It's about reminding and encouraging us to remember why we are here and why we are involved (as students, faculty, ministry staff, financial partners, or prayer supporters) in ministry on campus, specifically ministry at the level of graduate, professional, post doc and faculty.
I've been involved in campus ministry for almost 40 years, but only started with Grad/Faculty ministry this year and it's pushed me to think a lot about the "why" question. I hope these occasional postings will help us all keep that question alive and motivate us to keep "moving on" in the calling God has given to us. In the next couple of weeks I will be posting some reflections on this question as a result of reading a brief book by Leslie Newbigin titled "Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth," a collection of four talks he gave 20 years ago which are powerfully relevant for why we go about campus ministry today.
Why do we have Christian fellowships at the professional and graduate schools at Yale? Why try to form a faculty fellowship? Newbigin's insights suggests we do this because the gospel must address the public spheres of education, science, politics, law and business. Our default position is often that that fellowships are mainly for personal encouragement and mutual support during a stressful academic program. They do serve those roles, but God calls us to be about far more than that!
More next time...
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