In every case thus far, our earnest desire to “help” is always rewarded by our being helped more: to see firsthand the boldness and effectiveness of Christians who are doing ministry that we could never do; to observe types and shapes of ministry that we would never think of; to watch fellow Christians stretch often quite meager resources to accomplish what we might be tempted to consider impossible; to see the Spirit bring results in hearts and lives that remind us that God’s purposes and ways are grander and more lovely than we ever imagined.

This humbling and this encouraging are common effects on Covenant students who engage in the grand enterprise of gospel and Kingdom ministry around the world. We are too ready to believe that our ideas and efforts are essential, too confident in our own resources and skills – and certainly God is pleased to put to good use all that we obediently and faithfully offer. We are too eager to claim credit for the blessings that God pours out – and certainly God gives godly satisfaction to those who participate. What a joy to see up close what God is doing without us! And what a joy to find our own place in the ranks of those who follow and learn!

Please pray for us – and many like us – who go and work and help. Pray that we will be filled with the wonder of the Spirit’s mighty moving, chastised in our pride and pretension and self-importance, made more alive to the glory and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, gripped by the examples we see so that we would so live and work in our own contexts – and enabled to be genuinely helpful and encouraging to those alongside whom we serve.

A brief note about summer at Covenant –
With trees and flowers in full array and warm breezes blowing on Lookout Mountain, summer is a wonderful time to visit Covenant. Although college classes are not in session, the campus is busy with visitors, many of whom are attending conferences and camps of various sorts. Our new academic building will be completed in May and will be open for viewing. Our front campus grounds, now receiving a magnificent make-over, will welcome you with fresh beauty. Please plan to stop in and see what God has enabled us to do in these recent months – join with us in giving him thanks!

(With our travels to India, I won’t post my next blog until late May.)

This is a time when many graduating seniors would love to hear that voice from heaven announcing the future and giving out work assignments! Stories of such clarity, as worthy and wonderful as they are, often lead the rest of us – the vast majority of us – to a kind of discouragement about our own futures. In the absence of God’s voice, how do we know what to do? How do we find the right path? How do we avoid missing God’s purpose for our lives?

Mark Dever, senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, wrote recently about “the bondage of ‘guidance,’” the desire for a subjective sense of leading which “is too often, in contemporary piety, binding our brothers and sisters in Christ, paralyzing them from enjoying the good choices that God may provide, and causing them to wait wrongly before acting.”

This past week I spoke with a Covenant student who is deeply troubled by the lack of a sense of God’s leading and a specific path. He seems to be paralyzed in just the way that Dever describes, in bondage to the expectation that God simply must provide the blueprint of his future before he can take the next step.

Dever comments on his own sense of God’s calling to ministry on Capitol Hill: “I realized then (and now) that I could be wrong about that supposition.”

I was free in 1993 to stay in England, or teach at a seminary, either of which would have been delightful opportunities. I understand that I was free to make these choices. But I chose, consulting Scripture, friends, wisdom, and my own subjective sense of the Lord’s will, to come to DC. And even if I were wrong about that, I had (and have) that freedom in Christ to act in a way that is not sin. And I understand my pastoring here not to be sin. So I am free. Regardless of the sense of leading I had.

I encouraged this student to define his options, to consider his own desires and capabilities, to weigh pros and cons, to get the counsel of wise folks who care about him, to faithfully and prayerfully assess the options in light of Scripture in order to detect disobedience in any of them – and then to choose! I earnestly believe that, as long as the path is not sinful, God will be delighted to bless him as this first step leads to others and this one very partial view leads to further vistas.

My father felt, deeply and continually during his high school years, that God was calling him to pastoral ministry, and he never wavered through college and seminary and almost sixty years of ministry life. And yet I am convinced that he could have followed a very different path, putting his considerable gifts and energies to work in business or education to the glory of God. Of course, looking back, we can be sure that God was directing his steps; his life’s work was just as God intended. But from the front side, it was a combination of his sense of call with the encouragement of family and friends, his marriage to my mother, and decisions about college and jobs – for each of which he did NOT have clear spiritual guidance but rather made choices based on what seemed at the time to be the best way forward.

Three years ago, our oldest son graduated with a degree in English and a heart for the church, but without a firm path to follow. So he took a job in a small investment management company providing customer support and financial analysis, and he also entered a ministry internship program at a wonderful church in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. As the months passed, the opportunity to go to seminary opened up, still in the Chicago area so that he could continue his internship, and he is now completing the second year of his Master of Divinity program and moving into a near-full-time role at the church as the pastoral intern for the church’s third congregation on the near west side of Chicago.

My wife would tell a similar story about God’s unfolding plan after college graduation: a period of odd jobs (working at a day care center, teaching private piano lessons, temp office work) and hopeful expectation as I did my graduate work at Vanderbilt, and then to her delight the opportunity to pursue graduate studies herself.

My own experience supports the point as well. While I was “sure” that I wanted to teach philosophy and headed straight into graduate school, the years have demonstrated that the path of God’s providence is often – always? – very different from what we planned and could have ever known.

So how did I decide to move from college teaching to business to pastoral ministry to the presidency at Covenant? It was, as Dever says, the wonderful combination of providential timing, wise counsel, fervent prayer, examination of Scripture, and the sense of God’s releasing purpose. Each opportunity seemed to gather up a variety of factors that made the move make sense to us.

We are free to walk forward boldly. God has given us minds and talents and desires; he commands us to live obediently according to the Scriptures no matter what our circumstance; he brings us friends and mentors; and he puts before us opportunities and pathways. As long as the path is not sinful, we can feel free to make the very best decision we know how to make, trusting that God is directing our steps and will lead us into his blessing.

During a Q&A session with parents, I was asked about the emphasis we place on writing across the curriculum, and I was delighted to be able to respond that writing continues to be a strength of our program. Not only in specifically writing-oriented disciplines like literature and history, but also in business and education and the sciences, written assignments are a consistent feature.

After the session, a student related the story of a friend of his who is enrolled in our pre-engineering dual-degree program with Georgia Tech. After completing the designed three years at Covenant, he joined engineering students from many institutions in classes at Georgia Tech and found that he quickly became the “designated writer” for his group. He reported that, while his classmates were well-prepared technically, they had almost never been required to write during their earlier college years and were simply not able to do it to an acceptable standard.

Reflecting on writing at Covenant prompted my thinking about reading at Covenant. After all, it’s virtually impossible to learn how to write well without reading widely and much. A common characteristic of excellent writers is that they are voracious readers, and it’s their exposure to great writers and great writing that serves them well in their own writing efforts. Again, at Covenant reading is at the heart of our curriculum, and our faculty set high expectations for the volume and level of reading in their students’ academic work.

Awhile back, John Piper posted an article about the importance of reading, particularly for those of us who are “people of the Book,” as reading and understanding the Bible are foundational and essential for a growing and vital faith.

As Piper puts it, the effort and skill required to read difficult biblical texts well provide:

…an overwhelming argument for giving our children a disciplined and rigorous training in how to think an author’s thoughts after him from a text – especially a biblical text. An alphabet must be learned, as well as vocabulary, grammar, syntax, the rudiments of logic, and the way meaning is imparted through sustained connections of sentences and paragraphs…. (A)part from the discipline of reading, the Bible is as powerless as paper. Someone might have to read it for you, but without reading the meaning and the power of it are locked up.*

The Bible frequently clues us in to this matter of taking reading seriously: “Have you not read…?” “Have you never read…?” “Did you never read…?” “How does it read…?” God’s people are repeatedly commanded to read the Scriptures, again and again and again.

Piper concludes:

The ability to read does not come intuitively. It must be taught. And learning to read with understanding is a life-long labor. The implications for Christians are immense. Education of the mind in the rigorous discipline of thoughtful reading is a primary goal of school. The church of Jesus is debilitated when his people are lulled into thinking that it is humble or democratic or relevant to give a merely practical education that does not involve the rigorous training of the mind to think hard and construe meaning from difficult texts.

Thus far I’ve focused on the importance of writing well and the underlying necessity of reading well – with special emphasis on the reading of the Bible. But I want to back up one more step in the logical sequence: Reading well and with understanding helps us get at the writer’s meaning only if we have dependable access to the writer’s meaning. Once again, this brings us to the reading of the Bible. Even a good reading of a scriptural text won’t enable us to think the author’s thoughts after him if the text in translation is not a dependable transmission of the text in the original language. Not only should this prompt us to consider the study of Hebrew and Greek as a more regular feature of the ministry of the church, but it also should heighten our interest in which English translation we utilize for our study.

We don’t have to look far to find examples of the radical difference translation can make, not only for our understanding but also for our theology and our discipleship. Let’s briefly consider two cases from Peter’s letters.

2 Peter 1:16-21 is a text of biblical epistemology: how we know what we know about Jesus and his coming again, so that we might believe and live rightly. Peter offers two levels of validation for the coming of Jesus in glory and judgment: his own eye- and ear-witness account of the glory of Jesus revealed on the mountain of transfiguration, which served as an anticipation of the glory to be revealed at his coming; and the testimony of the prophets, who wrote, not according to their own interpretation or will, but as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

But what is the relationship between these two levels of validation? Is Peter’s eye- and ear-witness account a more solid foundation for our faith than the prophets’ testimony, or is it the reverse? Which it is is important – the issue goes to the heart of the confidence we can have in the written Word of God.

And yet we find two different popular translations giving contrary versions of the order. The New International Version translates v. 19 as follows: “And we have the word of the prophets made more certain…”, the sense being that the written testimony of the prophets has been made “more certain” by the eye- and ear-witness testimony of Peter and the apostles. On the other hand, the English Standard Version translates the same verse, “And we have something more sure, the prophetic word…”, the sense being that the written word of the prophet is more sure than Peter’s own personal account.

The point is that we can read either version closely and get the meaning, but – which meaning did Peter intend?

For several reasons I think the ESV translation is the better one (more faithful rendering of the Greek, the internal logic of the passage, the gospel account of the transfiguration event itself – which even Peter himself, eyes and ears open as they were, didn’t understand at the time, and other biblical passages in which we are explicitly told that the written Word is a more dependable ground for our faith than immediate experience, e.g. Luke 16:27-31). On the basis of a good translation and a good reading, we can follow Peter in affirming the magnificent gift of the Word of God written and the powerful, life-giving blessing it brings – far beyond momentary, less dependable, and often confusing sensory or spiritual experiences.

The other passage is 1 Peter 5:6-7. The New International Version translates this passage:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him for he cares for you.

By translating these verses as two separate sentences, the NIV creates for the reader the challenge of understanding the connection between them. What does “Cast all your anxiety on him…” have to do with “Humble yourselves…”? Is verse 7 a new thought? Is it a general exhortation to leave our worries with the Lord?

The English Standard Version translation preserves the grammar of the original Greek, presenting v. 7 as a subordinate clause as follows:

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

By faithfully rendering the grammar of the original, the ESV enables the reader immediately to see that there is a close connection between humility and getting rid of our anxiety. In fact, the reader is instructed to demonstrate true humility before God by casting all anxieties on him. Worry is pride, a refusal to acknowledge who God is and who we are.

Now could a reader of the NIV get this right? Well, of course – the reader could take these verses the way the ESV renders them. But there are other ways to take the NIV translation that would miss the mark and fail to drive Peter’s sharp point home: Do you worry? Are you full of anxiety? Don’t pray for “more faith.” Turn away from your pride, your presumption that you fully understand your situation and how bad it is. Humble yourself before the Lord, the One who cares for you with infinite mercy and love, giving over all your worries to “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ” and who “will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (5:10).**

I am very grateful for the place of writing in the academic program of Covenant College, and I hope we will always be known as a place that takes writing seriously and hones writing skills so that our graduates will be able to lead the way in written communication.

I am very grateful as well for the place of reading here at Covenant, not only as foundational for good writing but as the principal doorway into knowledge and understanding of our world, its beauty and complexity, and our place in it.

This reading emphasis is most significant for us with regard to reading the Bible. We take the very words of Scripture seriously, believing that the human authors, without being robots or stenographers, nevertheless wrote down exactly what God intended. And this means that we are concerned not only about reading well – vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc. – but also about the dependability of what we read, both the text in the original languages and the text in translation. To read and understand, no matter how well, what the author did not intend leads us away from the truth which God would have us believe and live.***

May our reading and writing be instruments of God’s blessing in the church and in the world!

* And it’s not just a matter of vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and organization. I remember the challenge of reading the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, who wrote some of the densest and most complicated philosophy in the English language. His major work, Process and Reality, comes with an extensive glossary of terms at the back because Whitehead frequently made up his own words – they looked like English words but they didn’t appear in a standard dictionary! – and he frequently assigned his own unique meanings to familiar words and collections of words. Years later, I came across a recommendation from a literary critic about reading difficult texts, and this encouragement brought back memories of the challenge, and the resulting satisfaction, of working hard to understand Whitehead: “Keep staring at the text, and eventually random acts of understanding will begin to occur!”

**One further example of the crucial importance of translating according to the grammar of the Greek text: Ephesians 5:18-21. Compare the ESV with the NIV and note that the latter breaks up this one complex sentence into separate sentences, and even presents v. 21 as a stand-alone paragraph rather than the fourth in a series of subordinate clauses intended to build out the meaning of “be filled with the Spirit” (v. 18). In so doing, the NIV, along with its gender-neutral companion TNIV, opens the door for (a) understanding v. 21 as a thesis statement for the passage that follows regarding wives and husbands, and (b) the proposal of an egalitarian understanding of husband-and-wife relationships, i.e. their service and submission to one another are identical and without differentiation – thus undermining the actual teaching of vv. 22-33 in line with this alleged introductory thesis.

***A few years ago, I was describing to a friend the benefits of essentially literal translation demonstrated in the English Standard Version, and he commented that he found The Living Bible version of a particular passage in Romans easier to understand. While I have long appreciated the devotional benefits of The Living Bible, it was soon clear to both of us that the “easier” reading altered and even left out crucial aspects of the original language text that the ESV version included. The point is that ease of understanding is not the most important criterion for a version of the Bible, particularly if what is understood, no matter how easy, is not what the author intended. My wife Kathleen has recently completed a two-volume study of the book of Isaiah, and she has sometimes been tempted to apologize when those using it complain about its difficulty. But then she stops herself, knowing that Isaiah is indeed a very difficult and complicated prophetic book and that careful and accurate study requires facing the difficulty head-on. It is no virtue to make something easier than it actually is, or to leave out or change meaning in order to make it palatable to less diligent students. Reading and understanding the Bible is often very hard work! As the philosopher Spinoza put it, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

However, I think it’s possible to discern this general divide: Some foresee the 21^st century as bringing the triumph of secularization, while others anticipate that it will be the “religious century.”

In his recent essay “And the Winner Is…” (The Atlantic, March 2008), Alan Wolfe presents the case for the triumph of secularization. (Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College, and the article can be found here.) Surveying the rise of religious faith in many areas of the world and noting dire predictions of the demise of Enlightenment tolerance and the onset of religious conflict, Wolfe makes two observations:

First, many areas of the world are experiencing a decline in religious belief and practice. Second, where religions are flourishing, they are also generally evolving—very often in ways that allow them to fit more easily into secular societies, and that weaken them as politically disruptive forces.

His recommendation is not to bet against the power of the Enlightenment and the marketplace to erode religious fervor.

The big middle of his essay includes overviews of the major regions of the world, and Wolfe asks his readers to look beyond the current increases to religious belief and passion to the “inexorable advance of secular ideals, such as personal choice and pluralism,” which ideals are helping to create moderated forms of virtually every world religion, including Islam.

And yet Wolfe does not equate secularization with the demise of religion belief, but rather with religion’s willingness to find its place in the secularized marketplace of ideas. It might be, therefore, that Wolfe rejects the more virulent criticisms of religion espoused by writers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, who seem to see religion as inherently evil (whatever “evil” might mean apart from some ultimately religious framework!), particularly as he describes the church in America as finding its comfortable place within secular context:

Consider what is occurring within the growing American evangelical movement. It has built megachurches that meet the needs of time-pressed professionals by offering such things as day-care centers, self-help groups, and networking opportunities. Its music owes more to Janis Joplin than to Johann Sebastian Bach. Its church officials learn more from business-school case studies than from theological texts. And its young people—well, as the children of parents who have gone through a born-again experience, they are not likely to be as obedient as the evangelical leader James Dobson wants them to be. Having opted to grow on secular terms, American evangelicalism is becoming less hostile to liberal ideas such as tolerance and pluralism. New efforts to take it in directions sympathetic to environmentalism and social justice are a direct result of the maturing of the faith, which followed from earlier decisions to make the movement more appealing to large numbers of Americans, especially the young.

This kinder and gentler Christianity bodes well, in Wolfe’s view, for the future, and he sees “intimations of a pluralistic, American-style religious revival” in other areas of the world as well, with religious peace as the single most important consequence of secularization’s triumph:

Historians may one day look back on the next few decades, not as yet another era when religious conflicts enveloped countries and blew apart established societies, but as the era when secularization took over the world.

Wolfe’s view of the future of religion stands in significant contrast with that put forward by Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey in “Climate Change: A New Season for Faith” (Comment, March 2008; the essay is a revision of the introduction to their book How Now Shall We Live?). Their very different perspective is exemplified in this way:

…we are seeing the first signs that Christianity may be on the verge of a great breakthrough. The process of secularization begun in the Enlightenment is grinding to a halt, and many people believe that the new millennium will mark ‘the desecularization of world history.’

Noting several cultural indicators such as declines in crime, drug use, and abortion rates, and citing the warmer welcome given to moral and religious discourse in the public square, the authors suggest that cultural trends are shifting because of growing dissatisfaction with “modernity” and its consequences and a fervent groping for something that will make sense of life and provide transcendent meaning.

Americans have achieved what modernism presented as life’s great shining purpose: individual autonomy, the right to do what one chooses. Yet this has not produced the promised freedom; instead, it has led to the loss of community and civility, to kids shooting kids in schoolyards, to citizens huddling in gated communities for protection. We have discovered that we cannot live with the chaos that inevitably results from choice divorced from morality.

The failure of the secular and the loss of meaning provide the context for Colson’s and Pearcey’s call to the church to embrace its calling to offer to the world a “comprehensive life system that answers all of humanity’s age-old questions: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? Does life have any meaning and purpose?” Such a calling enables Christians to engage effectively in the global marketplace of ideas and ideals, to declare and to demonstrate the sufficiency and all-encompassing truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be God’s agents in his redemptive purpose for his creation. Such a calling affects not only the church but every area of life: science and technology, arts and media, education, business, leisure and entertainment, law and government, home and family. Rather than inviting people to a private faith which gets comfortable with a leveled and secularized environment, Christianity contends for the truth and preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things, against other points of view and systems that offer futile promises and empty futures.

An extended aside: Colson and Pearcey mention that Abraham Kuyper “said that the dominating principle of Christian faith is not soteriological (i.e. justification by faith) but rather cosmological (i.e. the sovereignty of the triune God over the whole cosmos, in all spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible)”. This reference points to an unfortunate tendency among some “worldview” and “cultural transformation” Christians to separate the redemption of culture from personal, individual salvation. Such a separation is not the view of the biblical writers, for whom the soteriological (justification by faith, sanctification, glorification for individual sinners) is the path to the cosmological (impact on culture and redemption of creation). Common grace is not salvific; only in union with, and in dependence on, saving grace is God’s redemptive purpose for his creation accomplished. Gospel evangelism, Bible study, and discipleship are essential elements of God’s saving work, and lead, as they are faithfully and biblically pursued, to the wider social and cultural impact of an active and Kingdom-minded church. I am sure that Colson and Pearcey would agree: this past weekend, my wife and I heard Colson at a gathering in Florida give a clear, biblical, and winsome presentation of the gospel – the call to confess and repent of sin, to trust in the gracious work of Jesus on the cross, and to believe and then obey. This is the only sufficient ground for genuinely Christian engagement with the world.

What are we to make of these two views of the future of religion in the world? Wolfe invites us to consider the triumph of secularization, with progressive moderation of religious fervor and eventual religious peace. Colson and Pearcey foretell the demise of the secular, as the promise of satisfaction in prosperity fails to come true and the peoples of the world turn increasingly to competing religious answers.

Certainly globalism, fueled by communication and the expanding economic marketplace, does have a profound effect on culture and religion. Even two centuries ago, Methodist preacher John Wesley bemoaned the supposed inevitable:

I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. (quoted in Wolfe’s essay)

So we must grant some merit to Wolfe’s primary point.

But Wolfe’s argument ultimately fails because he does not see beyond the merely historical and social dimensions of religious belief, the struggle in the realm of flesh and blood. The Bible reminds us again and again that there is a larger story being told, a story which involves principalities and powers, truly cosmic forces in the heavenly realms. The dramas played out among world religions are in fact dramas of spiritual scope beyond our capacity to see and understand apart from the illumination provided by God’s revelation.

Wolfe’s prediction of religious belief tamed by secular forces is naïve; the secular will never triumph, because the universe is not secular! While it is difficult to know what kind of future to anticipate, it is almost certainly the case that the cosmic spiritual battle will show up again and again in earthly forms until the Lord Jesus returns and every knee bows and every tongue confesses.

What does this mean for God’s people? Commit our way to him, knowing that he is a faithful and powerful God who will accomplish all that he intends. Be equipped with the gospel of peace, the truth of the Scripture, the encouragement and strength of the family of faith. Learn to see “worldviewishly,” grasping the implications of the preeminence of Jesus Christ in all things and living out his preeminence in all dimensions of life and work. And prepare for our roles in the grand drama of history, contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, standing strong in the face of persecution and suffering, and holding out the hope of the gospel – until we see our Lord face to face.

After much searching, Dan decided to major in interdisciplinary studies, selecting coursework from the English, French, and music departments. This major has enabled him to pursue a variety of interests in literature, writing, languages, and music composition and performance. As he looks toward next year, he is investigating positions as coach and teacher in a secondary school, hoping to find a place where through his gifts and knowledge and experience he can make a worthwhile contribution both in the classroom and on the athletic field.

A key requirement for faculty approval of a particular interdisciplinary course of study is the student’s telling a coherent story about how these courses in these disciplines create a coherent and viable concentration. The reason telling such a story is important to us at Covenant is that we have a view about interdisciplinary work, whether it makes up a major, or provides the framework for our core curriculum, or contributes to a broader understanding of a specific discipline. Our view is that “interdisciplinary” means more than “multidisciplinary” or “crossdisciplinary”: it’s not just a matter of collecting courses from various disciplines that exist alongside one another (that’s “multi”); or of talking about other disciplines from the perspective of one discipline (that’s “cross”); but much more a matter of seeing how every course in every discipline actually affects and informs all the others (that’s “inter”), as part of the larger interrelated fabric of all knowledge. The various academic disciplines bear real, intrinsic relationship to one another, and knowledge and understanding in one area profoundly shape and enhance knowledge and understanding in the others.

Recently, Dr. William Dennison, professor of interdisciplinary studies at Covenant, published a treatise in which he explores the distinctly Christian foundation for interdisciplinary studies. In A Christian Approach to Interdisciplinary Studies: In Search of a Method and Starting Point, Dr. Dennison traces the history of increasing fragmentation among the realms of knowledge over the last several centuries, rightly diagnosing the underlying problem as the loss of a coherent and foundational starting-point. Without such a starting-point and the common heritage of all knowledge that it provides, the disciplines become separate and even antagonistic camps, pursuing their individual inquiries without regard for the others – with the result that they hardly want to, or are able to, speak with one another. As he puts it:

The result of such an unbiblical starting point seems to be apparent; the arena of academia is characterized by selfishness, pride, and power that often forfeit any conception of coherence and unity in the curricula unless it serves their own disciplinary interests. In this world of egotism, the Christian theist must recognize that human sinfulness is a monumental barrier for a true liberal arts education; realistically, its ideal of maintaining unity within diversity finds itself in constant conflict and resistance.

Some who recognize the harm of such fragmentation and seek to address it will attempt to build a framework of interdisciplinary understanding that emphasizes conceptual overlap or the value of pragmatic interaction. But if they fail or refuse to find “an ontological integrative starting point” that provides both the angle of approach and a methodology for true interdisciplinary work, then the education that results will inevitably remain fragmented and incomplete.

Dr. Dennison articulates very well the grounding of Covenant’s commitment to interdisciplinary studies: the original and final unity of all things in Jesus Christ. Taking us back to creation, where before the Fall all things were coherently related in God’s perfect order, and then forward to a consummated and recreated creation, where the unity of all things will be perfectly redeemed and restored, Dennison concludes:

Specifically, in Christ, the facts are given in the condition of integration…; humans immediately find themselves within the coherent universe as a whole.

Separation of the disciplines is, therefore, not primordial, even as the disciplines themselves constitute original and useful frameworks for understanding God’s amazingly manifold creation. A creation united in Christ, in the beginning and at the end of the age, provides both the possibility and the rationale for our interdisciplinary approach. Further, recognizing and rejoicing in this primordial and eschatological unity requires rejection of the “silo” mentality among faculty from different departments and makes possible the kind of gracious and fruitful conversations that happen daily on our campus – as historians, artists, psychologists, business and education professors, physicists, and philosophers put their joint efforts into the shared task of understanding God’s world.

What a rich framework for who we are and what we do at Covenant, celebrating and exploring together the rich and complex dimensions of human inquiry in a world foundationally understood as God intended. Our College motto, from Colossians 1:18, is set in the larger context of Paul’s doxology regarding this unity:

…all things were created through him (God the Son) and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.

Our task, therefore, is not to imagine unity and coherence where there is none, nor to attempt to create it artificially for the sake of pragmatic ends, but rather to grasp that it was there in the beginning, that in Christ we see the firstfruits of its restoration, and that it will be fully and perfectly manifest in the end. A vigorous interdisciplinary approach, grounded in the One in whom all things hold together and realized both in theory and in practice, is in fact the only educational approach that honors the God of the Scriptures.

Does this mean that we don’t delve deeply into the specific disciplines? By no means! Our physics students must – and do – receive a rigorous and highly competitive physics education, preparing them fully for further work in physics if that is their calling. And the same can be truly said of all our academic departments. But at Covenant this deep delving will never be walled off from seeing the breadth of other ways of seeing and understanding the world and everything in it, and rejoicing in the insights of other disciplines that complement and may even challenge conclusions derived from discipline-specific paradigms and methods.

Many thanks to Bill Dennison for his insightful account of interdisciplinary study. Kathleen and I are thrilled that our sons Dan and David are benefiting from Covenant’s soundly Scriptural and Christ-centered interdisciplinary framework. We are filled with an assured hope that they are being well-equipped to explore the pathways of God’s calling in a world of such diversity and complexity as ours. We are joyfully anticipating watching how God will use this blessing in their lives for his gospel purposes.

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 guided our minds and hearts –

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

At sunrise at Rock City, Psi Chi, our campus chapter of the psychology national honor society, coordinated the gathering. The rest of the morning included prayer among student small groups, faculty and staff departments, and personal prayer and meditation. During our chapel time at 11:00, faculty and staff joined in the chapel for an extended time of corporate prayer led by Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Jeff Hall.

At lunchtime, faculty and staff joined together and with students for conversation and reflection. Throughout the afternoon, in many settings and many ways, Covenant folks read, sang – and, yes, some napped! – during one of the days that I look forward to the most.

The evening brought a student-led time of praise and prayer, ending the day with our focus on God’s glory and purposes for his creation and for us.

Our prayers included wonderful opportunities for praising God for his holiness and beauty and truth and grace; for acknowledgement and confession of our sin; for wonder and thanksgiving for his forgiveness through the cross and his amazing blessings in our lives; and for bringing our requests to him, trusting that, as we give up to him our anxieties, his peace would guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

We prayed for each other – for those struggling with illness, bearing sorrows, fighting temptation, wondering about the future. We prayed for the church – for purity and peace, for refreshment and revival, for perseverance and hope, for the living and active Word to do its work, for effective gospel ministry. We prayed for our country – for the political campaign, for our service men and women in harm’s way in many areas of the world, for justice and righteousness in our land according to the Scriptures. We prayed for the world – for peace, for humility among world leaders, for the millions of victims of evildoers, for the powerful gospel through God’s people to shine the light of Jesus Christ in all dark places.

As we awoke the next morning, we were alerted to the realities of the world in which we live, and of our comprehensive dependence on the Lord God of the universe, to whom and in whose presence we had prayed in so many ways the previous day. The tornadoes that raced across Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky, causing the deaths of more than fifty people and heavy damage, including at our sister institution, Union University in Jackson, TN, reminded us of our calling: to give witness to our awesome God who rules and reigns, who leaves nothing undone that he would do, who allows nothing that he does not somehow oversee, and who graciously and often mysteriously works all things for his own glory.

On Friday and Saturday, we held our Parents Weekend, when about a hundred parents visited their daughters and sons at the College. During an open session for questions, as we discussed the challenge of encouraging spiritual growth in our students, I was compelled to remind us all that, with all the programs and opportunities and relationships that can so helpfully serve that purpose, it is God himself who captivates minds and hearts, whose Spirit works in the deepest caverns of the soul, whose Word always accomplishes what he intends, and whose purpose for his people is for good and not evil. And so our purest, highest charge is to pray that God would do it – in our three sons, two of whom are at Covenant, and in all our children during these hugely important years.

In the same way I invite all of you who read this blog to bow your heads and hearts right now – and pray. Pray for the College, that we would be faithful and diligent and effective in this crucial task of education and preparation – for students, faculty, staff, board, administration. Pray for the church that we would be continually reformed according to God’s Word and revived to fulfill his gospel purpose for us by his grace. Pray for our nation in such times as this. And pray for the world, and particularly for the movement of God’s truth and Spirit in bringing sinners to repentance and faith, in protecting his people in dangerous places, in gathering his chosen from all nations.

Of course our setting aside two days for prayers during the academic year does not imply that we don’t pray the rest of the time! Such specific and intensive times of prayer remind us of the Scriptures’ call to pray continually in all circumstances, with humility and gratitude and hope. In praise, confession, thanksgiving, and request, may we be people of prayer, knowing and loving and trusting our God who answers all our prayers according to his perfect and merciful purposes.

Another piece of recent news is that, after fourteen years of steady decline, the birth rate for American teenagers grew by 3 percent between 2005 and 2006. Again the two sides pin the responsibility on different factors: pro-choice proponents blame abstinence-only programs which, they claim, fail to provide “common-sense solutions,” and pro-life advocates blame conventional sex education programs that focus on condom and contraceptive use, addressing symptoms rather than underlying causes.

What cannot be denied is the cavalier attitude toward sexual activity that dominates much of youth culture and is a prevalent feature of campus life in America. This was brought home to me again this morning as I read a news item about the rising cost of birth control on college campuses (this article echoed another I had seen several months ago). A feature of the federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 eliminated incentives for drug companies to provide deeply discounted prices to college health clinics, producing a rapid increase as high as 500% in the cost of contraceptives, straining health clinic budgets, and pushing many students toward less reliable birth control methods.

Birth control advocates are calling the situation a crisis, and some are working to remove the offending feature of the Act. Planned Parenthood wants Congress to make the issue a top priority, and Sens. Obama of Illinois and McCaskill of Missouri have teamed up on a bill to reverse the 2005 provision in order to restore the price discounts.

Others are ruing the “negative” consequences on students. Some colleges, like Bowdoin in Maine, have stopped providing free contraceptives, although one Bowdoin student doubts that much will change, since “students are not necessarily concerned with a couple of dollars.” But other students see it differently. A student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison said, “It’s tough when something I feel is a necessity, like a utility bill, goes up from $7 to $40 a month,” and she tells of a friend who had to “choose between birth control and her monthly grocery bill.” (The friend chose groceries.) The director of student health services at Montana State University in Bozeman noted that the price increase “may seem small, but a lot of small things add up to be significant…It’s just one more price increase for college students in the overall increase in the cost of higher education.”

What is most striking, although less surprising than I wish it were, is the unquestioned assumption that sexual intercourse is the normal course of life on today’s college campuses. According to the American College Health Association, 39% of college women use oral contraceptives, with the implication that a much higher percentage engage in sexual activity but may use other forms of birth control or none at all. The quotations above place intercourse in the same category as turning on the lights (the parallel with utility bills) and classes (just one more increase among the itemized costs of education), making it clear that the broader educational culture fully condones and even promotes sexual promiscuity. Certainly the realities in many residence halls, including fully co-ed halls and bathrooms, reflect this same acceptance.

All of this makes a place like Covenant seem more and more odd, and therefore more and more a distinctive alternative for a college education. While we know that Covenant students do struggle with sexual temptation and some engage in sexual sin, we wholeheartedly promote and celebrate God’s design for human sexuality and sexual relations within marriage. We teach and encourage everyone in our campus community to pursue His holy and satisfying plan. Rather than give in to the flow of our culture toward rebellion and perversity, we joyfully find our calling in the pursuit of God’s purposes even and especially when this means that we stand against the trends.

So, as we grieve 50 million deaths, and rejoice in the slowing abortion rate, and spend ourselves in many directions to protect the unborn, and work alongside others to address teen pregnancy – we must not lose sight of the underlying issue: the reality of sin, the truth and grace of the gospel, the witness of God’s people in word and deed to the beauty and hope of God’s purposes. This is our frame of reference at Covenant, not only for education but for all of life.

Some of you may have seen the November 11 60 Minutes, a program entitled “The ‘Millennials’ Are Coming.” Host Morley Safer took his viewers on a quick tour of the rising generation often referred to as millennials:

They were raised by doting parents who told them they are special, played in little leagues with no winners or losers, or all winners. They are laden with trophies just for participating and they think your business-as-usual ethic is for the birds. And if you persist in the belief you can take your job and shove it.

(Read the entire program transcript here.)

In the workplace,

These young people will tell you what time their yoga class is and the day’s work will be organized around the fact that they have this commitment….They have climbed Mount Everest. They’ve been down to Machu Picchu to help excavate it. But they’ve never punched a time clock. They have no idea what it’s like to actually be in an office at nine o’clock, with people handing them work. And oh, by the way, possibly asking them to stay late in the evenings, or their weekends.

Faced with new employees who want to roll into work with their iPods and flip-flops around noon, but still be CEO by noon, companies are realizing that the era of the buttoned down exec happy to have a job is…dead….

What role have parents played in the millennials’ development? The program mentions the “coddling virus” which strikes many homes: parents who continue to look after their children long after their “special” offspring leave the nest. College faculty tell stories of parents who call them directly about their children’s assignments and grades; career services departments offer reports of parents who contact them to update their children’s resumes; employers are beginning to hear from parents in support of a child’s promotion or complaining about a poor performance review. The literature on collegiate student development carries many references to the phenomenon of “helicopter parents,” who hover just a cell phone call away, even calling to wake up their children every morning. The reality is that more than half of college seniors move home after graduation – “it’s a safety net, or safety diaper, that allows kids to quickly opt out of a job they don’t like.”

Another approach to understanding the rising generation comes from sociologist Christian Smith, who in his article “Getting a Life: The challenge of emerging adulthood” describes what he calls a “new, distinct, and important stage of life, situated between the teenage years and full-fledged adulthood” which has come to be in recent years. (Read the entire article here.) Factors in the emergence of this stage of life include the delay of marriage; economic and cultural changes which have served to undermine stable, lifelong careers; and parents who extend financial and other support to their children well into their 20s and even 30s. Traits of emerging adulthood include identity exploration; instability; focus on self; feeling in limbo, in transition, in-between; and a “sense of possibilities, opportunities, and unparalleled hope.”

Smith quotes Jeffrey Arnett’s analysis of how this phenomenon appears in matters of faith:

The most interesting and surprising feature of emerging adults’ religious beliefs is how little relationship there is between the religious training they received throughout childhood and the religious beliefs they hold at the time they reach emerging adulthood…Evidently something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children.

Millennials’ connections to churches may tend to parallel their connections to the workplace:

…they may very well bring to the churches of their choice motives, beliefs, and orientations difficult to make work from the perspective of faithful, orthodox Christianity…The phrase ‘consumer-oriented’ comes to mind.

Smith also draws on the work of Jean Twenge:

…multiple mainstream institutions in our culture have taught them their entire lives “to put their own needs first and to focus on feeling good about themselves…These messages come…not only from mass-consumer advertising but from the best-intentioned school success programs. Having actually believed such confident messages, young adults then find it hard to cope when real life often turns out differently. Stagnant careers, failed romances, personal insecurities, financial difficulties, and other disappointments and problems often lead to sarcasm, depression, apprehension, loneliness, and self-defeating gambits to force life to turn out the ways it was promised to have worked (e.g. quick “rebound” romances, spending sprees, ill-considered job changes).

How ought the church, and a college like Covenant, address these cultural facts and speak to the emerging generation? As Christian Smith suggests, neither falling all over ourselves “to reconstruct our messages and practices to somehow become more ‘relevant,’” nor blindly ignoring the phenomenon and the questions and challenges it raises, will do. It is crucial to understand the ways and attitudes of emerging adulthood; to grasp the fact that the rising generation will shape the institutions and cultural forms of its own time; to see in this stage of life opportunities for critical self-reflection; and to recognize that there are real possibilities for ministry and service that previous generations could not have realized. There are valuable insights among emerging adults and their ways of seeing and living that must be discerned and built upon.

As I was writing this blog, I heard a CNN report on “extreme flextime,” the workplace development which enables employees to work according to their own time schedules and lifestyles – including through the night, in shorter but more frequent shifts, and from their homes. Of course not all jobs will allow such flexibility, but, for those that will, early indications are that productivity is up and employee turnover is down. So there may be new structures and systems emerging to accommodate and take best advantage of the traits and habits of emerging adults. At Covenant, we have addressed a related issue with a college dining schedule that provides continuous service from early morning through the evening.

At the same time, the narcissism and self-focus to which both 60 Minutes and Christian Smith point must be challenged, even as analogous attitudes have been challenged in every generation. At Covenant this means maintaining and nurturing our foundational theological framework, passing on to the rising generation the true and gracious biblical orthodoxy that has sustained God’s people throughout all generations across thousands of years. It means critical examination and rejection of trends that would indeed “change the message” for the sake of being relevant – as can be seen in sectors of the “emerging church” movement; in the eagerness of many evangelicals to jump on cultural and political bandwagons without careful examination of philosophical and theological sources and implications; and in proposed rapprochements with other faith traditions which dull or distort the beauty and clarity and hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It also means sustaining college curriculum and academic standards that, while taking into account the phenomenon of emerging adulthood, nevertheless hold high the worthy tradition of learning, the rightful authority of the grand fund of knowledge and understanding passed down to us, and the stubbornly real distinctions between fact and fiction, truth and error, good and evil.

One of my greatest delights at Covenant is to observe and interact with our students. Certainly they have been shaped by the cultural trends described by 60 Minutes and Christian Smith, and we as faculty and administration are taking that into account. But they have also been shaped by homes and churches and schools in which truth, goodness, and beauty have been celebrated, where words continue to carry real meaning, where history and legacy are honored, where proper authority is respected, and where the Bible and the gospel truth it proclaims are the foundation for all of life.

All this means that today’s Covenant students have the glorious calling to speak distinctively into their culture and time, in ways that I cannot – and yet to do so with the same gospel message and for the glory of the same Lord Jesus Christ, joining their voices and lives to those of God’s faithful and fruitful people of all generations.

There is much on which to reflect in Lindsay’s book. His distinction between “populist evangelicalism” and “cosmopolitan evangelicalism”; his description of the personal and somewhat informal networks that bind powerful evangelical leaders together; his accounts of evangelicals’ efforts to gain intellectual respectability in, and to bring Christian principles to bear on every aspect of, the broader culture—these are fascinating and important features of his research and deserve to be understood by evangelicals of all stripes.

My comment here focuses on one aspect of Lindsay’s description of these evangelical leaders: their general disconnection from the local church. According to Lindsay, these leaders “feel distant from their own churches…” and “instead focus on the parachurch sector…” (p. 194). Small groups of peers provide their principal source of spiritual solidarity, and their commitment to such groups and parachurch networks is significantly higher than their commitment to a local congregation—that is, unless it’s a megachurch, where these folks are more likely, according to Lindsay’s observation, to find leadership models consistent with those they’re familiar with outside the church, or a savvy, entrepreneurial senior pastor with whom they can relate more closely than the typical pastor of a smaller congregation.

Often there is a genuine disrespect for such more typical pastors: “Many talked about their pastors being completely removed from the working world they inhabit…And they blame ministers for preaching irrelevant sermons that fail to connect with the challenges faced by business leaders today” (p. 195). Some of these leaders have experienced criticism from pastors, who would preach publicly against second homes or corporate jets without speaking personally with the leaders first.

One example whom Lindsay presents is Bob Buford, founder of Leadership Network. Lindsay says of Buford that he “has little interest in working with pastors of congregations that are of average size and scope, and rather wants to ‘build on the islands of health and strength.’” Buford favors “innovative church leaders whose personal styles resemble those of corporate CEOs.” As Buford put it, “I only deal with people who are receptive to what we’re trying to do” (p. 198).

What interests me—and ought to interest every believer—is the latent ecclesiology here. What exactly is the church, biblically speaking? Why does it exist? What is, and what ought to be, the believer’s relationship to it? What is the role of ordained church leaders, and what is the nature of their authority?

When powerful leaders eschew the local church, for whatever reason, and look to one another for their spiritual support, what is the long-term effect on faith, Christian life, and ministry? Where is spiritual discipline and accountability? With no intention to justify the failure of many ministers to understand and connect with their congregants, I nevertheless would suggest that these leaders may in fact need perspectives other than their own, even perspectives that would challenge their own. When Buford says that he deals only with “people who are receptive to what we’re trying to do,” one wants to ask “What is driving what? Who is being required to dance to whose tune? What resemblance does this bear to biblical descriptions of and instructions to the community of faith?”

In my opinion, there is no greater tragedy for modern evangelicalism than the demise of the church (both universal and local) through the loss of its rightful role and voice for believers and the broader culture. The rampant triumph of individualism and autonomy, according to which, even for people of faith, self is sovereign and fulfillment of one’s own desires and ends is paramount – this triumph means that the church has become just one more instrument for the individual’s personal goals: “It needs to be receptive to what I’m trying to do, or I’ll simply create my own communities to accomplish my ends.”

What a far cry this is from the biblical church, the very body of Christ on earth, through which, by the means of grace given to it, God is pleased to accomplish his sovereign and gracious purpose for his creation! How grateful I am for Covenant’s vital and vibrant connection to the church—to the PCA, to church leaders, to congregations, all of whom we joyfully serve and to whom we are joyfully accountable. Are such connections always easy to manage? Of course not. But we gladly choose such complications and the blessing of working through them over an autonomy that would cut us off from the primary context of God’s manifold and redemptive grace. And we consider it a crucial part of our calling to equip and motivate our students to love and serve the church, with its shortcomings as well as its glories, rather than seek alternate arrangements.

Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.

‘Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation of peace forevermore;
Till with the vision glorious her longing eyes are blest,
And the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won;
O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we,
Like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee. 
—Samuel J. Stone, 1866

In one sense this is clearly acceptable and laudable: Christians throughout the ages have been God’s instruments in bringing profound impact for good. We rightly take joy in Wilberforce’s relentless drive to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire, and we also rightly acknowledge others across the centuries who have provided leadership not only in government but also in the arts, in business, in education, in significant religious movements, and in justice and mercy.

At the same time I am increasingly concerned as I listen to the rhetoric of some PR for Christian colleges – including Covenant’s own! Who gets most commonly profiled in alumni publications, put up as paragons of the fruit of the educational programs colleges provide? To which grads do we often point to persuade prospective students and their parents that our institution is the one they should attend?

Recently I asked for an appointment to see someone who I thought might be interested in learning more about Covenant and perhaps supporting us financially. The response was that this individual was more interested in what he called “colleges with a special purpose,” and his further comments made clear that he meant colleges that were bent on producing “leaders” in government, media, the arts, etc. He has been impressed by the opportunity to focus on what he called the “high end” of opportunity for graduates of such institutions.

My temptation was to tell him about Covenant’s high-impact graduates – you know, the “real” leaders, the ones who are making a big difference in the culture. But at that moment Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 popped into my mind:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

And so, instead of touting the “big names,” I told him that, while Covenant has produced some extraordinary alumni in his sense, what really excited me was the opportunity we have to turn out generations of graduates who will faithfully pursue the mind and heart of Christ in every nook and cranny – most of them rather ordinary and even mundane. I told him about the remark of one of the angel hosts in C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, when a visitor to heaven asked to see the “famous people”: the host replied, “Everyone’s famous here.”

Of course the jury is out about whether the intentional purpose to “produce leaders” will actually be successful. How did our heroes come to be our heroes? What were their actual paths, the experiences and influences that shaped their lives and work? What did they do to become what history has made of them – David shepherding his sheep, Joseph serving faithfully in prison, Peter diligently fishing and mending his nets? In our engineered efforts to manufacture cultural impact, could we be missing the point? What if, instead of aiming for the glories of leadership, we were to aim for the hard, daily work of shaping students into godly, biblically thoughtful men and women who will shape their corners of the world in reformational and glorious ways!

Please don’t misunderstand: I love William Wilberforce, and I am grateful to God for raising up such men and women about whom books are written and films are made. I love the fact that God has called many Covenant College alumni to roles that fit the common pattern of leadership: business owners and corporate executives, those working on Capitol Hill, leading scholars and authors, pace-setters in medicine and law. And I pray that God will see fit to raise up a Wilberforce – or two or three or more – from among the thousands of our Covenant grads.

But such folks will be the exception and not the rule; that’s not how God primarily works his purposes in and through and by his people in his world. God’s pattern is not most profoundly seen in our extraordinary heroes, as important as those heroes are. God’s pattern is much more commonly, and perhaps in the long run more powerfully, found in the ordinary lives of ordinary people – who of course are not ordinary at all! They are fathers and mothers faithfully raising up their children to think and love and live for Christ. They are school teachers and college professors who nurture wisdom and understanding day in and day out, over decades of devoted and sometimes tedious work. They are accountants and carpenters and pastors of small churches; they are youth ministers and missionaries, shopkeepers, salespeople, deacons who care for the needy, and office workers who show up every day to do what is expected of them and much more.

My hope for Covenant is that we would be an “ordinary purpose” college – not ordinary in the sense of boring or not noteworthy, but ordinary in the sense of honoring the centuries-long calling of faithful, persevering, patient Christ-centered education which has proven its worth again and again and again in serving God’s redemptive purposes. Most often it’s not flashy, it doesn’t get headlines, and it doesn’t fit the pattern of hero-worship that consumes not only the broader culture but also the church. But it is God’s main way, and I rejoice to be part of it.