Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

fear

Loving Your Spouse, Kids (And Anyone, Really) While You’re Still In School—Part 2

work photoLast week, Bryan Stoudt shared about the tension many grad students feel between work and family, and the temptation to make good work God has called us to do into an idol. This week, he explores the underlying reasons for this tendency. See Part 1 here. 

Part 2: But Why Do We Worship Our Work?

So our obsession with school can stop us from loving and serving our spouses, kids and others around us.  [Read more…] about Loving Your Spouse, Kids (And Anyone, Really) While You’re Still In School—Part 2

Scholar’s Compass Navigating Beginnings: Relying on God’s Strength and Blessing Others

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary. . . . He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, he increases strength. – Isaiah 40:28-29 (ESV)

Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered. –  Proverbs 11:25 (ESV)

Image courtesy of Simon Howden at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of Simon Howden at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Reflection

Earlier this week we looked at God’s sustaining grace in the midst of new beginnings—times that can bring both excitement and anxiety. We see excitement build for new areas of study, new students and colleagues, perhaps even a new location to explore and begin to call home. But then the semester quickly progresses and becomes filled with to-do lists, committee meetings, teaching, and writing. We find ourselves buried under assignments and deadlines and the excitement and passion for scholarship and study often shifts into autopilot and survival mode. [Read more…] about Scholar’s Compass Navigating Beginnings: Relying on God’s Strength and Blessing Others

Scholar’s Compass Navigating Beginnings: Overcoming Fear and Anxiety

Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image courtesy of Apolonia at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind. – 2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. – Isaiah 41:10 (NKJV)

Reflection

Fall has always been my favorite time of the year. Crisp mornings, warm afternoons, jumping back into rhythms and routines after a summer filled with barbeques, family reunions, and time to just sit back and relax. It is full of excitement and back-to-school activities bringing crisp new school supplies and football games and all things pumpkin spice.

I remember well that fall when I started graduate school–the excitement, the anticipation of starting something new. Orientation activities and faculty seminars inviting students to something big, something interesting, something important. Starting classes, wondering “when are they going to discover that they’ve made a mistake–I’m really not as smart as they thought I was!” Struggling to balance new and ever increasing demands on my time and energy and oh yeah, I really should fit exercise and rest in here somewhere, right? [Read more…] about Scholar’s Compass Navigating Beginnings: Overcoming Fear and Anxiety

Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar (2/2)

“I am doing what I can to help Christian scholars to integrate their faith with their scholarship.” — David Williams

Last week I began to introduce myself and my understanding of the Christian scholar’s vocation by briefly outlining the controversy which marked my time as a student at Westminster Theological Seminary.  (You can read last week’s post here.)  This week I would like to share what I think were some of things I learned about the challenge of Christian scholarship from my time at Westminster.  I should make it clear that my interest is not specifically in the challenge of doing serious scholarship within a confessional institution like a Westminster or a Wheaton.  Nor is my interest (in this post, at least) in the peculiar challenge of doing serious, faithful Biblical scholarship.  While confessional institutions and the field(s) of Biblical studies both present unique challenges for Christian scholars who venture into them, my purpose here is to share some of what I have learned from my experience at Westminster about being a Christian scholar in general:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn.

1. Now we see through a glass, darkly.  Christian scholars in any field must be prepared for their studies to transform not only their conceptions of the world, but of God.  When I arrived at Westminster I thought I more or less already had all the answers and that I was there to learn how to better articulate and defend what I already “knew.”  I thought Christian scholarship was simply a matter of bringing my theological assumptions to bear upon the study of a particular field.  I did not expect to have those assumptions challenged by my studies, much less for me to undergo the theological equivalent of what Thomas S. Kuhn calls a paradigm shift. Nevertheless, shortly after my arrival at Westminster I began encountering information and evidence for which my working theological theory simply could not account—I encountered “anomalous data,” to again put it in a Kuhnian idiom.  [Read more…] about Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar (2/2)

Approaching a New Semester

Preparing for the classroom to fill.
Approaching a New Term. Preparing for the classroom to fill.

Editor’s note: A powerful piece received a few weeks ago, I encourage you to join the author and myself in prayer for the new term. . . .

I have to admit a certain fear as the new semester approaches. Not so much about the teaching itself. It’s a lot of work, but I’ve done it before. What incites fear in me is the realization that I — with all my insecurities, faults and failures — am again being given sixty-some students for four hours a week for fifteen weeks. This is more time than they will spend with their parents, their pastors, and probably most of their friends. And they will be tested to ensure they pay attention to what I say. I think of the influence some of my college professors had on me, positive and negative, and I wonder what impact I will have when these students look back some day.

This past week registration opened up for the spring semester, and I have been periodically — OK, maybe a bit obsessively — checking the online rosters to see who will be in my classes. With that on my mind, I read the scriptures and my morning devotional readings this morning and processed what was on my mind in my prayer journal:

“Learn to listen to me even while you are listening to other people. As they open their souls to your scrutiny, you are on holy ground. You need the help of My Spirit to respond appropriately. Ask Him to think through you, live through you, love through you.” — Sarah Young, Jesus Calling, Oct. 31.

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” — John 7:38

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. . . . It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another. . . . Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations —these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.” — C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

[Read more…] about Approaching a New Semester