Living Sanely When Life is Fired Point-Blank O s GUiNNEss a DDrEssEs sTUDENTs aT V EriTas F OrUM 2009
BY WEs ZELL Director of Undergraduate Ministries
INSIDE Graduates Equipped and Sent Forth Beauty’s Hope, Beauty’s Danger
Praxis V13 N2
Summer 2009
Praxis
Summer Reading Recommendations
U
niversity life — perhaps like your own life — now revolves around digitally-driven technology. Students register for courses online, receive assignments for those courses online, research those assignments online, and then email their research to their professors by 5 p.m. Meanwhile, these educational uses of the web-connected world meld seamlessly with social ones. The online research happens amid instant messages from classmates, Facebook updates from high school friends, and a pause here and there for a quick check of the global headlines. Altogether, it’s a constant stream of information and relationships, past the 5 p.m. deadline and well into the night . . . Much has been written about the communications revolution, the blazing speed of modern life, and the impact of both on the way we relate and spend time. (For more on this, search on the Internet for the article “Dwelling in Possibilities” by U.Va. professor Mark Edmundson in the March 14, 2008 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.) As a campus minister, I’m especially interested in the impact of these things on student assumptions about the measure of persons and the meaning of life. For instance, do we labor over our Facebook image because we forget that God has made us in His? Or do we use technology to stay in constant superficial connection with dozens of people but struggle to be deeply known by even just a few? Or do we never truly rest because we fear that it is only through constant activity and experience that we can make our lives matter? This year’s Veritas Forum at U.Va. — entitled Lost in the Cosmos — was an opportunity for students to consider from a Christian perspective these basic questions about life in the hyper-fast, hyperconnected modern world. Author and social observer Dr. Os Guinness lectured twice at Newcomb Theater on the U.Va. Grounds, where more than 400 students heard him each evening. (Dr. Guinness also spoke to graduate students at the Law School and the Darden Gradu-
ate School of Business Administration.) The forum title was borrowed from the Walker Percy book of the same name. In that book Percy observed that the more technologically savvy we become, and the more we understand and master the world around us, the less we understand about what it means to be a human being. In other words, the more competent we are when we face the cosmos, the more lost we are when we face ourselves. It is as if our increasing capacity to do — to work, to know, to perform, to acquire, to de-
Os Guinness (photos by Sarah Cramer)
construct and to reassemble — simply highlights our confusion about what can actually define us, establish us, and give us meaning. The biennial Veritas Forum at U.Va. is a part of the national Veritas Forum, a series of conversations that began in 1992 at Harvard University and has since taken place at dozens of campuses around the country. Veritas, as you might recognize, is the Latin word for truth; the purpose of the Veritas Forum is to explore how truth is central to human flourishing, and to further explore how different dimensions of true human flourishing might find their proper source and proper end in the love and power of Jesus. Past Veritas Forums at U.Va. have, for example, considered the failures of race relations, the meaning of freedom, the connections between faith and science, and questions Guinness, continued on back page
Equipped, Prepared, and Sent Forth GraDUaTEs sTEP OUT iNTO THE FUTUrE WiTH FaiTH aND HOPE iNTrODUCTiON BY WEs ZELL Director of Undergraduate Ministries
C
entral to the gospel of Jesus is the promise that he lives his life through his followers. And central to this promise is the Christian claim that faith is not simply something we possess as believers, but also something that binds us to the One in whom we believe. Through faith our very selves are now intertwined with Jesus, and we are so defined by him that Paul can say “it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” This is the deep mystery put in play by the Incarnation; because the Creator grips the creation, creatures in Christ can be lived in by God. And here is an especially dear part of this mystery: God’s life in the world through his people takes many different forms. In fact, it takes as many different forms, shapes, and paths as God has people. For when God grips a person, the person becomes more uniquely himself or herself, not less. And each of these unique people is then called into the world in unique ways. At the Study Center I get to see many of these people wrestle to discern their unique calling and then bear that calling out into the world. “Christ plays in ten thousand places,” writes Gerard Manley Hopkins, “lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his.” That is, Jesus shares his life with his followers and extends his kingdom through them. Here are two undergraduates who have passed through these doors en route to two of those ten thousand places.
BY aNDrEW siMMONs (A&S, B.A., Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law, ’09)
A
s I completed this recent semester of lasts well-known to departing undergraduate students — last times with friends at the University of Virginia, last formals and other social events, and the much-anticipated last walk down the Lawn for commencement exercises — thinking about the Study Center has actually brought back a flood of remembered firsts. I came to the Study Center for the first time — like so many before and since — for the Move-In Day Luncheon, in late August 2005. I Andrew Simmons came directly after tak(photo by Sarah Cramer) ing my oath of enlistment into the Army ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps) program at U.Va. — a moment marked with a quiet solemnity, and one that clashed with the cacophonous shock I experienced a few minutes later when I joined hundreds of classmates packed into this house on Chancellor Street. During my first year at U.Va., the Study Center was a magical and glorious place, where free coffee and beautiful women were omnipresent, and where the library represented a welcome study space away from the bustle of dorms. That year, it was the center for First Year Fellowship (a ministry to new students) and the meeting space for a Bible study of the Grounds min-
istry Reformed University Fellowship — and the place where I asked out my first college date (she said yes!). Following that year, the Study Center came to mean much more. It was the first place where I saw the true potential that intentional Christian community held, which I experienced through the Center’s Faith and Life Residential Year Program — and how thankful I was that Director of Undergraduate Ministries Wes Zell forced us into it. Through reading Augustine and washing dishes, by attending roundtables and performing community service, I learned that Christian community is not just preferable or desirous — it is mandatory. I learned the love of Christ is not some grand, sweeping abstraction; it is scraping your roommate’s dried pasta off the counter, doing his laundry, and dealing with his early morning wakeups (thanks, guys); it is intentionally engaging with the small minutiae of others’ daily living, in love. It was the place where I pulled my first all-nighter, slaving over a New Testament Greek final, and where a fellow resident brought me the very first order that morning from the Bodo’s bagel shop, remembering that it was my birthday. I am being commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Infantry, with orders for duty in Charlottesville, Georgia, and then Hawaii. In the midst of preparing for my new responsibilities, I warmly remember my involvement at the Study Center. It was, and remains, an academy, a sanctuary, a home. From the basement to the rooftops, the place is filled with more meaningful experiences than I could ever recount here. I pray that it might continue in its noble and faithful work, broadening the sweep of the Kingdom wherever its graduates might go.
BY DiaMOND BrUNEr (A&S, B.A., Psychology, ’09)
I
can easily give the main reason why I successfully made it through my four years at the University of Virginia: my involvement with the Impact Movement at U.Va. This Christian fellowship geared toward black students helped me establish my place on Grounds. As a general body member, and later as a part of the leadership team, I came to recognize the importance of Christian community. Whether we were discussing divisive issues at meetings, praying over each other’s lives, or laughing at our quirky personalities, I felt immense growth through each interaction. Not only was I changed by the organization itself, but also by those who came in to fellowship with us. They opened my eyes to how Diamond Bruner (photo by Sarah Cramer) God is working all over U.Va. I have loved seeing how these somewhat awkward and forced relationships transformed into pure Christian sisterhoods and brotherhoods. This has become especially apparent through my experience in the Study Center’s Faith and Life Residential Year program. My understanding of Christian
community has expanded from simply meeting once a week into more personal areas of my life and my home. I have lived and engaged with nearly a dozen other young women who are serious about relationships and are ready both to challenge me and edify me, in the name of Christ. I did throw myself into anything that seemed remotely appealing at U.Va. when I first arrived, including being a leader in the university’s Office of Orientation and New Student Programs and serving as a peer advisor and mentor in the U.Va. Office of African-American Affairs. I also served as a counselor for the Pregnancy Centers of Central Virginia, which helped lead to my decision to enroll this fall at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. I will be pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Health in Health Education; I have come to see the need for effective health education, especially among teenagers. I am particularly interested in the issue of teen pregnancy and the health conditions of teenage mothers and their babies. In general, my hope is to learn through community engagement and assessment the best ways of adequately addressing health needs. While at U.Va., I clearly benefited from many experiences that positively shaped my life. But it was the Impact Movement and the Study Center that I will remember most as I pursue graduate education in Atlanta. I thank God for initiating friendships which have thoroughly prepared me for this transition.
iNTrODUCTiON BY TiMOTHY MCCONNELL Director of Graduate Ministries
O
ne of our great privileges at the Center for Christian Study is reaching out to students at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration and the School of Law. At weekly fellowship groups, students hear from leaders in their professions who testify to the goodness of the Lord in the trying circumstances of law and business career life. These professional schools on the North Grounds of U.Va. are pressure-cookers designed for the rapid and comprehensive transformation of their students. The term “crucible” is often used! For these students, their educational institution fills up their world for the few years they live in Charlottesville. Our work brings the gospel into that microcosm, and that makes a difference. Christopher and Theresa, whom you will read about below, are two students who gave their time and energy to supporting our Christian fellowships as student leaders. The work we do on North Grounds with graduate students in the business and law schools depends heavily on student leadership, and these are two people who have let Christ work through them to reach others this year.
BY CHrisTOPHEr NOrFLEET (Law, J.D., ’09)
T
he world of legal academics can suffer from a distinct lack of the Christian virtues of sacrifice, faith, and humility. The law school environment often seems to have invited us to live and think as though spiritual truth was — at best — a peculiar
hobby for some people to indulge in, but certainly not pertinent to questions of law or policy. Thankfully, I found the University of Virginia School of Law to be a place where these challenges, though present, are much less prevalent than they are at other schools. I think this is true for a number of reasons. For one, my experience with many of the faculty has Graduates, continued on next page
Graduates, continued from previous page
been that they genuinely welcome contributions from Christian students. This included my participation in a seminar class last fall semester entitled “Religion, Democracy, and the Law,” which discussed the question of what role religious people and ideas should play in crafting policy in a democratic society. Additionally, the Law Christian Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Center for Christian Study, provides an opportunity for student believers to come together each week to pray, sing, and hear from outside speakers on what a biblical worldview looks like in the life and vocation of a lawyer. Christopher Norfleet LCF also provides a place (photo by Sarah Cramer) where I have developed some deep friendships that have made a huge impact on my experience as a law student. LCF gave me the chance to develop as a leader this past year, when I served as the organization’s president. LCF has provided a forum where the Christian students can come together to encourage and mentor one another. My wife, Corrie, and I — along with our one-yearold daughter, Sadie — have also been nurtured and strengthened by the excellent worship and teaching at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville. This summer I plan to remain in Charlottesville after graduation, studying for the bar examination, after which I will begin a clerkship with a federal judge in Dallas. As I reflect on my experience in law school, I consider myself extremely blessed to have been at U.Va. BY THErEsa MEaWaD (Darden, M.B.A., ’09)
I
n all of your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your path straight.” Proverbs 3:6
My path in the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration has been a two-year exploration of God’s will for my life, surrounded by friends who have helped me. This made such a difference last year when I weighed an attractive full-time job offer in investment banking following a summer internship. But the more I prayed about the offer, the more I heard God’s voice telling me to trust Him for another plan, and God directed me. Through courses like “Entrepreneur as a Change Agent,” God led me to people who were using business to do good works. Serving on the Leadership Committee of Darden Christian Fellowship has given me close friendships with other believers; I was vice president
of membership in the fellowship this past year. My Christian friends particularly played a significant role in my decision to pursue an alternate career path. As I talked to these friends about the offers that came up, they gently reminded me about the reasons that I had left my previous job and decided to come to B-school: to once again prioritize God and serve him with my life. Tim McConnell, our Center for Christian Study advisor, said he has heard a lot about people taking the prestigious jobs and planning to do service later. He said the plan rarely ever comes to fruition; it’s too easy to get caught up in the lifestyle and promotions. He said that the “big” jobs would remain and would be easier to transfer to later. I took Tim’s words to heart. That really made me think about how by taking the positions I was offered, I would be delaying God’s will, and my long-run plan might never happen. Through my church, God showed me that people need to be taught to manage their finances. As a result, I decided to start a non-profit organization, “Smart Wallet,” dedicated to providing financial advice to people with low incomes. Through God’s grace, “Smart Wallet” placed among the top three proposals in the recent Darden-U. Va. Business Plan Competition. Many people think the outcome of the M.B.A. program should be a high-paying job, usually investment banking or consulting. But I knew that God Theresa Meawad wanted me to serve him (photo by Sarah Cramer) in a different way. Uncertainty with a new organization is sometimes scary, but my classmates have definitely made things easier; in fact, one of my classmates is my first employee for “Smart Wallet.” The more I talk about my decision to start this business, the more people help. Furthermore, this has given me even more opportunity to talk with people about God. I cannot wait to see how he uses my life after graduation.
2009 U.Va. Move-In Day Lunch for incoming first-years and their families Saturday, August 22, 2009, 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. Unload the U-Haul and then come enjoy lunch and conversation with campus ministers, University faculty, and other incoming students. RSVP to Shelly Pellish at 434-817-1050 or shelly@studycenter.net for this free event. For directions and parking information, please visit our website, www.studycenter.net.
Three Books to Recommend
sUGGEsTiONs FOr sUMMEr rEaDiNG BY TiMOTHY MCCONNELL Director of Graduate Ministries
I
’ve been told that my expressions are transparent. There’s no use hiding what I’m thinking; it’s written all over my face. This weakness is often displayed when I am given a book by a friend — and it turns out it’s a book I really don’t intend to read! I’m sure you know the feeling. But at the same time, we declare a book valuable by handing it on to others, and a carried book is the Timothy McConnell (photo by Sarah Cramer) best kind of book. As Ken Myers, founder of Mars Hill Audio, said recently in addressing a group of young Christians, a webpage or an e-book can be forgotten, but an actual printed volume calls out to you by its very presence on your table: “Read me!” And when it’s a book handed to you by a friend, it calls out even louder. Here are three book titles I wish to hand off to you for your consideration this summer. These are books that I think are worth the time of any busy Christian reader. Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Yale, 2003). Dedicated to the author’s dear friend who recently passed away, Richard John Neuhaus, this book is the sum of decades of scholarship on the Early Church. Wilken has a way of being conversational while surreptitiously instructing you on the deepest and most esoteric insights of ancient Christian faith. To read this book is to walk with the famous Christians of the Early Church, see what they see, taste what they taste, and value what they value. You’ll feel that you’ve been to Church with them and worshipped shoulder to shoulder — and later, when you think about it, you’ll realize that while you walked with these Fathers they whispered deep truths to you about the Trinity, the nature of Jesus Christ, the full life of the Church and the goals of human life, and the way to read the Bible. Wilken was my doctoral supervisor, and he retires from the University of Virginia this month. Catherine Claire Larson, As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda (Zondervan, 2009).
Larson writes for Prison Fellowship Ministries and also blogs at Common Grounds Online. I wrote a review of her book for that blog, and I continue to recommend it to friends. It’s not an easy read from a poolside lounge chair. But if you are willing to enter into life as the African victim of tribal violence knows it, and watch for the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, you will be rewarded. Reading this book changes the way I think about all acts of forgiveness at every level — individual, national, racial, and theological. Saint Augustine, Confessions (Maria Boulding, trans.; New City Press, 2002). Did you read it in college? If so, did you really read it? C. S. Lewis wrote, “I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old… Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” There is little that is more palliative and self-disclosing than reading this stirring and epic autobiographical prayer by the greatest of all Church Fathers. So add these to your recommendations lists. Now that I’ve completed my graduate studies at the University of Virginia, I’m relishing the freedom to read whatever I’d like! These three are worth the cost of print, and they will reward you for taking the time to turn their pages. These books are available at Splintered Light Bookstore, (434) 296-3977 or (800) 979-3310, or online at www.splinteredlightbooks.com. Tim’s colleagues congratulate him on the successful completion of his doctorate. Tim received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in Religious Studies on May 17. His dissertation is titled Illumination in Basil of Caesarea’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Basil of Caesarea was a critical contributor to the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity. Late in the fourth century, when Christians wondered if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all equally God, or if they lined up like officers of different ranks, Basil proved that the Holy Spirit had to be fully and equally God. Soon Christians were confident to confess that God has definitely revealed Himself as one God in three Persons.
The Hope — and Danger — of Beauty BY BiLL WiLDEr Executive Director
O
ne of the things I admire most about students and others in and around the Study Center is their talent and passion for creating beautiful things. One may see this in the art on our walls here. Some time ago we enjoyed the paintings by local artist Malcolm Hughes with their rich evocations of nature’s beauty. Other works now adorn the walls — watercolors by Emily Wade in the main meeting room and photographs by Eric Kelley in the library that combine beauty with an often painful truth. The same may be said of the music composed or performed by other artists in town, including former Study Center resident Alex (and husband of staff member Ashley) Mejias. Such a longing for beauty is a great gift. In his book Simply Christian, N. T. Wright lists this desire for beauty as one of those indications that we were created for something more. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the delight in beauty I see in these artists is an echo of God’s own response to his world and an anticipation of his final purpose for it. But, as with all of God’s great gifts to humans, there is a danger as well. Let me explain what I mean. God’s own response to his creation is summed up in Proverbs 8:31, where his personified Wisdom is described as “rejoicing in the whole world and delighting in mankind.” This is the picture we also find in Genesis, where the first glimpses of beauty in creation are God’s own. Six times in the course of making the world, God stood back (as it were), took a good look at what he had done, and “saw that it was good.” That God was indeed viewing his own work with an artist’s eye is suggested by the careful way in which his work is described, as that of a master craftsman engaged in a great project — a temple-building project, to be exact! Carefully placing luminaries within it (not candles but the sun, the moon, and the stars), adorning it with jewels, and then — climactically — placing his own image (humans!) within it, God establishes creation (and the garden in particular) as the beautiful place of his presence. Then, at the Bill Wilder (photo by Sarah Cramer) end of the sixth day of creation, he steps back one more time (the seventh) and sees that it is “very good.”
In one sense God’s work was done by the seventh day and so he rested. Yet it is also true that much remained to be done. This is where humans come in. The garden itself (even before the fall) required continuing cultivation and care, to say nothing of the rest of the earth. Indeed, God’s command to “subdue the earth” suggests that the order and beauty which he had established in the garden now needed to be extended through the rest of creation. It seems that what God had begun in the garden he intended to complete through his royal human representatives on earth. This was, among other things, a beautification project of truly global proportions. Much might be said at this point about the way in which this “hope of beauty” extended to the physical bodies of Adam and Eve themselves or to the rest of creation. For the apostle Paul, the resurrected Jesus is a kind of “second Adam” who shows us what God always had in mind for humans: a glorified level of bodily existence in a new creation better and more beautiful than anything we might have imagined. One might even say that such beauty — understood as the glory of God coming to expression in what he has made — is the final and comprehensive hope of God’s people. John says that “when [Jesus] appears we will be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). That is, when we see the glory of God in Christ, we will become like him in his human glory. Seen in this way, the hope of glory (Colossians 1) is the hope of beauty, the at-long-last consummation in Christ of what God intended for human beings and his world from the very beginning. Unfortunately, there is a danger in this too, and one which we all know too well: the ever-present temptation to honor the gift over the Giver. Here again the story of Adam and Eve is instructive. Surrounded by beauty, Adam and Eve were barred from the full enjoyment of that beauty. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil “was good for food and . . . a delight to the eyes,” but its fruit was forbidden to them, at least for a time. Adam and Eve, it seems, were called not just to aesthetic discernment (“this fruit looks great!”), but also — and fundamentally — to moral discernment (“God said not to eat from this tree, so it would be wrong to do so.”). Moreover, they were called to what we might call discipline — in this case, to a willingness to wait for God’s provision in his own time and his own way, whatever that might mean. This gets at both the importance and the danger of the longing or yearning that beauty often evokes in us. Sometimes we are allowed to partake as a kind of
anticipation of God’s promised beauty. Other times that lower-case longing is meant to direct our attention to the upper-case Longing (for God, that is) along with a renewed commitment to wait. Too often, though, we are unwilling to wait and our longing for beauty (not just our appetite) leads us, like Adam and Eve, to consume. This is when beauty can become idolatrous rather than iconic, sacrilegious rather than sacramental. It points to the real danger of beauty for those tempted (as we all are) to take our inheritance and run. There is a powerful scene in C. S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra. The protagonist, Ransom, visits a new and unfallen world still in its time of testing. At one point he takes and eats some fruit, the very nectar of paradise, and finds himself reaching for more. Though he was “neither hungry nor thirsty. . . , yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do.” In the end, though, he comes to believe “that repetition would be a vulgarity — like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day.” He resists the urge to “encore” the pleasure. This is a powerful reminder that beauty (like all pleasure) in this age is a firstfruits — a foretaste — of our inheritance to come. The crucial and fundamentally moral question is to know when to partake and when to refrain. The trick is to do both in hope.
THANK YOU
The Center for Christian Study would like to thank the following individuals who graciously hosted regional gatherings for our alumni, parents, friends, and prospective families this semester: NORTHERN VIRGINIA, JANUARY 24 Meg & Steve Garber (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’12) Anya & Jay Macklin (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’09,’10) Nancy & Steve Skancke (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’09)
RICHMOND, VA.; MARCH 20 Janet & Dick Andrews (Parents, ’06, ’11) Ginny & Clyde Bowie (Parents, ’11) Sandy & Fred Gouldin (Parents, ’04, ’08) Elizabeth (Engineering, ’80) & Jimmie Massie (A&S, ’80; Parents, ’08, ’10) Bev & Paul Newell (Parents, ’09, ’10) Linda & Ken Newsome (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’09, ’10) Beth & Jim Shefferly (Parents, ’10) Cathy (Darden, ’84) & Tom Tullidge (Commerce, ’79, Law, ’84; Parents, ’09, ’11)
HOUSTON, TX.; APRIL 2 Sarah & Jay Campbell (Darden, ’07)
THE STAFF & CENTER . . . TIMOTHY MCCONNELL spoke Jan. 11 on The Voice of God at Meadows Presbyterian Church, Charlottesville, where he is a parish associate. . . ASHLEY MEJIAS spoke Feb. 11 to students at an evening program of the Greek InterVarsity (Christian Fellowship) at the University of Virginia. Ashley also assisted the Project on Lived Theology at U.Va. with its Spring Institute for Lived Theology 2009, titled American Evangelicalism and the Practices of Peace: The Lived Theology of John M. Perkins April 22 - 24. Ashley and her husband, Alex, a professional musician, assisted in planning, worship, and coordination of institute activities. Other Center staff attended portions of the institute. . . WES ZELL spoke March 12 at Beta Theta Pi Fraternity at U.Va. on Measures of Maturity. . . AMY ZELL taught March 24 on basic counseling skills in ministry to the interns of the U.Va. Grounds ministry Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship Club. . . BILL WILDER spoke to men at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Charlottesville, at a morning prayer breakfast April 25. . . Wes, Amy, and Ashley led about 80 U.Va. undergraduate students during a weeklong retreat at the North Carolina Outer Banks May 9 - 15, just before U.Va.’s commencement ceremonies. Wes gave a series of talks on the miracles of Jesus.
Nancy & John Jungman (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’09) Kristi & David Lumpkins (Parents, ’09, ’10) Jenny (Curry, ’81) & Larry Nettles (Parents, ’09) Tori & Scott Schroer (Parents, ’12)
DALLAS, TX.; APRIL 3 Dianne & John Hawkins (Parents, ’08, ’13) Claire & Kent Hope (Parents, ’11) Julie & Scott Kleberg (Parents, ’08, ’10) Elizabeth & Charlie Robinson (Parents, ’07, ’10, ’12) Barb (Law, ’80) & Skip Ryan (Parents, ’08)
VIRGINIA BEACH, VA.; MAY 3 Jodie (Board; A&S, ’84) & Robbie Berndt (A&S, ’85; Parents, ’12, ’13) Shelley (Parents’ Council; A&S, ’78) & Randy Case (Engineering, ’79; Parents, ’10, ’12) Lisa & Tim Robertson (Board; A&S, ’77; Parents, ’06, ’08, ’12)
ATLANTA, GA.; JUNE 11 Betty (Board; Curry, ’76) & Ned Case (A&S, ’76) Susan & Bradley Fulkerson (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’11) Christopher W. Glass (A&S, ’01) Theresa Sirois Hubbard (Law, ’05) Mary Stuart (A&S, ’04) & Joel Iverson (A&S, ’02) Nancy & John Jungman (Parents’ Council; Parents, ’09) Henny & John Whelchel (Parents, ’12)
the Center for Christian Study is a non-profit education and outreach ministry serving the University of Virginia and Charlottesville-Albemarle region since 1968. through programs, ministries, and partnerships, we provide opportunities and resources for the corporate and individual investigation of the truths of the historic Christian faith. Some of the ways we do this include courses, lectures, seminars, student-run fellowships, internships, mentoring opportunities, discussion groups, and special events. We proceed believing that men and women will be transformed by the truth, which will be reflected in their thoughts and actions, both in their private lives before God and in their public lives as members of society, the family, and the Church. Center for Christian Study 128 Chancellor Street Charlottesville, VA 22903 Phone: 434.817.1050 www.studycenter.net Praxis is published quarterly for our friends and supporters Carl Briggs, editor carl@studycenter.net
.
University Christian Ministries, Inc. (dba Center for Christian Study) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation eIN 51-0192618. The Center for Christian Study pledges financial accountability through our affiliate membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.
Center for Christian Study 128 Chancellor Street u Charlottesville, VA 22903
Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage
PA I D
A D D RE S S SERVIC E RE QU ESTE D
Charlottesville, Virginia
Prax´• is, n. The practical application of a branch of learning.
Praxi s
Permit No. 144
Visit the Center’s Web Site at: www.studycenter.net
Fundraising Update Annual Fund Goal: $908,000 (July 1, 2008 – June 30, 2009) Gifts Received: $646,636.37 (71% raised!) Gifts and pledges received from 407 donors as of May 19, 2009 Annual fund gifts have an immediate impact on the Study Center’s budget, providing 90% of its yearly ministry support. To make a gift to the Study Center by June 30, please visit our online giving page at www.studycenter.net, or mail in your gift using the enclosed reply envelope located in this newsletter. Parents, alumni, and fourth-year students can support the Study Center while helping U.Va. reach its Capital Campaign goal. To make an online gift, visit www.alumni.virginia.edu/uvafund. Type in “Center for Christian Study” in the box marked “Other” in the gift allocation section. You may also make a gift by mailing a check to the U.Va. Fund. To ensure proper allocation of your gift, please include “Center for Christian Study” in the memo line of your check. U.Va. Fund remittance address: U.Va. Fund P.O. Box 400314 Charlottesville, Va. 22904 For more information on specific giving opportunities, please contact Shelly Pellish by phone, 434.817.1050, or by email at shelly@studycenter.net.
Guinness, continued from front
about the resurrection of Jesus. Past participants have included Nicholas Wolterstorff, Dick Keyes, Frederica Mathewes-Green, George Marsden, Eleanor Stumpf, Larry Woiwode, and Don Carson. This year’s Veritas Forum was an endeavor to explore what the Christian story says not only about the human search for meaning, but also about the peculiar challenges posed to this search by modern life — that is, by technologies that often spread us thin across space and time, in a world where we are potentially everywhere and nowhere at once. As Dr. Guinness argued, in such a world the promise of God’s presence, offered to us in the gospel, becomes evermore powerful. It is, after all, the gift of his presence that upholds us, allowing us to engage life — with all of its withering technologies — without being withered ourselves. Dr. Guinness’ Veritas 2009 lectures — Survival of the Fastest: Living Sanely When Life is Fired Point-Blank and You Only Live Once: Shopping For Our Selves in the Global Supermarket — are available for download at www.studycenter.net/veritas.