Integrated Faith: The Church and the University

The church and the academy share jointly in the responsibility of equipping Christians to live an integrated faith.

Christian universities have a special calling to the life of the mind. The Christian universities seek out truth wherever it may be found and makes full use of both the book of Nature and the book of Scripture as it seeks to do this task. The Christian university thinks broadly—concerning itself with all of human culture and all of the created order. The university also thinks deeply, peeling back layers of mere appearance to discern what lies underneath. The university also retains the wisdom of the past and brings it forward into the needs of the present.

If the university has a special focus on the mind, the church has a special focus on the heart and the hands. It is a community knit together in love and committed to serve the world. The church is the place where Christians live together in community as they seek to fulfill their callings.

One might compare the university to a nursery which grows plants and trees for planting in other places. The church is the landscape architect that makes use of those plants—planting its members into the field of human culture, nourishing both their souls and their Christian vision for their callings.

Of course these tasks are not tightly compartmentalized. One can never nurture a mind except by means of engaging the body. And of course, the church cannot be all action and no thought. They share in both—but they each have a slightly different focus.