#20: How Christian Study Centers Minister to University Students

Today I’m concluding my four-episode series on campus ministries. My guest is Karl Johnson, the Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, a unique initiative to minister to students on campuses throughout the U.S.

In this podcast we discuss:

• Karl’s struggle to integrate his faith and studies while at Cornell
• Why and how Karl established a Christian Study Center at Cornell (Chesterton House)
• “Residential ministry” as a focus of Chesterton House
• What Christian study centers are and their core ministry to students
• Where and how to find a Christian study center
• The history of Christian Study Centers, going back to L’Abri founded by Francis Schaeffer
• How study centers specifically serve undergraduate students
• Christian study center Fellows Programs–a form of “intellectual hospitality”
• How Christian study centers differ from and compliment other campus ministries
• The Consortium of Christian Study Centers’ shared Statement of Faith (The Apostle’s Creed)
• How the Consortium thinks about labels such as “conservative,” “progressive, ” and “Evangelical” Christianity
• Some “heros of the Faith” Christian study centers tend to hold up to students
• Forms of idolatry Christian students (and their parents) often fail to see while in college
• How students should understand the relationship between their faith and the university
• Some examples of how Christian study centers have engaged the university redemptively

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Consortium of Christian Study Centers
• Chesterton House at Cornell University
• Octet Collaborative at MIT
• Upper House at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Christian Study Center of Gainesville at the University of Florida
• Cambridge House Christian Study Center at the College of William and Mary
• Ligoneer Ministries (an example of a non-university-based Study center)
• Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
• George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
• Charles E. Cotherman, To Think Christianly: A History of L’Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement
• James Davidson Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
• Veritas Forum
• Hearts & Minds Bookstore