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T HE S T UDY C E NT E R
Remembering WHAT the LORD HAS DONE HERE
THIS ISSUE: Why Christians Look Back, pg 3 Bill Wilder It Started at the Gym..., pg 4-5 with Drew Trotter, David Turner, Ken Elzinga, and Daryl Richman
STUDY CENTER STAFF BILL WILDER
Hoos Got Questions, pg 6 Fitz Green
Executive Director bill@studycenter.net
FITZ GREEN
Transferring into Community, pg 7 Ahenfua Aboagye-Nyame
Senior Director for Education & Programs fitz@studycenter.net
RICK CAMPANELLI
Director of Graduate Ministries rick@studycenter.net
NIKKI FLANNERY
Development Manager nikki@studycenter.net
RACHEL GAFFIN
Questions about what you have read here? Contact Rachel Gaffin at rachel@studycenter.net
Communications Manager rachel@studycenter.net
ETHAN HIGHTOWER
or visit WWW.STUDYCENTER.NET
Director of Undergraduate Ministries for Men ethan@studycenter.net
On the front: Law Christian Fellowship gathers at a retreat in the 1970s. The Study Center newsletter is published for our friends and supporters. University Christian Ministries, Inc. (dba Center for Christian Study) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation EIN 51-0192618.
KATIE HIGHTOWER
Director of Undergraduate Ministries for Women katie@studycenter.net
JAN MATHEWS
Administrative Assistant jan@studycenter.net
TRISH OWEN
Librarian trish@studycenter.net
BILL PORTER
From the STAFF SHELF:
Facilities Coordinator billporter@studycenter.net
DEBBIE RODRIGUEZ The Apostles’ Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism by Ben Meyers
Every Step an Arrival: A 90-Day Devotional for Exploring God's Word by Eugene Peterson
This book reintroduces its readers to the ancient Apostles’ Creed, exploring the radical nature of the creed and why its claims are worth dying for.
Every Step an Arrival, a devotional by the late author of ‘The Message‘ Bible translation, serves as an encouragement to believers reading Scripture.
Recommended by Fitz Green
Recommended by Trish Owen
Director of Finance debbie@studycenter.net
CARLY VANNESS Programs Manager carly@studycenter.net
AMY ZELL
Director of Counseling Resources amy@studycenter.net
WHO WE ARE Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal by Craig M. Gay
Why Can’t We Be Friends? by Aimee Byrd
Gay, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Regent College, examines the impact that modern technologies have on human flourishing.
In this book, Byrd questions the tendency of the church to avoid healthy friendships among men and women, all in the name of upholding sexual purity.
Recommended by Stuart Hornsby
Recommended by Rachel Gaffin
We are a non-profit education and outreach ministry serving the University of Virginia and Charlottesville since 1976. We seek to serve Jesus Christ by fostering the serious consideration in the university environment of a biblical worldview, and by encouraging and facilitating wise discussion of the Truth in light of the challenges of contemporary culture.
CONTACT US PAG E 2 S T H E ST U DY C E N T E R N E W S L E T T E R FA L L 2018
Phone: (434) 817-1050 Email: info@studycenter.net Website: www.studycenter.net Find us on social media: @studycenterUVA
Why Christians Look Back
by Bill Wilder Executive Director bill@studycenter.net
Today we take a look back at the past. Sometimes we’re
disinclined to do this in our hard-charging, forwardmomentum way of living. If you’re like me, you have a hard time remembering what you did over the weekend, never mind reflecting on things that happened a generation or more ago. When we do look back, I’ve noticed, it’s often by way of negative example. We’ve all heard that “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” Was any student ever inspired to learn history on that basis? C.S. Lewis does much better when he urges readers “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.”1 For Lewis the past helped dispel the foggy notions and stale convictions of our own time. It is to our own shortcomings (and not those of the past) that we are most blind. The past can actually help us to see what we need to see. We look back not just to critique, but also to affirm and to emulate. The example of Daryl Richman and other founders of the Study Center comes to mind in this connection. One of the legacies of those early Study Center years is a commitment to Biblical truth and to evangelism, both of which are increasingly contested in our late modern period. Our Senior Director for Education & Programs, Fitz Green, explores our latest attempt to honor that legacy in his reflections on our recent participation in the Grounds-wide RZIM (Ravi Zacharias International Ministries) outreach. Another reason for looking back is to preserve our sense of institutional identity for the sake of the future. I’m very aware that what we have at the Study Center—this house on Chancellor Street along with the distinct Christian convictions and practices we share here—are God’s gifts conveyed to us by faithful men and women in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and beyond. Though this ministry has certainly
changed and adapted over the years, we have also sought to define and honor the essentials of this ministry since the beginning. That brings me to the topic of another article you will find in this newsletter. I have already mentioned our commitment to Biblical truth. Another core value here (rooted deeply in our past) is hospitality and care. That expresses itself in lots of ways, including our role as a landing place for students transferring from other schools. Our Communications Intern, Ahenfua Aboagye-Nyame, describes that wonderful development in her article later in this newsletter. Naturally, we want to make sure that the strengths of the past make their way into the Study Center’s future. Here’s where the word “institution” comes into play. According to Andy Crouch, “institutions are the way the teeming abundance of human creativity and culture are handed on to future generations.”2 That’s true too for the particular creativity and culture that study centers like ours create in university environments like UVA. Looking back for the sake of looking forward is, of course, a pattern deeply rooted in Scripture. God’s people live between the fulfillment of God’s promises in Christ in the past and the further fulfillment of those promises in the future. Scripture too sees those purposes being primarily fulfilled in and through an institution—the church—that represents Christ in the world even as we anticipate his final Advent. My hope is that, in our own calling and place as the Study Center at UVA, we will find ways to honor that way of looking back for the sake of looking forward. That’s why I think we should look back. Now it’s time to look forward, beginning with the rest of this newsletter! 1. C.S. Lewis, “Introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation” (Yonkers, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 13. 2. Andy Crouch, Playing God, (Downer’s Grove, InterVarsity Press, 2013), 188.
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It Started at the Gym... RETROSPECTIVES on the CENTER FOR CHRISTIAN STUDY’S BEGINNINGS from DARYL RICHMAN, KEN ELZINGA, DAVID TURNER, and DREW TROTTER
Bill Wilder, Ken Elzinga, Daryl Richman, David Turner, and Drew Trotter gather on the Study Center's front stoop. A number of years ago, the Center's founders sat down with Executive Director Bill Wilder to reminisce on God's faithfulness to the Study Center during its founding. Here, for the first time, we take a moment to share the reflections of some of those who were present in the Center's earliest days, as they celebrate the Lord's care for the Study Center that has led to the existence of the Center today.
Kenneth G. Elzinga Study Center Co-Founder Robert C. Taylor Professor of Economics at UVA “Daryl Richman was a North Dakota farm boy pastoring two local churches in Fluvanna County, Virginia, which was very divorced from the life of the University. Daryl would come into the grounds [to work out at Memorial Gymnasium] and that’s how he first met [the students he brought to Christ]. [He had] no backing organization. Out of that, Daryl did something mind-boggling to me: he left his church (where he was a beloved pastor) and moved to Charlottesville to begin telling students about Jesus. He’s a persistent guy, and he would persuade me to go to fraternities and share my faith. That wasn’t easy for me. I didn’t grow up in a fraternity culture, and I wasn’t comfortable sharing my faith in the group. We would go into the fraternities [together]. I was the apologetics guy and Daryl was the relational guy. People started coming to know Christ. What Daryl decided the University needed was some sort of meeting where they PAG E 4 S T H E ST U DY C E N T E R N E W S L E T T E R FA L L 2018
could invite their friends and hear the gospel. There was nothing like that going on at the time. The only Christian group I encountered when I first came here was a small struggling group that had some godly young men in it, but their culture was very defensive. Daryl began to transform [the question] from “how do you hold onto your faith?” to “how do you share your faith with others?” I don’t think of Daryl as being someone with great organizational skills himself, and I say that in candor, but what he is great at is finding people with organizational skills and encouraging them to start organizations. Among them was the Study Center, with its geographic locus. One of the things that marks Christian ministry [at UVA] is the number of ministries who cooperate with each other. There’s an irenic spirit to the organizations. I think that’s partly because Daryl put that in the DNA of the Christian community here. It’s his nature to want to encourage someone else to do well, and if that came at the expense of them doing something he had been doing, that was fine. He was happy to free people up to [share the work of the gospel]. The evangelistic passion has not left Daryl.”
Law Christian Fellowship celebrates a wedding.
Daryl Richman & Bob Voyles at an early Action Ministries retreat. Daryl Richman Study Center Co-Founder “[When I first moved to Charlottesville], I started migrating onto the campus like a goose flying over to stop and get some food. [At the time,] UVA was so far out of my purview of important things. When I began to use Mem Gym, I began to communicate with students one-to-one, face-to-face. I was going to Mem Gym primarily to have a place to work out because I was tired of not having exercise, but I ended up with a small group of guys to care for: Bob Bissell, Mark Nickels, and Dan Smith.”
Daryl Richman & current Study Center Board member Lee Bunn in 1978. Action Ministries in what is now known as the Richman Room.
David Turner Former Director of the Study Center Original Study Center Student “I came to UVA in 1966 for my first year, and in 1968 one of my fraternity brothers, Clay Bear, told me about this guy that he had met at the gym. He wanted to invite Daryl and Mr. Elzinga to come [to our fraternity] and talk about Christianity. This was Ken’s first foray into the fraternity life. It was a crossroads for me, because Ken forthrightly said he was not ashamed of the gospel. It led to tears [on my part] and to a friendship [between us]. Daryl is indeed persistent: He would call me relentlessly, just trying to encourage me to reconnect with the Lord.” Drew Trotter Former President of the Study Center Original Study Center Student “I went to that Bible study with Bob Bissell and the others in the fall of ’68. It was in the spring of the next year that Daryl came up with the idea of [creating a larger Christian group]. We named the group ‘Action Ministries’ and we would meet on Sunday nights in different people’s homes, as close as the President’s home on Carrs Hill to as far away as farmhouses in Fluvanna County. We would meet at the small parking lot beside Mem Gym (now the multi-story parking garage) and drive out in caravan. By the time I
graduated, we couldn’t fit all the cars in the lot.” Ken Elzinga “The Action meetings could not meet on Grounds at the time. Every Action meeting had to be some place other than grounds. We had to find a home or go to the Wesley Foundation or go to St. Paul’s [Episcopal Church]. Daryl and others began thinking, if we had our own place, since we couldn’t always count on university facilities. Miraculously [128 Chancellor St.] opened up. At the time, God raised up some people that said, ‘Let’s help Daryl buy this house.’ It was a very dark place when it was first purchased, but now it's a beautiful place.” By Rachel Gaffin and Ahenfua Aboagye-Nyame
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HOOS GOT QUESTIONS by Fitz Green Senior Director for Education & Programs fitz@studycenter.net
This February
we partnered with 7 fellowship groups and with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries to hold a weeklong evangelistic series that we called “Hoos Got Questions.” It’s led me to think about the Study Center’s roots in the evangelistic ministry of Daryl Richman. In 1972, still in the early days of Action Ministries, Beat Steiner and other InterVarsity students organized a weekend-long major evangelistic event, which they called “Jesus Christ vs. Christianity.” It was headlined by Leighton Ford (the brother-in-law of Billy Graham) and the AfricanAmerican evangelist Tom Skinner. Both the title and the choice of speakers were controversial at the time, yet the weekend was a great success and fueled the energy behind Action Ministries’ weekly meetings in the years following.1 Daryl’s character left its mark in the growth of evangelism on Grounds, and he also made an impact in the way he readily partnered with other campus ministry groups.
them with the truth, we were on board right away. In my time at UVA I’ve never seen an event so big (15 talks over 5 days) nor so widely supported (7 fellowship groups, 3 churches, RZIM, and the Study Center). Attendance at Hoos Got Questions was strong all week as well, with 75 students at every lunch, and hundreds each evening. Numbers are only part of the story. As I debriefed with Shawn Hart, the director of RZIMs’ university missions, he said to me, “We couldn’t believe how many non-Christians we met who were in small groups!”
“SO IF JESUS DIED ON THE CROSS FOR OUR SINS, WHAT DID THE RESURRECTION DO FOR THE PEOPLE HE SAVED?” At Friday's lunch talk, entitled “Why Would God Die?”, a student (we'll call him Paul) caught Ethan Hightower’s attention when he asked a really good question during Q & A: “So if Jesus died on the cross for our sins, what did the resurrection do for the people that he saved?”
Grounds ministries hand out flyers during RZIM week. Photo courtesy of RZIM.
These two emphases—proclamation of the gospel and partnership in ministry—continue to the present. Most of our evangelistic ministry in recent years has been relational. The Center has seen students come to know Jesus through mentoring relationships, in our graduate fellowships, and through friendships made in our discussion groups. This is quiet work, and good work. Yet when our staff saw the opportunity both to join with other ministries and to reach out to non-Christian students across grounds and engage PAG E 6 S T H E ST U DY C E N T E R N E W S L E T T E R FA L L 2018
After the talk, Ethan introduced himself to Paul and learned that Paul has been actively seeking God for some time. He’d started attending OneWay, the IV chapter for African-American students, and listening to talks on the RZIM website. One day he met with Jerry, the OneWay Grounds minister, and told him, “I have so many questions, I wish RZIM would come to UVA.” Jerry’s reply was, “Well, guess what? They’ll be here next week!” In that conversation with Paul, Ethan shared our future hope: that just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so too will we be when he comes again. What’s more, even now that Hoos Got Questions week is behind us, Paul has Ethan, Jerry, and the students of OneWay to walk with him as he asks questions and, we pray, finds their answer in Jesus. 1. Charles Cotherman, The Study-Center Movement: Lay Theological Education, the Counterculture, and American Evangelicalism, 1965-1979. Ph.D., University of Virginia, 2018.
TRANSFERRING into COMMUNITY For decades,
the Study Center has made an impact on students from all backgrounds, but transfer students Pauline DiLorenzo and Brendan Berkel have had a unique experience when it comes to appreciating the Study Center’s hospitality. Coming from a community college with a smaller Christian population to UVA with its larger Christian community has been comforting for Brendan. Through the Study Center, he has been able to befriend students from various fellowships on grounds, an experience he did not have the opportunity to enjoy at his previous school. Brendan’s engagement with the Study Center’s programs has reinforced what he already knew about the gospel and Christ, and has allowed him to get plugged into the Christian community at UVA. For Brendan, the Study Center is memorable because he gets to see someone he knows every time he comes here. “It’s definitely welcoming,” he says. “The people here are friendly. A lot of places you can go on campus people just have their headphones in, head down or whatever. They could care less to get to know you, but here is different.” After visiting grounds and touring the Study Center with some high school friends, “it was [a place] that I always knew would hopefully be a part of my experience at UVA,” Pauline says about the Study Center, where she participates in the
For Pauline, there are countless aspects of the Study Center that make it memorable, but the most significant of those, similar to Brendan, is the people. Pauline came to UVA looking for a place to call home, and she’s found that through her experiences at the Study Center. “I actually wrote about [it] in my application to UVA, I said I wanted to find a place that felt like home and that is ultimately what I have found through the Study Center and through the amazing people that I’ve met here.”
SPRING 2019 CALENDAR WELCOME BACK LUNCH January 15
SECOND & THIRD YEAR DINNER February 26
RACE and PLACE in CHARLOTTESVILLE January 21
The MOVIES and AMERICA Drew Trotter March 1
FIRST YEAR DINNER January 29 11 AM: MOVIE SCREENING February 1 HOOS GOT QUESTIONS February 18-22
MAKING STRANGE: The VALUE of FANTASY in TOLKIEN and HARRY POTTER Alison Milbank April 3 FOURTH YEAR DINNER April 23
LIBRARY BOOK WEEK March 4-8
EXAM SNACKS May 2-10
MARCH MADNESS LUNCH March 21
BEACH WEEK May 11-16
STUDENT ART EXHIBIT The month of April
GRADUATION DAY LUNCH May 18 PAG E 7 S T H E ST U DY C E N T E R N E W S L E T T E R FA L L 2018
WWW.STUDYCENTER.NET
by Ahenfua Aboagye-Nyame Communications Intern
residential program. Pauline did not grow up a Christian and therefore has only recently begun to explore the scores of Christian writers at her disposal in the Study Center's Pauline DiLorenzo and her friend Phil library. Her curiosity Lockwood show off their “skip-the-line” and willingness to passes during Exam Snacks. learn has been fostered by the Study Center’s events and resources. Pauline has attended and appreciated several Study Center programs and events. Talks such as Can Faith & Science Coexist Brendan Berkel at the Study Center's and Reduced to Data, Race and Place screening. along with the Study Photo by Birttany Fan. Center’s video series “Race and Place in Charlottesville,” have piqued Pauline’s interest and have kept her engaged.
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Contact Carly Vanness for more information. carly@studycenter.net PAG E 8 S T H E ST U DY C E N T E R N E W S L E T T E R FA L L 2018