Student Ministry

As mentioned yesterday, I meet individually with each of my students to discuss their future plans. What has surprised me is how many of them are shocked and thoroughly grateful that a faculty member would take the time to do that and really listen, care and discuss them, their lives, concerns, hopes, and dreams.

Many say that in their entire undergraduate experience, I am the only one to reach out to them like this. This really begs us to consider why we are in the university. Many of us have somewhere buried in the detritus of our minds the dream of the collegial university—faculty in scholarly fellowship with each other, grooming the next generations, molding and shaping them into pillars of knowledge to support the lamp of truth as they glide across the stage into the unknown of their futures.

Missional Community: Chemistry

One of the relatively new buzzwords in American Christendom is “missional community.” It is one’s sphere of daily influence. For academicians, it is often their department. The MC ‘movement’ seeks to help believers recognize the people around them everyday as their mission field, and to approach those circles as an embedded missionary.

Just as a missionary to a remote African village seeks to become part of the community first, to learn the language and customs, then integrate the Gospel into it, so should each of us. The advantage we have is that we are already part of that community. We are tied by threads of commonality, whether it is by vocation, hobby, family status, neighborhood, carpool, or whatever binds our various circles together.

Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness

Tonight, I received the following email (name and school withheld for security reasons):

Hi Dr. Wilson,

  I am about a year from graduating with a PhD in virology.  Over the past year I have been questioning whether I want to stay in academic sciences post-graduation.  One major deterrent is being around so many people with strong anti-Christian world views.  After getting in contact with Dr. Patricia Fanning from Reasons.org she directed me to your blog.  I can't tell you how encouraged I was by your blog posts.   I just wanted to say thank you for your encouraging words.

While this email definitely encouraged me, I was also disappointed for this graduate student. I would be truly surprised if there was not at least one Christian faculty member somewhere on his campus. Yet in the years of his graduate program, it appears that he hasn’t met them.

Study Abroad

One of the side projects I have is to help science students study abroad in Europe. I am passionate about it because of my study abroad experience as a student spending the summer in the former Soviet Union as it transitioned to become Russia and the former Soviet republics. In addition to being a study abroad trip, I took a bunch of Russian New Testaments and other literature in Russian with me, making it into a summer missions trip as well.

As faculty we have the opportunity to encourage our Christian students to take advantage of similar opportunities, both as undergrads and graduate students. One way to do this is to model it in our international travel as well. Ministries such as Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) and others like to work with faculty so that when they are travelling abroad, they have opportunities to speak about their faith in addition to their research. It turns out that many foreign countries, even ‘closed’ ones are far more open to such discussions from American faculty than American universities are.

So when you travel for conferences or as a visiting scholar, contact campus ministries with whom you have relationships at your home campus to find out what activity and people they have at or near your host campus(es) and they will help you make contact. When you have a Christian student in your classes or research area, encourage them to do the same and even join you on your trips as an assistant. It will be an incredible mentoring time, and great encouragement for the both of you.

SDG

Fringe Benefits

Three days ago, I posted about an assignment I give where students write a one-page essay on “What I want to do with my life.” One of the fringe benefits is that since I frame it as a life essay rather than a career essay, we get to often go deeper than their 9 to 5 dreams and priorities. In particular, a few students each semester share how their relationship with Christ is a driving factor for them or some other reference to their faith.

I am always thrilled with this, because since they bring it up, it becomes fair game for an open conversation between us, and it is usually mutually encouraging (Romans 1:12). They are excited to learn about an instructor at the big school who shares their faith, and I’m glad to be able to let students know where I stand, and hopefully it spreads to other students for their encouragement. They are especially encouraged that it is a science instructor who is a Christian because there is an attitude sometimes that ‘you can’t be a scientist and a Christian,’ so it is a relief to find out that isn’t true.

What Does Church Look Like?

Today, I’d like to share some one-line gems from my friend Neil Cole and his friends, and thoughts they inspired in me. Twitter is great about helping folks to be profound and brief!

“Sow a church and reap an institution. Sow disciples and reap a church.” (Billy Mitchell)

"Jesus never commanded us to plant churches, he only commanded us to make disciples."

“Always make copies from the master, not from a copy. Always make disciples of Jesus, not of you.” (Retweet of Kellen Jones)

Special Cases

Every so often, usually one to two times a year, a special case comes along. There will be a situation or a student with unique needs that don’t fit neatly in the lines of your carefully planned course. For whatever reason, your policies and procedures just don’t apply, and you need to adjust.

Sometimes it’s the precursor to a shift in how things will be done in the future, so everything needs to begin to adjust to accommodate a new way of doing things. Usually, it is merely the annoyance of the ubiquitous ‘exception to the rule.’

If you are like me, you are doing good to keep the normal things humming along, and you don’t relish the thought of having to figure out how to fit this road bump into your schedule. I have found a reasonably simple solution to moderate the effect of these special cases.

It's The Policy

If you teach multiple sections of a course like me, or even 1-2 large sections, your syllabus probably gets longer with the number of students with more and more legalese to cover every possible scenario, usually added just after it happens. Students today seem more able (and willing!) to find every loophole rather than just sit down and learn the material.

When they come to me with their sob story and demand time out of my busy schedule to resolve their issues, it is easy to fall back on policy and give them an answer based on the syllabus or university handbook or whatever, and wash my hands of the 'blame' for an unpopular decision.

When I do this, the Spirit convicts me, reminding me that >I< wrote the syllabus. I'm not some middle-management cog, I am the instructor of the course, and even if I were a cog in the wheel, I have been given a job to do--to resolve this person's issue. I am reminded, that in my case anyway, I am teaching because I want to help raise up the next generation of citizen-chemists. Policies don't mentor, people do.

Will I be professional enough, mature enough, to take responsibility for what happens in my course? Will I respect my students enough to listen to them, evaluate their situation, and make a fair decision, even if it is one they don't like? Am I willing to bear their displeasure or do I feel compelled to capitulate to earn their goodwill? The vernacular for this is being a 'people-pleaser,' and it is generally viewed with disdain. Jesus is not a respector of a person's self-esteem. He is a respector of truth, because He is the truth. As His people, we are called to do likewise.

Of course, just making such decisions is not mentorship. Mentorship is helping the student to understand the situation, and why the decision is a fair one. They are not always receptive, but deep down, they probably respect you more.

There is an 'old-fashioned' word for mentorship. It's discipleship.

SDG