#5: A Practical Guide to Navigating University Culture – John Stonestreet

Christian students are called, as are all Christians, to be “in the world but not of it.” Yet doing so is much easier said than done, and sometimes much harder on university campuses. To help students in this, John Stonestreet and I discuss his and Brett Kunkle’s recent book, A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World.

John holds a master of arts in Christian thought from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) where he graduated with honors. He currently serves as president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. John is a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetics. He is the daily voice of BreakPoint, the nationally syndicated commentary on the culture founded by the late Chuck Colson. He is also the voice of the Point, a daily one-minute feature on worldview, apologetics and cultural issues.

Prior to his current role, John worked in various capacities with Summit Ministries including Executive Director, overseeing the various aspects of the ministry to accomplish its mission of cultivating rising generations to resolutely champion a Biblical worldview. Prior to working with Summit and The Colson Center, John was on the teaching faculty of Bryan College where he helped to develop a Christian worldview sequence for the core curriculum, as well as several non-traditional educational opportunities. He also directed the Bryan College Worldview Team, an innovative educational initiative designed to teach students to analyze worldviews using the lens of popular media and culture.

In addition to A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World, John has also authored Restoring All Things: God’s Audacious Plan to Change the World through Ordinary People (with Warren Cole Smith), Same-Sex Marriage: A Thoughtful Approach to God’s Design for Marriage (with Sean McDowell), and Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview (with W. Gary Phillips and William E. Brown). John and his wife Sarah, have three daughters and live in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In this podcast we discuss: 

• How to define “culture” and why we must understand culture
• How Christians should engage in and respond to culture
• How Christian students can celebrate the good on campus
• Why “Christian” is a great noun, but a horrible adjective
• The fallacy of chasing cultural relevance
• How higher education has become dehumanizing
• How students can flourish in this dehumanizing environment
• The two questions all students must learn to ask
• Practical ways students can discover their calling
• The unseen influence of cultural undercurrents
• How to overcome cultural influences and become virtuous people
• Why so many millennials are drawn to Socialism

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World, by John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle
• A Student’s Guide to Culture, by John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle
• The Aims of Education, by T.S. Eliot
• The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior, by Steven Garber 
• “Men Without Chests” in The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis
• What it Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics, by O. Carter Sneed
• You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, by James K. A. Smith
• Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, by James K. A. Smith
• Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, by James. K. A. Smith  
• The Colson Fellows Program
• Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents, by Rod Dreher
• Breakpoint – A Program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview