking and narrowed our reflection on the nature and character of Christian scholarship.” (Rodney Sawatsky, Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation)

I can only begin to scratch the surface of the serious and complex issues which the authors gloss over in their effort to convince us that everything is just fine in Christian higher education — and that any who claim otherwise should be characterized as over-vigilant, hyper-conservative, closed-minded indoctrinators. . . in other words, the real problem. Click to continue »

A couple of months ago, my wife and I traveled to watch a Covenant men’s soccer match – a purposeful and delightful journey as our son David was playing defensive midfielder in his senior season on the team.

During breakfast at the bed-and-breakfast where we stayed, we met a couple who both work for a Fortune 500 company and who, upon learning that I am president of a college, asked me what I thought about the preparedness of today’s college graduates for work in the world.

The context for their question was that, although their company recruits from the very “best” colleges and universities, the college degree seemed to them to guarantee virtually nothing about what these graduates know or are able to do – and this with respect not only to business knowledge and competencies but also to more general abilities to speak and write well and to work effectively with others. They also noted that today’s graduates have little sense of the wider world and its significant systems (economic, political, social, cultural, etc.). The company’s training programs, therefore, assume almost nothing except simple reading skills.

This couple’s observation is not theirs alone: According to a recent survey of employers, only 24% of today’s college graduates are “excellently prepared” for even entry-level positions.

While there may be multiple reasons for the weak condition of graduates’ preparedness, one important factor may be the increasingly nonprescriptive curricula of American colleges and universities. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni recently released “What Will They Learn: A Report on the General Education Requirements at 100 of the Leading Colleges and Universities,” which graded these institutions on their course requirements in seven key subjects: English composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and science. Forty-two of the 100 received a grade of “D” or “F” for requiring courses in two or fewer of these subjects, with twenty-five receiving “Fs” for one or no such courses. (For more information, go to http://whatwilltheylearn.com.)

Even among institutions which, for general subject areas like literature and history and science, have “distribution requirements” to satisfy which students can choose from among a group of courses, the listed courses for each area are often so varied in topic and depth that virtually no common understanding and competency can be ensured. In fact students are graduating with huge gaps in their knowledge.

It’s no wonder that diplomas from such institutions carry less and less assurance for employers, and it should be no wonder that those who pay for such education – through tuition, public funds, and donations – are asking more questions and expecting more accountability. Click to continue »

Last July, one of my blog postings focused on the appointment of Dr. Francis Collins as the new director of the National Institutes of Health. My principal purpose was to raise concern about how Dr. Collins, a professing Christian whose appointment to this new post has been hailed by many Christians, reconciles his Christian faith with his clear commitment to Darwinian evolution. I questioned the biblical adequacy of his approach, and encouraged believers who hold to the authority and sufficiency of the Bible to look elsewhere.

A major concern regarding evolution among Christians has been the possibility – or, as some would argue, the inevitability – of ethical implications and consequences which contradict biblical truth regarding the dignity and sanctity of human life. God’s direct and special creation of Adam and Eve, our historical first parents, in his own image provides a major biblical ground for the unique nature of human being and an important moral mandate for its protection. Give that up, as Dr. Collins is explicitly willing to do, and this most significant theological/ethical foundation for the protection of human life is more likely to fall.

One might wonder, then, what Dr. Collins’s views of the sanctity of human life are, given his dual profession of Christian faith and evolution. We are beginning to find out. Click to continue »

On November 20, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., The Manhattan Declaration was publicly released. The Manhattan Declaration is a nine-page statement whose central burden is a clear, strong, and gracious articulation of crucial, biblically grounded moral convictions and commitments regarding the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious liberty. To read the Declaration and see related items, go to http://www.manhattandeclaration.org.

Here are two paragraphs from the opening section:

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

 

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

The more than 150 original signers, of which I am one, are from Protestant Evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox communities. Evangelical signers include Joel Belz, Bryan Chapell, Ligon Duncan, Tim Keller, Al Mohler, Marvin Olasky, Harry Reeder, Joni Eareckson Tada, and Ravi Zacharias, and at least one has publicly expressed his rationale for signing.

I signed the Declaration for four principal reasons: Click to continue »