a conference for
graduate students,
faculty, and
professionals

The Big Picture
A Thematic Overview of Following Christ 2002

The Following Christ conference attends to two weighty matters: theology and vocation. It is the conviction of IVCF's Graduate & Faculty Ministries that the Bible and orthodox Christian tradition have much of great importance to say about the practice of the intellectual and professional (not to mention the spiritual) disciplines. Although this conviction is not new, and underlies and motivates all of GFM's work, we must give fresh attention to it among every cohort of students, academics, and professionals.

The imperative to bring our faith and our work together can, unfortunately, be neglected quite easily and without professional cost within the cultures most of us operate in, and so we need to intentionally reflect upon and put into practice the integration of study, work, and worship. God has endowed us with education and opportunity, so we believe we are accountable for spiritual stewardship of our talent and privilege. It is not the faith, still less Jesus Christ himself, which is in danger of falling silent about the nature of our professional work; it is we ourselves.

But at the same time, much has been learned about the compatibility (and even inseparability) of Christian faith and modern intellectual and professional work. Much has been accomplished, in recent decades especially, to make universities more open for Christians' working on and working out their faith within the social and intellectual setting of the academy and the professions. Much helpful guidance is available in print and in the public record of discourse among Christians that can be passed along to scholars and professionals early on in their work. Perhaps even more helpful, there are colleagues and mentors who have gone this way before and who can offer their advice, their success, their failures, their encouragement, and their challenge to us and to one another. We are resource rich, and the time is ripe to distribute those riches as widely as possible.

Finally, there's room to push ahead. Although perhaps we do not believe that in these penultimate days we can triumphantly "take back the universities for Christ," there is hope for us to bring ever more wisdom, more graciousness, more intelligence, more commitment, more integrity, more beauty, more charity to the world of the professional and academic disciplines. We are ten years on from Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and we are eager to make new experiments with the outrageous idea of Christian scholarship (as George Marsden put it).

At Following Christ, we gather Christians from the influential institutions of the world — academia, commerce, government, communications, medicine, the courts — in order to challenge and encourage one another. It's all too easy to lapse into either over-confidence or cynicism about the role our institutions (and we ourselves) play in shaping the world. It's wise, instead, to consider how we will be shaped. What discourses set the terms of our questions? Whose word and way will we follow? How we know and praise God and how we serve him with our days matter for us individually, for the quality and direction of our culture, and for the peace and well-being of the world.

The Four Days

The program on each of the four main days of Following Christ 2002 is shaped (though not constrained) by a pair of thematic ideas. Each pair begins with an overarching biblical or theological concept and continues into a dimension of praxis. (At the end of this document appear selected Scriptures and recommended readings relevant to each day's themes.)

Creation & Culture

The doctrine of creation per se is not one of the more controversial of Christian doctrines. The bare proposition that God made the universe is the kind of teaching one simply accepts or rejects (though the details of means, timing, and implications, of course, have engendered much dispute). But even in its most straightforward form ("God made the heavens and the earth") lie many implications for the Christian scholar and professional. This doctrine has bolstered confidence in the underlying order of the universe and the potential for justice in human relationships and prosperity in human economies. Believers' awareness of the goodness of God's created order has motivated innovation across the full range of intellectual and professional disciplines, from physics to political science, from law to poetry, over the centuries. So what might this doctrine mean for the professions and disciplines today?

But we must remember that creation has in some senses fallen with humanity since Eden. What impact does the Fall have on our understanding of the doctrine of creation? We live in a world where blessings and curses are mixed up everywhere we look. As the song-writer Bill Mallonee has it, we rightly wonder, "How much of this was meant to be? How much the work of the devil?" Whether we practice medicine, study the past, or teach in the classroom, both God's gloriously good creation and the deleterious aftershocks of the Fall are evident. Christians have access to theological insight into evil and brokenness, which to others' minds merely "happens." So what power might that insight lend to our disciplines?

The second term of the day's thematic pair, culture, fits here because culture is how we do creation, how humanity participates in the ongoing work of God in the universe. God alone is the ultimate creator, but he has given us tremendous creative agency, ever since he had us name the animals and tend the Garden. Culture comprises the worlds we form through our communication and relationships with one another, our transactions, our artistry, and the works of our hands. By the many works of culture — from gardening and bridge-building to music-making and medicine — we join God in maintaining the world and, though perhaps not actually improving on it, at least fulfilling its promise, his vision for it. God commissioned Adam and Eve as gardeners to work a plot he planted; we join them, and we want to think about what that might look like now, in a wider field but outside of Eden.

But Christians' relationship to culture is ambivalent: there are ways in which human cultures have preserved God's created good, and ways in which they have been twisted or co-opted. We are all agents of creation, but must take care whether we and our cultures become agents of God's or begin to build towers of Babel to make a name for ourselves. We can face the problem of suffering as it should be faced: by working out how we might join with God to battle against the curse of the Fall. How should we evaluate the cultures in which we participate? How may we participate in human cultures that may be only flawed relics of God's good creation? Are there ways in which we can influence or even revolutionize them? In what ways should we commend and embrace them even as they stand?

Kingdom & Calling

A kingdom is a place, and it's a people — but most of all it's a powerful principle that organizes all relationships and enterprises under one lord. The kingdom of God is the fact of his rule, and it holds our attention on the second day of Following Christ 2002. This rich and complicated theme runs throughout Scripture and finds particular expression in the teachings of the King himself, Jesus Christ. If the kingdom of God is among us, if it has been proclaimed in our hearing, if Jesus is ascended and reigns now and forever, how shall we understand his kingship over our study and work? We are obliged to think again about how to live our lives and how to pursue all our business in light of the all-encompassing claim of Jesus' lordship.

The Gospel is the proclamation of the kingdom of God, the declaration that Jesus Christ is the true king in the land. The coming of his kingdom brings redemption for his world from its fallen state; he made it all and now has bought it all back for himself. Unfortunately, all of our activities have not yet been reorganized to acknowledge and advance his rule. Truth has always been God's truth, but we're sorry to say that not all knowledge is. Our sciences, our professions, and our arts have yet to be returned fully to his lordship. What's more, the broken state of the world makes it difficult sometimes even to envision the next steps we might take. We humans are mavericks and rebels inclined to carry off the treasures of the kingdom (knowledge, healing, providence, order, power) to exploit for ourselves, without accountability to the Redeemer King. We want to ask together what the claims of Jesus have to do with our academic and professional lives.

The practical dimension here is calling. If the proclamation has gone out that there's a new king in the land, how will we respond? In what capacity will we pledge him our allegiance and service? These questions require consideration of many things: where in his domain he needs servants, how we have been gifted with talent or resources, what training we have taken up. Some people have heard a sharp, direct summons from the Lord to a specific occupation; others depend on his gifts of providence and wisdom to find their place in his kingdom's economy; still others struggle with cycles of uncertainty about their calling. On this day of the conference we want to help delegates think clearly and perhaps more freely about their own sense of calling, to give space for God's call to us, and to consider ways that our individual callings are connected to the greater kingship of Jesus in the world. We must do all our work as unto the Lord, and it's a special blessing when we can listen attentively to him for direction and inspiration.

Incarnation & Service

The rule of God took a dramatic turn with the incarnation of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The classical Christian doctrine here is straightforward (though admittedly a mind-bending mystery): that Jesus is at once fully God and fully human. The deity of Christ was no barrier to his being really present among us as one of us — and indeed his bringing the divine nature into history personally has transformed us. The Incarnation is another orthodox doctrine that, by and large, moderns either accept faithfully or reject outright, and the intricacies of the early Church leaders' disputes about the precise nature of the Son are often lost on us. But we want to take the time to consider the teaching carefully enough to hold it in good conscience, as well as to understand its implications for our professional and academic lives.

Indeed, "incarnational" is a term also applied to a certain style of Christian engagement with the world, one familiar to and formative for many Following Christ delegates. It is our conviction that Christ transforms human culture by entering into it personally and then by commissioning his followers to carry on that endeavor themselves. Throughout biblical history (from Abraham to the apostles), God's children have been sent into the world as a blessing and a testimony. God doesn't merely hand down tablets of stone or ritual prescriptions, he calls a people by his name. And as the Father sent Jesus, so sends he us. Just how is it that Jesus was sent into the world? What kinds of things did he do? What relationships did he have? What power did he wield, and how? What were his aims? Such questions become crucial for understanding our own place in the world.

A significant part of the answer to these questions lies in considering Jesus' own statement that he came not be served but to serve. We link service, then, to this day's theme of incarnation in order to emphasize its connection to the life of Christ as a model and its claim on us as an activity for the whole person. Jesus served with earnest intent, wisdom, sacrifice, thanksgiving, and worship on his lips. He talked about ways to serve God and ways to serve people, about ways to serve fellow believers and ways to serve the nations. Our professional and academic training invests us with power, and we want to give heed to Jesus' model of stewardship: using power by giving it away. Even when we consider very specific arenas for Christian service that are open to the likes of us (most often quite remote from Jesus' first-century setting), nonetheless his example of incarnational service may guide us. At Following Christ 2002, we want to issue a strong call to regard the academic and professional life as a life of service.

Expectation & Engagement

Although the Kingdom of God is near, we also know all too well that its full hour has not yet arrived. Scripture says that creation itself, along with us children of God, eagerly awaits Christ's coming to restore all things to his good rule and to usher in a new and ultimate era, a new heavens and a new earth. That steady note of expectation is the theme of our fourth day. It is bittersweet to be waiting for Christ's second coming: bitter because we wait, sweet because he is coming. Christians are resident aliens in this age and in its institutions of education, government, health care, and business. At Following Christ we will try to hold in tension our affection for the ground where, for now, God has rooted us and our eager longing for his restored kingdom to come.

We share something in common with the Old Testament Hebrew slaves in Egypt and the Jews in Babylonian exile, as most of us live in the world's most powerful nation and work amidst its privileged institutions, and yet we are convinced that there is more good from God yet to come. We are enriched by the wealth of Egypt (like the Hebrews in the Exodus) and we are educated by the knowledge of Babylon (like Daniel and his colleagues), and we hope to live as good citizens in these times — even though we look forward to more. It's also worth remembering that we can be turned aside by riches and knowledge when they are not devoted to the Lord, as a shortcut to our own promised land. When we do so, we dishonor the coming King and risk our own destruction. What is that "more" that we look forward to? How does Christian expectation influence our view of the present and of our study and work?

Good citizenship in the present age, an engagement with people, problems, and opportunities around us, adds the practical dimension to this final day of the conference. Although we wait for Christ's coming, we don't wait idly; he has commanded us (as Jeremiah 29 has it) to buy houses, transact business, and enter into the life of our times. As we 1,500 Following Christ participants prepare to return to our homes and daily work, we want to consider ways that God might have us engage with our communities (both local and professional). How will we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God today?

There are times when we should lend our labors to the common aims of our culture. There are times when we should pull back in protest and prayer. But how can we discern the difference? What sorts of endeavors should we be pursuing in this in-between time as we eagerly await Christ's return? We believe that we're not just marking time till he comes. We want to consider how our study, work, and worship in the present days might be pervaded with hope. 

Selected Scriptures and Readings

Creation & Culture

Gen. 1-3; Prov. 8; Col. 1:15-20

Blocher, Henri. In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984.

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper's Magazine Press, 1974.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.

Sayers, Dorothy. The Mind of the Maker. Bridgeheads series. London: Methuen, 1941.

Kingdom & Calling

Matt. 4:13-25; John 18:33-38; Heb. 12:18-29

Abraham, William J. The Logic of Evangelism. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.

Colson, Charles with Ellen Santilli Vaughn. Kingdoms in Conflict. New York: W. Morrow, 1987.

Hardy, Lee. The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990.

Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. New York: Macmillan, 1949.

Wright, N. T. "The Light of the World," chap. in The Challenge of Jesus. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999, 174-97.

Incarnation & Service

John 1:1-18; Phil. 2:3-13

Charry, Ellen T. "Defeating the Fear of Death: Athanasius of Alexandria," in By the Renewing of Your Minds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, 87-100.

Nouwen, Henri J. M. In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. New York: Crossroad, 1989.

Stott, John R. W. The Cross of Christ. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1986.

Willard, Dallas. The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. New York: HarperCollins, 1988.

Expectation & Engagement

Jer. 29; Rom. 8:18-25; Heb. 11:13-16

Augustine of Hippo, The City of God.

Ladd, G. E. The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974.

Monroe, Kelly, ed. Finding God at Harvard: Spiritual Journeys of Christian Thinkers. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1996.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Until Justice and Peace Embrace. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983.