It Takes a Village to Form a Christian Scholar

 

I can still recall my nervousness as I taught my first classes at a Christian college. I was well-educated in electrical engineering at a large secular university, which is to say I was not well-educated in anything else. I had spent many years being catechized to think like an engineer, but faith remained largely peripheral to my studies. I was a Christian who was a scholar, but not yet a Christian scholar. And yet there I was, a new faculty member expected to “integrate faith” in the classroom. I wince when I recall my first feeble attempts at faith integration—urging my computer science students to march into their careers and “transform technology” for God’s kingdom. It was a ringing phrase, but the content was admittedly thin. In those early days, I fear I sometimes offered my students stones for bread.