“Who’s on your Mt. Rushmore?” This is one of my favorite questions to ask my students. When it comes to fashion, politics, theology, or potentially volatile social issues, who most informs your thinking?  Specifically, give me four names of people who have your ear.  The Mt. Rushmore idea is based on Michael Michalko’s idea of…

Teaching organic chemistry, I have grown accustomed to the moment when students’ eyes begin to glaze over, and their faces seem to ask, “What’s the point of learning all of this?” It is a fair question, and not only for students trying to survive learning countless chemical reactions. In a culture that is suspicious of…

In When Politics Becomes Heresy: The Idol of Power and the Gospel of Christ, Tim Perry, lead pastor at a Lutheran church in Canada, applies a knowledge of church heresy to the Christian church today, arguing that Christians need to examine themselves in light of ancient heresies. Although not a direct case for the study…

In ancient times, the discipline or field of rhetoric focused on speech, mostly in politics and law courts. Then with the advent of writing, rhetoric was extended to the written word. Today, however, rhetoric cannot include only spoken and written speech. With modern technologies, humans communicate in a variety of ways, not only through sermons…

At first glance, or even third, one might have difficulty seeing the connection between these three books. However, each makes a significant argument for the life of the church in this divisive age. How can Christians with divergent beliefs and markedly different political positions communicate with one another? How can the fractured church communicate to…

In our previous post, we compared the role of Christian professors with that of the Old Testament prophets as “stewards of truth.” Following the model of the prophets of the Old Testament, we are required to maintain the truth of our respective disciplines, deliver it convincingly in the classroom, and continuously refine it to apply…