GroshLink

A friend in campus ministry recently asked me if I had ever trained Christian undergrads not only to effectively communicate the Gospel with their non-Christian peers, but also to approach and fruitfully interact with non-Christian faculty. What a great idea! I replied via email with a few endeavors efforts in that direction and where I'd go today, so below. I've never considered this a focus, instead it is fruit of the ministry of drawing closer to Christ and understanding the calling which we have received from the Father to love Him, love our neighbors, and steward the creation. As we work this out in the setting of the university, we cannot help but have conversation with peers and instructors. I explore this (and need to develpment further in the future) in materials such as Indwelling the Biblical Story: A Philosophy of Education in Theory and Practice and other related topics

I led an undergrad small group through Leslie Newbigin's The Gospel in Pluralist Society and then had them write short essays on topics raised by their life on campus (academic and social). For both undergrad and grad students, at various times, I've had open conversation regarding current events, recently read articles of interest to the university (Chronicle of Higher Education, Education articles from the NY Times, whatever has come up on the web), and specific classroom issues/conversations/texts. I believe that regular interaction with Christian faculty and reading materials written by Christian scholars is particularly helpful in the faith development of students and the consideration of their vocation.

In the CMU grad ministry we focused a semester on the question of faith in the university, essays generated by students can be found at here

If I'd go about it today with undergrads, I would start with the Christian Vision Project's Intersect/Culture DVD. This cooperative endeavor between Andy Crouch, Christianity Today, and InterVarsity's 2100 Video is quite good. A number of clips from this series were used at Urbana in the main sessions and were well received. Also, I'd take advantage of ESN (Emerging Scholars Network), materials such as the core bibliography, a discussion guide for Marsden's outrageous idea of Christian scholarship, and info on podcasts from Mars Hill Audio I'd also probably try to reproduce an undergrad faith and vocation conference like the one we pulled off in Western PA several years ago using Christian faculty from the surrounding colleges and universities.