Ten Reasons To Go To A Christian College | Dr. Jim Scott Orrick
- Humans were created to know God. A human who does not know God is not fully human. Jesus is the only way to know God. Go to a college where the whole curriculum is designed to glorify Jesus and therefore make you fully human.
- God’s ultimate revelation is in his Son Jesus. Jesus is now on the throne of the universe. Go to a college that recognizes Jesus as the Lord of the world and encourages students to follow Jesus as Lord.
- God has given us a book that tells us how to know him and enjoy him forever: the Bible. Go to a college that values and teaches the Bible as the word of God, so you may understand what God has said and so that you may know God and enjoy him forever.
- All truth is God’s truth, and the whole earth is full of God’s glory. Go to a college that encourages students to see God’s glory everywhere it is revealed.
- The two ways that God consistently influences humans is through the literature of the Bible and through personal relationships. Go to a college where you may gladly come under the influence of the administration and faculty. After taking his class, there ought to be at least one professor about whom you say, “I want to be like him.”
- Go to a college where the professors love God, love their subjects, and love their students.
- Make good friends, for your friends will make you. Go to a college where you can make friends who will encourage you to pursue what is highest and most noble in life. He who walks with the wise becomes wise, but a companion of fools will come to ruin.
- College years are a time of life when students examine their belief system. Go to a college with an environment where this crucial examination may take place under the caring oversight of mature Christians.
- Most persons who go to college meet their mate at college. Go to a college where you are likely to meet an earnest Christian.
- The college from which you graduate is known as your alma mater. Alma Mater is Latin for soul mother. You may not choose the mother of your body, but you may choose the mother of your soul. Choose wisely.
Dr. Jim Scott Orrick is the Professor of Literature and Culture at Boyce College.
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True and Clear: A Call to Biblical Preaching | Gunner Gundersen
I took my first preaching class thirteen years ago: Sermon Preparation and Delivery with Dr. Michael Boys. Hundreds of sermons, lectures, and lessons later, the two pillars he established still stand tallest in my mind.
Pastor Boys taught us that accuracy and clarity are the most essential elements of biblical preaching. Accuracy is like air, clarity like water. Without air, people die immediately. Without water, they die eventually. Either way, they die.
So it is with God’s people. His Word is our manna (Deut 8:3; Matt 4:4), his truth our feast (Ps 1:2), and his will our food (John 4:34). We die without hearing the truth proclaimed with accuracy and clarity. Without accuracy, we die immediately. Without clarity, we die eventually. Either way, we die (Prov 29:18).
Preachers rightly have many concerns, and the kaleidoscope of categories can be overwhelming. Right interpretation, the sine qua non of biblical preaching, roots the tree: background and context, grammar and syntax, exegesis and theology. Without cutting the Word straight (2 Tim 2:15), accuracy is impossible and clarity irrelevant.
Homiletical elements then form the trunk and branches: structure and outline, introduction and conclusion, explanation and application. The preacher’s concerns, though, continue branching and leafing into matters of semantics and segues, stories and illustrations, timing and transitions. Miniscule veins and delicate buds appear in the soft artistries and developed instincts of pace, tone, and gestures, along with soul-touching images and mind-capturing metaphors.
Then there are the atmospheric concerns surrounding the preaching event: liturgy, song, seating, lighting, amplification, and a host of liturgical and spatial dynamics that affect the sermon. And we’re not even addressing those age-old homiletical questions every developing preacher must wrestle with. Preaching notes manuscripted or outlined? Delivery scripted or extemporaneous? Personality filtered or amplified? The thoughtful preacher, whether aspiring or established, can find himself exhausted navigating the labyrinth of expository concerns week after week.
But strip it down, boil it down, and apply the paint thinner of the final judgment to the glossy artifacts of oratory, and you’ll find (once again) these two essential and foundational elements of biblical preaching: accuracy and clarity. Speak the truth, and speak it clearly.
Of course, this requires rigorous interpretation and logical arrangement and enlightening illustrations and followable transitions. It requires laborious preparation and skillful execution. But healthy concerns over homiletical effectiveness should never bustle around the minister’s mind like bridesmaids taking over the wedding. Rather, these beautifying agents should be carefully prepared and positioned as handmaidens highlighting truth and clarity.
Yes, build effective scaffolding and structure—to uphold the truth. Yes, labor over your illustrations—for the sake of clarity. Yes, weave stories into your sermons—to capture the imagination with clearly proclaimed truth. Go ahead: Craft pithy proverbs and meaty maxims. Gesture with purpose and intonate with precision. Make your introduction compelling and your conclusion inescapable. Reach deep into the well of stories and illustrations, images and metaphors, proverbs and parables so you can reach deep into the psyche of your earthen, story-bound listeners. Do what you can, within biblical propriety, to capture our spastic attention spans.
But never forget that there’s a famine in the land, that people are starving, and that what emaciated pilgrims need most is not the Skittles of your best story but the true meat of God’s nourishing Word, sliced up with digestible clarity. Pressed in on every side, they need not the stained glass window of ornamented preaching but an unclouded view of divine truth.
Truth and clarity might not entertain, but the preacher’s responsibility is not to go viral on earth but to store up treasure in heaven. Readying souls to race well in this world and reach the next is the preacher’s calling and the sermon’s purpose. After all, there is more joy in heaven over one listener who repents than a hundred retweets that know no repentance.
So never let your capacity to be clever outrun your calling to be clear. Cleverness is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. When cleverness serves clarity, use it. But when cleverness stifles clarity, crucify it. The preacher’s job is not to paint the nail of truth but to drive it. So make your main goal and your heaviest burden this: to tell the truth, as clearly as you can.
This is biblical preaching: nails of truth, sharpened with clarity, driven by the Shepherd-builder of the church through a Spirit-anointed preacher. So until the new creation dawns and the church of Jesus Christ is saved to sin no more, this is the preacher’s calling, and these are his watchwords: true and clear.
David “Gunner” Gundersen (@GunnerGundersen) serves as Director of Student Life and teaches biblical counseling and theology courses at Boyce College.
The Hard Work of Sleep | Abigail Cavanaugh
Can you sense it? Life is getting busier. We feel it acutely in the transition from high school to college, and it just gets worse with each successive phase of life. Professors are exhorting you to academic excellence, everyone is talking about the importance of local church involvement, you are surrounded by opportunities for evangelism and new relationships, and you’re probably also working a job in the midst of all this. These are worthy pursuits, and faithfulness in this season of life means pursuing all of them with godliness and zeal. Add in the fact that we are living in a culture where success reigns supreme, and success is measured in productivity (money earned, books written, homework assignments submitted, godly children raised, to-do lists checked off) and it becomes so easy to forget one very important thing: sleep. Sleep is usually the first thing to get neglected or cut short when the schedule gets full, but it is crucial for both fruitfulness and faithfulness. Here are three brief reasons to make sure you get adequate sleep this semester.
- Practical
Valuing sleep is countercultural, but it benefits those around you as much as it does yourself. The most difficult roommates (from personal experience and observation) are the ones who are constantly irritable and on edge from being tired and stressed. Anger and impatience are caused by a sinful heart that desires comfort above the good of your neighbor – or roommate – but a good night’s sleep and a clear mind go a long way in the fight against sin.
Sleeping doesn’t just improve your mood, it fosters creativity and problem solving. Multi-tasking as we usually think of it is actually impossible; we are only able to consciously focus on one thing at a time. But your brain is constantly processing information and problems in the background, and according to Jeffrey Kluger’s article Shhh! Genius at Work, your brain doubles up on this action while you sleep, allowing you to make connections and solve problems that baffled you while you were awake (or, like Paul McCartney, write the melody to one of the most recorded songs in the history of pop music).
- Physical
Let’s be honest, though. Most of us skip sleep because the practical benefits seem to outweigh the practical expense. Snapping at your roommate and falling asleep in class don’t seem that important at 1 AM when you have a Greek quiz the next morning. But getting enough sleep every night is not just advice from your mom. Scientific research shows that productivity and health are crippled by sleep-deprivation. According to a Carnegie Mellon University study, people who sleep fewer than 7 hours a night are almost three times more likely to catch a cold than those who average 8 or more hours a night; research from Harvard Medical School indicates that sleep deprivation limits our ability to focus and access previously learned information. Essentially, it makes those late night study sessions less effective, and will make it difficult to remember all that information the next day when you’re actually taking the exam.
- Spiritual
Not only is sleep important for practical and physical purposes; sleep also cultivates humility and requires faith. God could have created us as vampires instead of men and women – never sleeping, and able to maintain constant, unceasing productivity and labor for the sake of his kingdom. But God created us as we are. Like food and water, we cannot survive without sleep. More than eating and drinking, though, sleeping requires the conscious humility of relinquishing control and admitting that we are not self-sufficient or independent. There is a limit to what we can accomplish, not only in life, but in a single 24 hour period. The Psalmist says “it is vain for you to rise up early, to retire late, to eat the bread of painful labors; for he gives to his beloved even in his sleep.” (Psalm 127:2).
We fight against sleep when we fear what will happen when we allow ourselves to rest, and when we think our own work is too important to cease for a few hours; Psalm 127 calls this vanity. Sleep is our daily reminder that we are finite and that God is the only being in the universe who neither slumbers nor sleeps. Accepting the gift of sleep from the hand of God is a practical act of faith in the face of anxiety.
Worship God by working hard, with diligence and zeal. And then sleep, knowing that “he will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:3-4).
Abigail Cavanaugh is a senior at Boyce College and plans to graduate this winter with a B.A. in Biblical and Theological Studies. She currently works as the Administrative Assistant of the Boyce College Faculty, and is a member at 3rd Avenue Baptist Church.
Things To Do About Things You Can’t Do Anything About
You are weak.
Whether you care to admit it or not, know it all-too-well or are blissfully naïve, you are beset with weakness. By virtue of being human, your body tires at the end of the day, your mind fogs when the caffeine wears off, and your attention span will wane if this blog post it too long.
But some are beset by more intimate weaknesses. Some are physically weak by a chronic illness; some are weak in resources that keep them from good pursuits like education; some are weak in skills and experiences that keep them from the job they want.
For most, the sensation of weaknesses isn’t a pleasant one. We want to grow. This aching desire is compounded for Christians – people whose inherent desire is to grow in Christ (Phil. 2:12-13). Yet, we oftentimes are confused by our weaknesses. Are my weaknesses sinful? Should I seek to grow? Should I just focus on my strengths? Do I just accept my weaknesses? Or worse: do I use them as an excuse any time I want to escape a difficult situation?
What are we to do about the things we feel we cannot do anything about? Here 5 things you can do about your weakness:
- Understand the Difference Between Sinful Immaturity and Weakness. Sinful patterns in your life are meant to provoke repentance, not contentment. Your faith will stagnate if you think your flaring temper is “just one of my weaknesses.” On the opposite end, assuming you are to be strong in every area of your life will lead to a frustrating, guilt-filled, and joyless Christian life. The college girl who just “can’t stop gossiping”, and as the guy who “just can’t stop” gawking at girls are not the same as the guy who takes longer to read the chapter in that book or the girl that is not as much of a social butterfly as her friends. Understanding this difference between sinful immaturity and weakness is key.
- Hide in the Sufficiency of Jesus. When Paul faces his weakness in 2 Corinthians 12, his response is contentment. Why? Because in his weakness, Christ’s sufficiency is put on display. We often pray for God to deliver us out of our weakness, when God wants us to first learn how to be content in our weakness. You might not be growing out of your weakness precisely because God wants you to be humbled by your weakness. He wants you to find shelter in his strength. When you are weak, he is strong.
- Consider Your Weak Heritage. Christians often look at Hebrews 11 as the Hall of Faith. These are our heroes who endured until the end. But this passage is full of flawed and weak heroes who kept their faith in their God and were “made strong out of weakness” (Hebrews 11:34). Have you considered your heritage of faith? Our legacy is full of unimpressive people, beset with weakness, through whom God accomplished mighty things. Meditate on the weaknesses of God’s people, and let your faith be fueled by their strong God.
- Embrace the Diverse Body of Christ. Some of our weaknesses are not meant to be strengthened, but supplemented by other people. If you are a foot, trying to be a hand, you don’t need to grow in your footiness, you need to embrace being a hand, and let the foot make up for your inherent weakness (1 Corinthians 12:14-20). God may not want you to grow out of your weakness, but may want you to grow in your dependence on his church.
- Strengthen Your Weaknesses. Although we should be content with many of our weaknesses, some of our weaknesses should become strengths over time. When your weaknesses are exposed through a trial, a rebuke, or a new responsibility – find ways to grow. Respond in prayer, asking God for growth; respond in dependence, asking others for help. Identify any practical steps you can take to come out of weakness and into growth.
The Fertile Soil of Weakness
Paul says that he will boast “all the more gladly” of his weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Why would anyone be glad in their weakness? Because when our responsibilities exceed our abilities, we can be confident that we’ve been planted deep in the fertile soil of the sufficiency of God.
So get excited and get expectant. The God of our weak forefathers is ready to display his power once again – through you.
Spencer Harmon serves as the Activities Coordinator in the office of Student Life at Boyce College. He is a M.Div. student, and a member at Immanuel Baptist Church. He’s married to Taylor, and has one daughter. You can follow him on Twitter at @SpencerMHarmon.
Trustees elect new faculty, celebrate historic enrollment
Trustees of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary elected two new faculty members and received President R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s report summarizing historic student enrollment metrics during the board’s April 20-21 meeting.
In the harmonious meeting held on the seminary’s Louisville, Kentucky, campus, trustees unanimously approved all recommendations. READ MORE