Click here to listen to the episode on Spotify
In the forty-sixth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Robert B. Sloan, President of Houston Christian University. Sloan opens by discussing the importance of a community having a vision for its existence, how such a vision is cultivated, and how such a vision shapes and frames strategic planning processes. For a Church-related college or university, Sloan also explains the critical role theology and theological articulation play in the vision for an institution’s existence and the strategic planning processes it experiences. Sloan then shifts to discuss his own vocational discernment which includes service as a pastor, a professor, and an educational leader. While each profession comes with its own commitments, Sloan found over the course of his career that they have complimented one another well, bringing mutually reinforcing sensibilities to bear in the service he offers. He also details how he found expressions for his vocation as an interim pastor, a professor, a seminary dean, and a university president over the course of his career. Sloan then concludes by offering details concerning the relationship the Church and the university are called to share and how the health of that relationship impacts the health of the academic vocation as expressed on a university campus.
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
—
Our guest is Robert B. Sloan, President of Houston Christian University. Thank you for joining us.
One of the critiques of higher education is college and universities lack a compelling sense of identity that informs not only daily decision making, but also and perhaps more importantly, a larger good or purpose toward, which such decision making is directed. At what level do you think such a critique is accurate?
Robert B. Sloan: Thanks, Todd. Thanks for the question. It’s good to be with you. I think that critique could well be accurate in far too many cases. It’s, it’s absolutely vital for universities of any description, Christian universities certainly, but really for any, a good organization for a church, for a school, for a university to have a clear statement of its mission, of its purpose, of it, a clear vision, and then a strategic plan to try to implement that kind of vision. So it’s absolutely important.
You have to have a vision, but in order to take it seriously, it has to, as you’ve indicated in your question, it has to motivate the kinds of strategic actions that you take. And to do that, of course, you have to think it through carefully, craft it, build it carefully, then continue to focus upon it.
Todd Ream: Yep. With that being, you know, accurate, then at some level, what do you believe are the ramifications, near and long term, for such a void for many colleges and universities? What are the challenges they then incur by lacking that compelling vision?
Robert B. Sloan: Well, you have to know who you are in order to and you have to know who you are. You have to know what your commission is. You have to know where you want to go. Otherwise, you just drift. You’re a victim of cultural forces. You’re constantly thinking about other values than the most important values.
You know, it’s easy for presidents, for universities, for officers, for faculty, for staff, it’s easy for any of us simply to think about our career and let that be the guiding principle of what we do. But that’s really a huge mistake when it comes to the nature of a university.
If we’re going to be faithful, it’s not going to happen because we drift. It’s not going to happen because we don’t think about it. We have to have clear objectives in mind and of course that means for a Christian university, that means having clear objectives that are consistent with the great faith, the content of the faith that we espouse.
Todd Ream: Thank you. At what level then do you believe presidents in particular are responsible for cultivating such a sense of identity?
Robert B. Sloan: I think the buck ultimately stops with the president for that responsibility. Now, of course, you have to have trustees, directors, regents, whatever you call them, who are committed to the mission and vision of the university and to the historic character of it. Without trustees and directors of the corporation of the university, the university becomes susceptible and vulnerable to a lot of drift simply because of the personality drift or the implementation drift of a given president.
But I think presidents are absolutely key to the whole process. I think people in the university respect and want to see leadership out of a president. They expect to see that. Where that’s not present, they’ll simply let, understandably so, their own career or their own department or their own area, be the guiding set of principles for whatever it is they do on a daily basis. But it’s absolutely the president’s responsibility to seize that opportunity and to take advantage of that opportunity.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. How does a president then know whether the vision that’s being cultivated is compelling sets that institution apart in a unique manner in comparison to its peer institutions?
Robert B. Sloan: I think the compelling nature of a vision is seen in a number of ways. In terms of the energy that it creates for faculty and staff who actually work there. You know, does it, does it drive people’s interest? Is it something that they can, again, in keeping with their own sense of calling, is it something that they can grasp hold of?
Is it compelling to the public? Does it, so it’s not only faculty and staff, but is it compelling to the public that is to say is it something that reflects marketplace needs? The market doesn’t determine your vision, but it often determines the shape and focus of your vision. The shape of a vision for a Christian university has to do a whole, of course, with the content of the faith that we hold to the Scriptures, our tradition, et cetera.
But, but the public, it also has to be relevant to the public. And so when people, when people entrust their children to you, people send students, when people give donations, that tells you that there could well be some kind of compelling vision going on. There’s something that interests them.
And then I think from peer institutions we do network with one another. You get feedback from one another. Is anybody calling and asking how do you do that? Or, or how did you create that vision? I think when that sort of thing happens over the years, then, then people are seeing something that they’ve either heard about or that they admire themselves.
Todd Ream: Yeah. From your experience, you know, as a president over the years, in what ways, once a vision is in place, in what ways have you learned to communicate it to internal constituents, as well as external constituents. And what lessons might you offer to others?
Robert B. Sloan: I will tell you that that is a very salient point. It must be talked about constantly. The kinds of things that a president does on a daily basis or his executive cabinet or his or her executive cabinet, it’s something we’ve become very familiar with, but it’s not familiar to everybody else.
And even if you have established a vision document and you have a strategic plan to implement it, it must be repeated, it must be appealed to. It has to be taken for granted by faculty and staff that this is something that we’re doing, that this is realistic. Too oftentimes, too many times, vision statements, vision documents, they can be beautifully written. They can be very aspirational and inspirational.
But one, they don’t have a strategic plan attached to it with specific times and dates and people and money and tactics and strategies that will move you forward. But they can be beautifully bound and put on the shelf and then forgotten. It’s something that you have to talk about constantly.
We at HCU talk a lot about our vision, our vision statement, our 10 pillars. We talk about the strategic plan, the, the five imperatives that are, are used to appeal to implement that strategic plan, to implement the vision statement. So I refer to it constantly with our trustees. I refer to it constantly when we have faculty and staff forum.
We refer to it when we have an institutional strategic planning committee. So it, it’s just, it has to be part of not only the aspiration of the institution, but it has to be part of the daily operational fabric of what you do. And so, I mean, you communicate it verbally, you communicate it visually, but it also becomes part of the marketing.
The external audience also has to know that, and you have to have all those ways of saying externally what you’re doing. That also impacts the internal audience, because when the internal audience sees that this is something important that we appeal to externally, when they see that it’s something that we use to raise money that we use to recruit students, that we are using, most importantly of all for being faithful to our calling and faithful to our mission, that resonates internally as well.
And people get very enthusiastic about it and very excited. So we have by the grace of God, seen a good bit of that, but believe me, I learned many years ago that repetition and internal marketing is absolutely critical.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. You’ve touched on possible answers to this question, you know, a couple of times already, but I want to ask you explicitly, for Church-related college and universities, what role does theology play in the cultivation of such an identity and in particular, the compelling nature of such identity?
Robert B. Sloan: I think it is a huge factor in the compelling nature of an identity, just in the identity itself. It’s a huge factor. Now I have to add a qualifier that I didn’t know to add 20 years ago or 30 years ago, the qualifier is that, what some people mean by theology, and what I mean by theology can be something very different. I think you don’t have the Christian faith without a theology. It’s a set of core convictions.
We believe that the long awaited Messiah of Israel’s history, in fulfillment of the promises of God, has now come through the person of Jesus Christ. And in His death and resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God in His expected return we have a template for what the world is really like, where the world is really going and what it is we’re really supposed to do.
To me, it seems you, you’re not a, not a Christian without having a theology. C.S. Lewis talked about Mere Christianity, and it’s the basics of the Christian faith. Now, some people mean by theology, a highly technical, professional field of study, which is concerned with a lot of technical detail philosophically and foundationally, et cetera.
But by theology, I’m referring to kind of a biblical worldview. The long story of the Bible, the Gospel itself at the heart of all of that. So I think theology is absolutely vital. It doesn’t mean you have to be, doesn’t mean you have to be a professional theologian to do it. It means the never ending task for a faculty member or a staff member or a president or a board member of putting into practice the implications of what we say when we say Jesus Christ is Lord. We have made a clear statement about the nature of reality.
And so when we make that kind of statement, as Christian people, we are constantly, it’s what our pastors tell us when they preach to us, rightly so, they tell us that, that to follow Jesus Christ means it has an impact on how you live, how you speak, what you do, your calling, your money, your talents, et cetera. It’s a thoroughgoing confession of who you are and what you want to do in the world, what you believe.
You know, C.S. Lewis is so compelling. I think it was Walter Hooper, who said he was the most thoroughly converted man I ever met. By that he meant that he had, he had sort of worked out in, in a broad way, the implications of what it means to follow Christ. But I think theology is wonderfully important.
Todd Ream: Yep. Thank you. I want to transition now to asking you about your own vocational discernment and your life in a little bit. You earned an undergraduate degree from Baylor University, Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Doctorate in Theology from the University of Basel. At what point did you determine that the study of theology would prove to be a critical thread in your own sense of vocation?
Robert B. Sloan: My sense of vocation was that as a youngster and then particularly reemphasized and refocused as a freshman in college, I had a sense of calling, I had this sense that the Lord was calling me. I interpreted that to mean, as a preacher or a pastor, early on. But I actually, at one time, I remember thinking, I don’t want to be a professor. I don’t want to be a teacher. I wanted to be, you know, a proclaimer of the Word of God.
But as I was a college student at Baylor in the religion department and in the psychology department, I was a double major, and in the honors program, I discerned the need for people who could talk about the Christian faith, you know, in a way that was both faithful and intellectually honest.
And so that’s, that’s when I discerned a, a call that, that maybe teaching or being a professor might be the way in which my own calling, to proclaim the Gospel was going to be fulfilled. So I’ve never left that for, I still preach in churches, but I also feel like leading the university that we are, you know, trying to live and preach and teach the Gospel.
Todd Ream: So ordained minister, faculty member, and an educational leader, in what ways do those threads of your vocation then interact with one another, perhaps strengthen one another, and perhaps even at times, maybe in certain circumstances, compete with one another?
Robert B. Sloan: Well, yeah, that’s an interesting question. I immediately think of times in my life when, when I was a young professor, but then very quickly had the opportunity to preach. I wanted the opportunity to preach and that I wanted to be, to stay, you know, fixed within the church. One of the great legacies of my hometown pastor was he loved the church and he and he talked about the church theologically and biblically and that has always stuck with me.
So, throughout my teaching career have always done a lot of interim pastorates, interim preaching where I’d be the regular Sunday preacher. I did a lot of that for many, many years. And there were times when I was tempted to slide over into a church ministry, but I knew that I would miss the teaching and the constant opportunity to learn and study and write that being in academics would give me.
So those two belong together, I think for a Christian or for the Christian theologian. They belong together and it’s powerful to be able to stand in front of a group of 75 freshmen in a Bible class or 12 doctoral students in a doctoral seminar on the New Testament, and to be able to teach. And yet, be able also to have the opportunity to stand up on a Sunday morning and preach to God’s people who are not professional theologians, not even taking a freshman Bible class but they want to hear a word from God.
And the worst thing you can do is separate professional theology from the church. And also for the church to give up its calling to teach the theology of the Bible. Both of those, of those need to be done and belong together.
Todd Ream: You served as a faculty member in Baylor’s religion department, but then, you were also the founding dean of Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary. Would you please describe the discernment process that led you to accept that appointment as Truett’s founding dean?
Robert B. Sloan: You know, I love this question because I haven’t been asked that question in that particular way. I can’t recall ever. The truth, the truth is Baylor was in the process because of controversies in Baptist life of establishing its own seminary. And I was tabbed to be part of just the development of that.
So I remember telling my wife that, you know, I think Dr. Reynolds is going to ask me to be dean of the seminary, and I’m not sure I really want to. I probably at an emotional level, didn’t want to for various reasons. But I knew if he asked me to do it, I was supposed to do it. It was a sense of circumstances calling, where the Lord had been leading me in life. It was something I couldn’t say no to.
I’m not even sure I discerned a specific calling to be dean of the seminary. I just knew that if he asked, because I respected him, because I trusted the circumstances that the Lord had put me in in my life, that was something that I would do.
Todd Ream: What components of your service as dean did you find vocationally fulfilling?
Robert B. Sloan: Extremely fulfilling and very important for allowing me eventually to be a college president, was starting the seminary from the ground floor. The, the opening meetings that I had with President Reynolds and with Jim Netherton, executive vice president, first meetings I had were, you know, I had to, I had to go to that meeting to talk about the seminary, had to, I had to get a yellow tablet and I had to get a pencil, and I had to begin to think about, because we had no applications. We had no students. We had no faculty. We weren’t even incorporated yet at that point. But I mean, all that was happening in the process of happening.
So the great experience was learning to ask the question, what’s the purpose of a seminary? The simple thing to do would’ve been to just go get a bunch of seminary catalogs, which I did, ordered seminary catalogs from everywhere, looked over their curricula. What, what is a seminary? What do they do? But the simple thing would’ve been just to try to copy what others have done. It made me ask foundational questions. What are we trying to do? Are we trying to produce professional theologians or are we trying to produce thoughtful, educated ministers of the Gospel?
And the answer is, a seminary is a professional school. It’s not a graduate school of religion. It’s a professional school. And so we were trying to produce, so the question was what really becomes what makes a great church? What makes a great pastor, teacher, preacher, leader of a faithful church?
So that became the way I started thinking about it with the help of a lot of friends. Try to think backwards, what will produce that kind of outcome? If that’s the outcome you’re aiming for, what will produce that kind of outcome? So that’s what shaped the curriculum. It’s what shaped the advertising. It’s what shaped the recruiting process. It’s what shaped the fundraising process. But it was a great experience to start with.
I mean, it’s a false illusion when you walk into something that’s already existing and you’ve already got a hundred students, or 500 students, or 10,000 students. But when you walk into a place and you’ve got no students and no donors, well, or, or maybe only a few donors in mind, and no application form, it’s a different prospect.
So I got on the phone and recruited students. I learned very quickly, you can’t just put out your flyer, hang out your shingle and think people are going to come. We got on the phone and recruited students and et cetera, et cetera. So that was a great, great experience.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 1995 then, as you echoed, you were appointed Baylor University’s 13th president. Would you describe the discernment process that informed your decision to accept that appointment?
Robert B. Sloan: You know, I would give a similar answer to what I gave before. When I was asked, how did you feel when, when you were called and told you’d just been elected president? It sounds like a silly answer, but it’s literally what came to my mind. I felt like a straw in the wind.
I mean, I couldn’t say no. I was caught up. I really thought and think I was caught up in the providence of God and what God was doing in that particular circumstances with that institution at that particular point in time, as it was intersecting with my life and my family and where we were.
So it wasn’t a specific discernment. It was an acceptance of what, what I felt being swept along with something much more important than myself, but I was being called to do something.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. When you think about those years as president at Baylor, what did you find vocationally fulfilling about the role that you filled?
Robert B. Sloan: Several things. I’ll probably give you the third thing as the most important, but I learned about the financial dimensions of a university budget. How does a university run? What does it depend upon? Universities, unless you have a massive endowment like a Harvard or Yale or a Princeton or a Rice, unless you have a massive endowment, you have to have students. And so the revenue side of what runs a university is the students.
So I’m kind of reducing it to the lowest level there because the mission is so much bigger than just talking about, you know, having a revenue side of your budget. No margin, no mission. I realized that it was one thing to have ideals about what you want to accomplish. It’s something else to know that you have to have the support of God’s people and a revenue source to do it. So I learned about the operational mechanics of a university.
Secondly, I learned the importance of, I thought this before, but it really came home to me clearly, the importance of faculty and staff, the hiring process, the people you hire. You can have all the pamphlets in the world. You can have all the marketing statements in the world as to what you are and who you are and as a Christian institution, but unless the faculty and staff deliver that on a day-to-day basis, that’s not who you are. Who you are is what happens in that classroom, faculty and staff carry the great traditions of the university forward. They are the DNA of the university. So I realized how important the hiring process was.
I decided early on, it wasn’t day one, but I realized after some months and my first couple years, since I was putting my signature on hiring faculty and staff, that I had to take that seriously. I decided I’m not there to be a rubber stamp of what has been decided. And so that, that was a hard decision and created some initial, you know, controversy, but I just said, is my signature on there? I’m the one responsible to the regents.
And I still, I still do that. I interview faculty and I don’t, I don’t think it’s a hard interview. I just want to know, do they love students? Do they love our mission? Are they committed to Christ? So you have academic goals and aspirations? Do you like teaching? Can you embrace an institution like ours? I mean, those are pretty simple commitments. But I learned the importance of the people in having a university.
And the third thing I realized in terms of shaping my calling and who I am is how important it is to have a vision and actually have a vision statement. I thought I had a vision for the university from day one. I did, but I realized, it’s absolutely critical that you have a process for getting that vision captured in writing and thinking it through in details. And of course, that’s a participatory process. You, you, you know, the trustees, the faculty, the staff, everybody’s got to participate. Donors, alumni, it’s quite a process.
But I realize that I love thinking about the future. I love vision statements. I love vision documents. Because I’m persuaded that if you communicate them and if they are compelling and inspiring that they work, and people actually change their behavior based upon the directions given. And you can do far more with that kind of mission and vision-oriented process than you can without it.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. You were, in 2006 then, appointed the third president of Houston Christian University, then Houston Baptist University at the time. I’m going to ask the same sort of question I’ve asked before in terms of your appointment at Baylor, an appointment as dean at Truett, the discernment process that went into your willingness to accept that appointment, would you share a few of the details with us?
Robert B. Sloan: I would, and you know, it, it was different. I had been the president of Baylor and you know, a very large and prestigious and traditional, Christian university. And so when I became chancellor, I was no longer the CEO and that was not satisfying to me.
But on the other hand, I decided, you know, this is a stage in life where the Lord has something else for me to do. So I naturally thought maybe I’m, maybe I need to go be the pastor of a church. And I thought that might be the direct next direction I would take. I wasn’t sure. It was the first time in a long time that I felt like I had been sort of cut loose from my calling. Because I became convinced that the calling of the Lord on my life was to help raise up strong Christian universities that make a difference in our world, that are faithful.
So the one thing I thought I would not do is be a college president again. And just for various reasons. One, I was tired and the other, the other reason just, I just didn’t see that kind of match for me. I had the opportunity to apply to, and in one instance, even go to a certainly apply to some public universities and state universities. But that just didn’t appeal to me, because I felt my calling oriented itself around distinctively Christian higher education and what it means to be committed to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and work out the implications of that for higher education.
But you have to have an institution that wants to fulfill that mandate. And, and, and there are many institutions like that, but would it be an institution that also fit my history and in my setting in life. I was on sabbatical. Baylor had graciously given me some sabbatical time. And I was on sabbatical and got contacted by Houston Baptist University. And I basically said no, and in an email.
And I read back to my wife and I said, you okay with me hitting the send button on this? And she said, well, I thought you said you were open to whatever the Lord had for you. And I said, well, I am, but I just don’t think it’s, I just don’t think it’s going to be this. And she said, well, why don’t you just at least soften it just a little bit? So I added another phrase or sentence about at this time or something like that. I left some very tiny space open in the, in, in the door, and sent it off.
And anyway, that began a process. I said no several times but I had, I had a couple of friends tell me that I shouldn’t be dismissive too quickly, because there’s a dynamic at play. At then, we were Houston Baptist University. There’s a dynamic there at play that isn’t at play in most evangelical universities, and that is to be located, in a, in a major city. There are many Catholic universities located in major cities, but not Protestant, evangelical universities.
So, I mean, this one friend even got out, you know, he did a search and we sat down in a computer together and he did a search of Christian universities and where are they located? And he was absolutely right. There are a few that are in major cities, but not many. And so that intrigued me. And the different dynamic of being in a city like Houston with this massive population and, and energy and medical care and the arts and the entertainment, it created a different way for me to think about it.
And so, anyway in the process, with the help of the search committee, some wonderful people on the search committee, very patient, I recall going to what they thought was an interview and I thought was a consulting, and I thought they just wanted me to help them find somebody.
I realized during the process that I was being interviewed and there, there was a certain freedom because I didn’t really care in, in a good sense, I had no self-interest in having the job. I didn’t really want the job. And so my answers had a great deal of freedom to them. And the people were, I think they appreciated it. And anyway, they kept working with me and praying with me. And so we ended up coming.
And it’s been, there’s been clear confirmation from the Lord over the years, not all at once, but over the years that this was where he, where He wanted Sue and me to be. And we’re very thankful. We love the university and I think HCU is becoming the kind of university that is already, has historically and in an increasing ways is making a huge difference in Christian higher education.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. So 19 years later now, which, just saying 19 years in the university presidency makes me tired actually. But you know, you, you obviously, you know, found your stride coming through your service at Baylor and now 19 years, almost 20 years there at Houston Christian, in what ways has the role changed over time as the university has grown and changed over time?
Robert B. Sloan: You know, a lot of the things, a lot of things are the same, but as I suggested earlier, one thing that changed immediately was being in a city like Houston. It’s just it, we are a small fish in a very big ocean here. But the opportunity to recruit faculty, to recruit students, to develop programs, to be more sensitive to the marketplace because the market is, is here. I mean, there, you know, 120 plus languages I think are spoken here in Houston. It’s just, it’s massively different.
But Christian higher education has changed, technology has changed things dramatically over the last 20 years. We already, of course, we had emails and we’re making use of word processing, and so on, in the recruiting process and the marketing process, but the change from 19 years ago to today is massive in terms of technology.
And so that’s been a big difference. Budgets, government regulation, hugely different. The decline and perhaps reinvigoration of Protestant life, of evangelical life. In the United States. I mean, the rise of the nones N-O-N-E-S, has been something to take note of, but we’re seeing some interesting new dynamics. There are some, some warm and flourishing spots in American Christianity right now. So these are interesting times.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to go back to a piece of our original conversation about vision, compelling vision, how it’s cultivated. But for guests unfamiliar with the Houston Christian campus, would you start, as we talk about Houston Christian’s visions that you’ve, you know, for strategic plans that you’ve had, would you start by telling the story of the 10 pillars?
Robert B. Sloan: Sure. That, I wish I could claim credit. I knew the story, but a colleague who was on campus at the time, came up with the metaphor. On our campus are 10 physical, gigantic pillars. They’re in the center of the campus. They were put there with an interesting backstory in, in 1900, the so-called storm of the century in Galveston, which destroyed Galveston. Galveston was the premier city in Texas at that time, seaport and shipping and so on.
Somewhere between estimates vary, but somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 people lost their lives. They had no warning of that hurricane that was coming in, and people were just out looking and seeing the clouds darkened. And the next thing you know, they’re hit by a hurricane. Some people, the Galveston County Courthouse had 16 of these giant pillars, and it was one of the few buildings that sort of stood and people huddled under the shelter of the county courthouse. And many lives were saved.
Years later, the wife of our founder, our founder, was one of the most significant founders, was Stuart Morris and his wife noted that those pillars, when the, when the Galveston County Courthouse was rebuilt years later, noticed that those pillars were for sale had been, you know, sold off and so on. But they were for sale. He bought those 16 pillars and put 10 of them on this campus in, in the earliest days of the campus. And of course, they have all kinds of Biblical resonance, 10 commandments, 10 books of a certain readings of, of in the Jewish lectionary.
But we were starting to build the vision statement Faith and Reason in the Great City. It was our vision for the year 2020. This was back in about 2008. And so we were going to have 10 imperatives or something like that. So my friend, Hunter Baker said, well, why don’t we call them the 10 pillars? And because we already had those pillars and a compelling story that started off that, say he wrote the story up of how people sheltered. And he said, and then in today’s day, when times of stress and storm, the pillars still stand. And so that, that became the metaphor to carry now what we call our 10 pillars are really core convictions.
And there are core convictions about things that are market sensitive, but they’re also biblically foundational. The, you know, the commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the importance of the Scriptures foundation, the importance of life. And so we talk about family and gender and, and so on. So we’re very explicit in those 10 core convictions about the things that we believe about the nature of the Church, about the nature of redemption, about the nature of human relationships that were made in the image of God and Christ has joined you and Gentile together in Himself.
So they are, I think, things that any Christian confession historically could have agreed to. People don’t agree with all of those now, but we decided it’s very important for us to say who we are, and we have found a lot of support for those 10 core convictions. We adopted them as foundational documents.
We already had something called the preamble, which is a kind of Christian confession, a confessional statement. The preamble is the preamble to our letters of incorporation and everybody has to sign onto that. But we added these 10 core convictions as one of our foundational documents, and it’s a great comfort to families when you encourage them to send their students here. It’s a comfort to donors, they know who we are.
Todd Ream: Thank you. When you think back on that 2008 strategic plan, 10 Pillars: Faith and Reason in a Great City, when you think back on it how do you assess the level of success that was accomplished over that 12-year period?
Robert B. Sloan: Well, you know, that’s a, that’s an important question. You start off with a strategic plan that has measurable strategies and tactics to it, so you can tell, you know, if you, if you, if you faithfully follow the measurements you can, you can tell you know, if you have been successful.
But numbers don’t tell the whole story because there’s certain things that are just not easily measurable. That’s harder to assess but it’s every bit as important. I mean, we want to be faithful as a Christian institution. So what are the things that would help us do that? So we have rejuvenated, for example, our student life emphasis with various, allowing, quite a few different off-campus groups, you know, navigators and of Christian athletes, we encourage them to come on our campus.
And we, we’ve, we have expanded, expanded our, our chapel, our convocation, we call it in, in our worship services. We’ve expanded the importance of community worship. We do things with our faculty and staff that were only done maybe once a year, but now we have more regular opportunities simply to get together and have worship experiences. But how do you measure success? You look at the numbers but you have to be very flexible about it. We said from the word go, this is not written in stone.
One of the things that we want to be very clear about is that if other opportunities come along that are compelling, we’ll jump into them. We’ll assess them and then jump into, into them. If, if there’s something we’ve put here that we are not going to, that we decide later, we won’t do it.
For example, in our first vision statement that went up to 2020 we said we want to consider starting a law school. Well, we do have a pre-law program, but it’s never been something that made sense for us to do. In fact, law schools have declined in their numbers. They may be on the verge of coming back. But it’s never something that we felt was important for us to do.
But on the other hand, something we didn’t have in our first vision statement, vision document, was a school of engineering. And we now have a very robust school of engineering that we started in about, I want to say about 2018. And it’s very robust. It’s growing like crazy, and it’s a perfect fit for Houston. But that was very providential, how that started and how we got there.
But you know, you, you, you look at students, one of our aspirations has been and still is to grow. So we are now a good 4,500 students, grad, undergrad, online, et cetera, to residential, but our aspiration is to grow to 10,000. So we’ll know if we reach that goal or not.
Todd Ream: You mentioned engineering as something that came into the plan that wasn’t originally part of it because of the opportunity, the resources, and the need in Houston for it. Your current provost, Dr. Stan Napper came originally as the dean of the school of engineering and the founding dean, is that correct?
Robert B. Sloan: That’s absolutely correct. We started with an advisory board. They were, it just providentially created people who had a great passion for helping us start a school of engineering. One of the original three members of that advisory board external members, it grew to a larger size very quickly, but he was a graduate of an engineer and a graduate of Louisiana Tech. So he helped us make connections with Louisiana Tech and the president there, and less guys. They opened their doors and helped us think about how to start a school of engineering.
One of the people there was Stan Napper, he was vice president. He had been in their school of engineering and he was a vice president for research. So anyway, in the providence of God somebody one day just dropped the hint to Stan, say, well, maybe you should be our dean. And he actually started thinking about it. So anyway, he was a great dean of our school of engineering, so successful that he became provost when that opening occurred.
And then he brought a fellow colleague from Louisiana Tech to us, Katie Evans, to be our new dean. She is fabulous. So we are growing just by leaps and bounds.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Before we close our conversation, I want to ask you about how you understand the characteristics and/or the qualities that define the academic vocation.
Robert B. Sloan: I think the characteristics and qualities that define an academic vocation, particularly for the Christian, began with the doctrine of creation. This is God’s world. It’s made through Jesus Christ. All things visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities, all things created for Him and through Him are under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. There’s not a single square inch or reality outside the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
And so the Christian scholar thinks about various kinds of things. Obviously a Christian scholar is grounded in the Gospel and a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But that means how you care for people. You know, by this, they’ll know that you’re My disciples, that you love one another. So that affects how, how, you know.
So teaching is a form of discipleship. So for the Christian faculty members, I mean, they have this compelling obligation, and probably also need and interest at heart for influencing the lives of students, being transformative. And that is, is both by teaching, by content, by research, and also by example. So it’s a very relational job.
A Christian academic, people have different mixes of these things but a Christian academic is also interested in the truth. And it is interested in knowing what God’s truth is. If the world is created through Jesus Christ, then what is that world? The mandate in the garden to Adam and Eve is to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth. That doesn’t mean, conquer it in the sense of abuse. It obviously, it means to nurture it and care for it. Understand it.
And so all the disciplines of the historic university, which of course universities were historically Christian entities, but they still retain this, this commitment to knowing what the created order is like. They don’t call it the creation, they call it nature, in the world, but it’s still, you know, the Christian scholar is obligated to the truth, to understand, to research, to think.
And so I think a Christian, a Christian academic, the academic vocation is teaching, it’s mentoring, it’s learning, and it can expect that learning can express itself, it can express itself in many different ways. It can express itself in writing and research in the laboratory, in speaking, in performance in the arts. The Christian academic is a disciple of Jesus Christ and all the implications of discipleship are expressed through the filter of a vocation in higher education.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you.
When thinking about the exercise of that academic, that understanding of the academic vocation, are there any virtues that you think are more important, especially intellectual and moral virtues, that you think are more important to cultivate than others?
Robert B. Sloan: I would list several. Of course, there are the traditional virtues of temperance and justice, et cetera, and the Christian virtues of charity, of love, and faith and hope.
The Christian academic in our world today I think has to be, this may be understating it, but has to be one, curious, that wants to learn. This is God’s world. I’ve been given a calling to be in it. What makes it tick? What, what’s going on? And that that’s not just the natural order, that’s also the social order, human nature and so on as well as social order.
They have to have this, they have to have a sense of purpose. I think that’s something you get when you’re raised in the church. I have met people, it surprises me whenever I meet people who don’t seem to have any purpose. And I’ve wondered where do we get that? I think human beings are born with purpose, but if it’s not cultivated in the church and in the family, you lose that sense of mission about life.
I think the virtue, another virtue to be pursued, of course, is humility. It’s the counterpoint to pride. Pride is the beginning of all sin and rebellion. And so humility, the, the, the notion that while I have a confession of faith, I could be wrong. While I think I know, I could be wrong.
And academic life, the great temptation is to pride, because we’re used to people asking us questions and we get to answer and we get to pontificate, and it’s easy to forget that our learning is in a very narrow area. And we could be wrong. We always have to have humility.
I think what is needed in our world, a virtue most needed, and this is similar to the classical virtues, is what I would call moral courage. The tendency in life is to be carried along by peer influence. Peer influence can be wonderful. It can also be wrong. And so we need the counsel and help of others. We belong to the Body of Christ. We need the moving of the Spirit under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the fellowship of God’s people in the context of worship and discipleship.
We also need to realize that our world is pushing us in ways to which we should not be conformed. It’s hard to swim against the stream. I think if you have a sense of mission and purpose, you never are going with the stream. You’re always pushing against the forces of deception and darkness, which come all around us.
It’s hard. I think moral courage is something that we have to wake up every morning and, sort of strap on our, the armor of God again and say, we’re going to, we’re going to fight the fight of faith.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you.
For our last question then going back, we talked about the Church and the importance of the relationship with the Church earlier in our conversation, but I want to ask you in particular as we close now, in what ways is the health of the academic vocation on a Church-related university campus reflective of the health of the relationship that the university shares with the Church?
Robert B. Sloan: I think those go together very significantly. There was a study done a decade or two ago that talked about the decline of the Christian schools, Christian universities, and one of the factors was they lost their connection to the Church. I think it’s absolutely vital for faculty members, for staff members, for all of us to be involved in our local churches, to be regular participants in worship if we believe what we believe about the Church and about worship and about Jesus Christ.
The Church is the institution He founded, not the university. The university is an arm, Christian university is an arm of the Church. We have a discipling function and a specialization function of certain areas of knowledge and practice. But however simple the preacher may be, we all need to sit under the hearing of the Word of God. We need to hear the Scriptures read. We need to hear songs of faith sung. We need to participate in communities of service, and charity, and faithfulness. So it makes a huge difference.
One of the things that we’ve done that I think has helped us, and I give, I give my provost who also does student life, I give our student life and academic people the huge amount of credit for this. We’ve tried to rejuvenate our annual revival services on campus. We called them IGNITE.
So far what we’ve done is invite a church to come lead those services for us. So the staff members of the church take turns preaching. They’ll have breakout sessions. They’ll lead in the music. So if it’s a familiarization with a specific church in a given year, but it’s also just familiarization with ministers and the church and allowing not just the ministers of the church, but other members of the church to come be a part of those services. So that’s proven to be a tremendous blessing for us, and we’ve emphasized in student life as we see students who are, who respond to evangelistic or Bible study or mission outreach efforts, we try to tie them into local churches.
We definitely need one another. It’s not just two entities that can kind of need one another. We belong organically to one another. In particular, the university is a subset. The Christian university is an arm of the Church. We are a subset of the Church. The Church is the bigger and more significant entity.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Robert B. Sloan, President of Houston Christian University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Robert B. Sloan: Thanks, Todd. It’s been great to be with you. I appreciate the opportunity.
—
Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
