MikeHickerson.com

During the next two weeks, I am going to be in Madison, Wisconsin, for InterVarsity’s Orientation for New Staff (ONS).  Though I’ve been with InterVarsity for about 2 years now, I have not yet been through my official orientation.  I’m looking for to the trip, because it will be a good chance for me to get to know some other staff from around the country (mostly working with undergraduates, a key area for ESN), and also to receive some valuable training.  The main InterVarsity website has posted a great article describing ONS. 

Please be in prayer for safe travel, and also for a peaceful home while I’m gone for Elizabeth and the kids. 

This December, as a special day-ahead event at Following Christ 2008, we will hold the first ever national gathering of the Emerging Scholars Network!  ”Flourishing in the Academy,” December 27-28, will help ESN puzzle out what it means to be called to the academy and how to follow Christ faithfully in this environment.  You can read more about at the official announcement on EmergingScholars.org. 

There are also four other day-ahead events - here is the information about them.  I expect all will be absolutely wonderful. 

Occasionally, I talk to people who are a little put off by the name of the Emerging Scholars Network.  ”I’m not a scholar!” they say, and they don’t think of their children in that way either. 

But an interesting study was just released by the Dept. of Education, entitled “Parent Expectations and Student Achievement.”  Here’s how the Chronicle of Higher Education ($) summarized it:

The Education Department released a report on Tuesday that offers new insights into the factors influencing whether parents expect their children to enroll at four-year colleges, and suggests that many young people who could succeed at such institutions are not being encouraged by their families or schools to apply.

The study found that parental expectations vary widely between different races and income levels, and that many parents think their children won’t be able to finish college when their grades suggest otherwise. 

I had a professor in college who was an incredible teacher.  It made sense, because educational theory was one of his specialties!  He freely admitted that he was not a good student in either high school or college - he had a 2.7 GPA as an undergrad - and he applied to grad school almost on a whim. Once in grad school, though, when he was able to focus on a subject that he was truly interested in, his grades took off.  He earned a PhD and is now a tenured professor.  He also taught me one of my first lessons in academic grace, but that’s a story for another time. 

What are your expectations, either for yourself or your children? 

Last Sunday, I spoke at Dixie Valley Church of God in Louisville, at the very gracious request of their pastor, Lindsey Cornett.  He offered me the chance to introduce his church to the Emerging Scholars Network, and the visit resulted in a number of good contacts and good conversations. 

Daniel is one of the Biblical models for ESN: a scholar, devoted to God from his youth, who became a redeeming influence in the kingdom of Babylon.  If you’ve never thought about Daniel as a scholar, noticed how he was chosen to be taken to Babylon. 

 Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility-young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.The king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king’s table. They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were to enter the king’s service. (Dan. 1:3-5) 

Here in Kentucky, we’re accustomed to hearing the term “brain drain,” when bright young students leave the state for better opportunities elsewhere.  This was not a brain drain - this was a brain vacuum!  Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, purposely sought the best and the brightest among the young Israelites, so that they could be trained in the ways of the Babylonians. 

Daniel and his friends not only persevered: they flourished.  Here is the final assessment at the end of their training. 

 At the end of the time set by the king to bring them in, the chief official presented them to Nebuchadnezzar. The king talked with them, and he found none equal to Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah; so they entered the king’s service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. (Dan. 1:18-20)

Everything else that Daniel would accomplish was made possible by that early commitment to both God and his studies.  

At the last Following Christ, Harold Dean Trulear gave a truly memorable talk about Daniel.  I’d encouraged you to give it a listen.  More audio from Following Christ 2002 is available online. 

And you think that was good, then check out what’s coming at this year’s Following Christ.

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a recent article (sorry - subscription required) called “So Much for the Information Age,” from a college professor lamenting his students’ deplorable grasp of current events and world history. This professor teaches journalism at one of our countries’ top universities, yet here is a sampling of what he found when he surveyed his students:

Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries — China, Cuba, India, and Japan — not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses — half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn’t pretty.

I don’t think this is all that surprising, and it probably says much more about our nation’s primary and secondary educational systems than it does about the university world. 

The professor goes on to express concern about our nation’s future, and about how we as a nation have failed our students, by considering them “educated” when they can’t discuss the front page of The New York Times.  

I hope that Christian students are taking a different approach to their studies, and educating themselves whether or not the system is.  After all, we worship a God who made the world, who loves the world, and who loves the people of the world so much that he sent his Son to die for the world.  That same God then calls us to emulate Him and be formed in the image of Christ.  

Since God loves our neighbors and the world they live in, so should we.  And the first step is to learn about the world in which we find ourselves. 

You can now register online for Following Christ 2008, including the first Emerging Scholars Network National Gathering.  Register online at the Following Christ website. 

Following Christ 2008 will be held in Chicago, from December 27 to 31.  Plenary speakers will include N. T. Wright, one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars, and Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project and outspoken Christian.  Other speakers will include Carmen Acevedo Butcher, MaryKate Morse, and Jeff Van Duzer.  Part of Following Christ will be devoted to discipline-specific tracks, devoted to understanding how following Christ affects our daily work in the arts, business, the humanities, healthcare, and more. 

At InterVarsity’s recent Graduate and Faculty Ministry staff conference, we honored Terry Morrison for his many years of ministry. Terry is currently Director Emeritus for Faculty Ministry, and served as IVCF’s second Faculty Ministry Director. Terry has a powerful ministry among Christian faculty around the country, and he played a small, but crucial, role in my own journey.

In college, I became an English major because I loved to read. Only after I responded to the call of Christ did I start to see that there were truths that could be understood through language, and began to desire to integrate my love for Christ with my love for literature. At the time, I thought that a PhD in English was the most direct route to this integration, and besides, I loved school and had very good grades and test scores, so a PhD made sense. I knew from personal experience, however, that English departments were not necessarily friendly to Christian faith, and explicit questions about, say, how Christ’s identity as the Word of God influences our understanding of human words were not exactly welcomed. I wrote a lot of poetry back then, and I was especially interested in the practice of language, and my relationship with Christ was a central theme in my poetry. I knew that I would have to be careful in my choice of graduate school, so that I would be free to explore this integration project.

Through a series of InterVarsity connections, I was put in touch with Terry Morrison. Robbie Castleman’s True Love in a World of False Hope had been very influential in my relationship with Elizabeth, and we had met Robbie at chapter camp in Florida. At the time, Robbie was working with graduate students in Florida, and she directed me to Terry, then the Director of Faculty Ministry. One of Terry’s gifts is countless relationships with Christian faculty around the country, and he immediately pointed me to three Christian English professors who he thought could help me.

I emailed all three, and put to them a question that, looking back, I think is a little odd: “Where I can I go to earn a PhD, where I can integrate my love for Christ with my love for literature?” The first emailed me back and said, “I have no idea, but don’t do what I did.” The second wrote back and said, “I have no idea, but perhaps Baylor.” The third wrote back: “I’m not sure there is such a place. I think you will be facing a long and lonely battle. You can, however, do what I did, and earn a theology degree first. That way, you will have the foundation you need to do the integrative work yourself.” I just happened to be reading Knowing God by J. I. Packer and Earth and Altar by Eugene Peterson at the time, and both men “just happened” to teach at a school I had never heard of, Regent College. And now you know the rest of the story.

Looking back, that series of conversations and connections - from Robbie, to Terry, to those three Christian professors (whose names, alas, I have forgotten) - was one of the key turning points in my walk with Christ and my understanding of my vocation. As I have joined ESN, I have spoken to many people about these conversations, and reflected on them frequently to understand why (I think) God has called me to ESN. I would be willing to wager that Terry was a central link in more conversations like these than he will ever know on this side of heaven.

And that’s why I praise God for Terry Morrison.

I am home for a while, after three long road trips in three weeks.

• At the end of February, I went to Nashville to see Kevin and Beth Line, some old friends from college (from the University of Louisville InterVarsity chapter, in fact!), meet some new friends from their church (Faith Church), and touch base with a few colleagues from InterVarsity.  Jason Ingalls, InterVarsity staff at Vanderbilt, has been doing some great work among grad students and faculty, and I got to meet with him and with a few of the emerging scholars he has gotten to know at Vandy.
• At the beginning of March, I traveled to Chicago, and then on up to Madision, WI.  In Chicago, I was trained on InterVarsity’s website management system by Jon Boyd, who is also serving as conference director for Following Christ 2008.  Jon is a very busy person: his wife just gave birth to their second child.  I have recently taking over editing both the ESN and Faculty Ministry websites, and Jon was very gracious in opening his home to me and handing me the keys to the website.  I continued on up to Madison to introduce myself to some folks at InterVarsity’s National Service Center and visit with Rachel Bawden, our hard-working Operations Director for Faculty Ministry.
• Finally, last week, I traveled back to the Chicago area for InterVarsity’s national conference from Graduate and Faculty Ministry.  We were treated to several great talks by Andy Crouch.  Andy is a writer, editor, and director of The Christian Vision Project, and he has some important things to say about Christians as cultivators and creators of culture.   He has a book coming out this fall which I am sure I will be recommending to many ESN members.  I also had the chance to see many of my InterVarsity colleagues and have several crucial conversations about moving ESN forward this year.

As part of our staff conference, many of the details of Following Christ 2008 (in which ESN will play a major part) were revealed.  I encourage you to check out the website and prayerfully consider coming and inviting friends you know who would benefit.

We also celebrated the ministry of Terry Morrison, director emeritus of Faculty Ministry, who is retired from InterVarsity after many decades of service as a student, professor of chemistry at Butler University, and longtime director of Faculty Ministry.  Terry played a small, but extraordinarily important part in my personal and professional development, which I will blog about later this week.

A while back, a friend invited me to join him in a business opportunity to, in his words, “become financially independent.” He had seen me developing financial partners for my work with InterVarsity, relying on the generosity of others for my family’s wellbeing. I think that, in his mind, asking other people for money was a risky and insecure way of making a living.

He’s right.

My work with the Emerging Scholars Network depends on other people sharing ESN’s vision for our nation’s colleges and universities.  It requires me to trust that God will lead me to the right people, and that my (often frustrating) work in contacting people, setting appointments, and making “asks” will be rewarded.  There is no certainty, except the ever-present certainty of God’s promises.

In contrast, many other jobs seem secure.  They have a steady income stream, a proven business model, contractual or governmental guarantees, well-funded pensions…

It’s all an illusion.  Independence is an illusion.  All of us are dependent on God, for both our daily needs and our eternal ones.  An economic downturn, a tragic accident, a sudden scandal - sometimes, just plain bad luck - can demolish our dreams, and our dreams of financial independence will be gone like vapor.

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.  (James 4:13-17)

Inside Higher Ed ran a story today entitled “Meditative Spaces,” about efforts at various colleges and universities to create space for meditation and contemplative prayer. The schools in the article represent a broad range of heritages - private secular, Buddhist, Baptist, Catholic, even a college based on Transcendental Meditation. On one level, I think this can be a promising development, as students, faculty, and administrators recognize the spiritual component to life and attempt to honor our human need for transcendence. The article quotes a recent study from UCLA, which found that most college students were looking for spiritual meaning in their lives:

Indeed, it seems the majority of college students consider themselves to be spiritual in some way. A 2005 study by University of California at Los Angeles researchers found that 80 percent of freshmen have an interest in spirituality – but while they expect guidance from their colleges on spiritual matters, those expectations often aren’t met. In an earlier pilot study of college juniors, the researchers found that nearly two-thirds said their professors don’t encourage discussion of spiritual or religious matters.

The meditation spaces described are as diverse as the schools: prayer rooms, small chapels, outdoor labyrinths. However, the article fails to mention the most important element of meditation. Who or what is the object of meditation?

Psalm 119 is perhaps the central Biblical text regarding meditation. The psalm is organized into 22 sections, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line of each section begins with the same letter. Acrostic poems, like Psalm 119, were a Hebrew device for capturing the entirety of God, as if to say that the theme at hand is being covered “from A to Z.” In this case, the theme is God’s word itself.

The second section, Bet, vv. 8 - 16, has always spoken strongly to me:

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By living according to your word.
I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
I have hidden your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
Praise be to you, O LORD;
teach me your decrees.
With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.
I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.

The impulse of the colleges above is correct. Human beings are designed to seek transcendence, and meditation is a natural part of how we are wired (some more than others). I pray, however, that students and faculty across our country will discover the proper object for meditation. May the Christians among them be salt and light, so that they will see true spirituality, focused on Christ and God’s revelation.