The Christian university can work to develop itself as a people and a place. It can thrive as a social-spiritual ecology of holiness by pursuing a "tabernacling" of the presence of Christ in everyone and every place. Every classroom, every seminar room, the dinning commons, each office, and each residence lounge, the soccer pitch, basketball and volleyball court, and the locker rooms can become places where the permeating presence of Christ is an appreciated reality. Every interaction, every gathering, every lecture and conversation, every e-mail, every use of the internet can be filled with the acknowledged and appreciated presence of Christ.
If the essence of the university is truly Jesus Christ, if He then, through human agency, is allowed to not only be Rabbi (teacher), but also Lord, as the Apostle John tells us, then the mission of the Christian university stands a chance of succeeding. What the university strives to do in the lives of others will succeed. Its identity and mission will be empowered and Kingdom ends will be achieved. The university will live out its destiny as a people of faith seeking understanding, a people of hope for a world that is so often in despair, and a people of love who, in Jesus' name, participate with Christ in the transforming love of Christ for the world and who, in the end, are part of the redemption, reconciliation, and restoration that God intended since the beginning of time.
Excerpted from Called to a Higher Purpose, by J.Raymond, 2009 (available in the Trinity Western University bookstore.)
If the essence of the university is truly Jesus Christ, if He then, through human agency, is allowed to not only be Rabbi (teacher), but also Lord, as the Apostle John tells us, then the mission of the Christian university stands a chance of succeeding. What the university strives to do in the lives of others will succeed. Its identity and mission will be empowered and Kingdom ends will be achieved. The university will live out its destiny as a people of faith seeking understanding, a people of hope for a world that is so often in despair, and a people of love who, in Jesus' name, participate with Christ in the transforming love of Christ for the world and who, in the end, are part of the redemption, reconciliation, and restoration that God intended since the beginning of time.
Excerpted from Called to a Higher Purpose, by J.Raymond, 2009 (available in the Trinity Western University bookstore.)
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