Many universities in America are experiencing difficult times. The combination of enrollment declines and operating cost increases has pushed some universities beyond their ability to adapt. A growing number of institutions suffering financial exigency have either closed or been merged into more economically healthy university systems. Christian Scholar’s Review Editor, Dr. Perry Glanzer, has offered…
It is now 50 years since Robert Greenleaf coined the term “Servant Leadership” in his groundbreaking essay, The Servant as a Leader. In a break from command and control strategies of the past, Greenleaf’s leadership theory required that a leader must be a servant first and a leader second. Unlike task-focused leaders, a Servant Leader must focus…
The stock market looks at the world through a peculiar lens, one that people outside the market don’t always understand. Oddly enough, it is similar to the lens through which the Bible views the world, particularly how it views Christians and the church. The church has come under consistent criticism, sometimes well earned, and yet…
Business and legal history are not the most likely sources of Christian illumination. In this post, however, I will expose the contrasting viewpoints of God and fallen humanity through the tiny lens of a single legal form of business organization, the partnership. Partnerships, in one form or another, have been around since ancient times. One…
The popular futuristic fantasy of a world without work has been receiving increased attention lately. In a January 2026 podcast, Elon Musk opined that people should no longer worry about saving for retirement because, in the world of abundance to come, those savings would be irrelevant. By 2030, he claimed, artificial intelligence would be smarter…
Scrolling Ourselves to Death is a project of the Gospel Coalition, harnessing the arguments of Neil Postman’s 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death,[1] to take on post-millennial media. This compilation of essays applies Postman’s logic and insights about the social and spiritual impact of television to the 2025 world of social media and other digital…
In the present university world, we talk a lot about impact. Our research is measured by its impact on our academic discipline, according to how often it is cited and by whom. Woe to the professor whose research always winds up in journals with a low JIF. The leading accreditor in the field of business,…
One way to understand the evolution of popular management publications over the last 50 years is to see it as beginning with a reaction to the struggles of American manufacturing in the 1970s. Shocked by the oil embargo and an invasion of cheaper, more efficient foreign imports, US car manufacturers attempted to adapt quickly but…
As an Associate Dean of my college I am on a 12-month contract, so the academic calendar doesn’t impact my work schedule as much as it does many faculty. All the same, I am a very different figure on campus during the semester than I am when most of the students have gone home. During…
It is a season of change in the American higher education world. The technological tsunami of online education has broken across the university beachfront and the economic efficiency for students being able to earn a degree without leaving home, and often at reduced tuition, has produced a massive increase in online programs. At the same…
This fall I am teaching an Honors Seminar designed for students in my home university’s College of Health Sciences. The students are all eager to pursue their professional careers as medical doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. Sadly, only 10% of them have expressed any interest in practicing in those parts of the world where they…
It is the time of year when those of us who serve as teachers, from college to Kindergarten, are ramping up our preparation for the upcoming term. In my home university, new faculty are arriving on campus this week for onboarding, next week will be devoted to faculty meetings at the university and college level,…
Part guidance to young lawyers and law students and part Christian apologetic for the legal profession, Robert F. Cochran, Jr.’s new book, The Servant Lawyer, is a much-needed addition to the dialogue between the church, the legal profession, and the communities they both serve. The overall tone of the text is prescriptive. Cochran argues that…
Part guidance to young lawyers and law students and part Christian apologetic for the legal profession, Robert F. Cochran, Jr.’s new book, The Servant Lawyer, is a much-needed addition to the dialogue between the church, the legal profession, and the communities they both serve. The overall tone of the text is prescriptive. Cochran argues that…
When I was a boy growing up in Hong Kong, both my parents were professors. They worked some long days during the long semesters and sometimes brought papers home to grade on the kitchen table after dinner. At the same time, they never seemed to be working deep into the night, and summers were a…
University students often face a challenging number of life-changing choices during their brief time on campus. I often joke with my incoming freshmen that during my time as a college student, I decided on which university I would attend (twice), what major I would pursue (again twice), where I would live (three times), where I…
It is a great time to graduate college in America. Unemployment rates are hovering at around 3.7%, as low as they have been since the 1960s and approaching what economists would consider full employment. The hot job market not only provides a great sense of affirmation for newly minted college grads as potential employers woo…
Sometimes students’ reasons for becoming entrepreneurs go beyond the desire for lifestyle freedom. Some young people bristle at the idea of having someone in authority over them. More than autonomy, they want power and immunity from the demands of others, and they imagine being their own boss as equivalent to achieving it. They imagine organizing a business in which they “call the shots” while others “wash the pots”; a business that serves them. These would-be entrepreneurs evidence a misunderstanding of business. Serving the needs of clients, fellow employees, or others is the very nature of value creation in business. Some may prefer to serve indirectly through an organizational structure while others may prefer to serve more immediately by starting their own business.
Christianity is best understood as a religion that requires integration throughout a believer’s life. Scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 10:31 and James 1:8 warn against compartmentalizing one’s life into sacred areas that are subject to God’s requirements and secular areas that are outside His purview. Christian business faculty have long called on our students to…
One of the leading models for the integration of faith and business is social enterprise and Mark Sampson is among one of its more notable practitioners. Social enterprise, however, is subject to the criticism that it represents an unstable relationship between capitalistic activity and eleemosynary intentions. Modern capitalism has created great efficiency in the economies…
