New Vistas: Dreams for the Center for Christian Ethics
By Robert B. Kruschwitz, Director
I have one little window in my office here in Waco, high up on the fourth floor of Pat Neff Hall. But it is a beautiful window – round and set deep, like a porthole, into the massive wall. The early morning light, through its flower-patterned grillwork, throws a striking shadow across my desk.
It`s my porthole out to an incredible place.
This morning two lawn mowers grumble around over the yard. Mourning doves coo on a ledge, just out of view, around the corner of the building. As the day heats up, summer campers and incoming freshmen, here for orientation, splash in the pools of the big, angular fountain below – the one that our students have nicknamed "the rocket launcher".
Concrete pads form little islands across the fountain`s pool. A few folks, enjoying their pad-hopping shortcut to and from assignments, are congregating on an island for a moment, just to visit. Two children race from pad to pad; the little fellow is winning.
Crepe myrtles show off their gaudy white blooms (except for a few, sneaky red species that managed to slip past the careful landscapers). Live oaks and cedars frame the fountain and then the grass mall, stretching north to the university library.
Hidden just beyond the library and trees is the River Brazos, before the ridges of Bellmead. Then, beyond those ridges …
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"The rocket launcher." That tag fits this whole place. Baylor University.
Here folks, young people mainly, gather for years to study, pray, and reflect – but not to stay. From here they are launched on amazing journeys of service to the church and to society. Launched toward Texas, the new American southwest, other regions of North America, and, increasingly, the entire world. Beyond the ridges of Bellmead…
Texas Baptists and their friends have done a fine thing here. Baylor`s quite a launching pad. It is one of the largest Christian universities in North America and the largest Baptist university in the world. This is a wonderful place for the Center for Christian Ethics to be located.
Just down my hallway is the Center for Ministry Effectiveness. The good folks in the Religion and the Philosophy Departments work in the Tidwell Bible Building just across Speight Avenue. George W. Truett Theological Seminary is here. Fine professional schools are on campus: Hankamer School of Business, Baylor Law School, and the School of Education, for instance.
The J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, the Center for Family and Community Ministries, the Institute for Faith and Learning, and the Center for American and Jewish Studies are in this university. Probably I missed a few – like I said, it`s a big launching pad.
These will be great new working partners for the Center for Christian Ethics.
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Just the way Foy Valentine dreamed it … as its guiding Board nurtured it … and as it grows now through the aegis of Baylor University, the Center is all about shedding Christian light on the ethics of everyday life. The Center`s resources, communications, and research will serve a wide audience of Christian people, and leaders in our society.
But before I – and, I hope, you – get carried away in dreaming about future projects for the Center, let`s talk about what is going on right now. This summer brings new staff and new offices, and planning for a new journal.
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Please visit the Center in Pat Neff Hall, Room 408, or give us a call. When you do, the first face you`ll see, or voice you`ll hear, is Julie Bolin`s. We are fortunate that she is the Center`s face and voice for most folks! Julie surely brings a lot of creativity, energy and friendliness to us as the Administrative Associate. She developed these assets over the years in an honest way – as a wife and mother and elementary school music teacher!
Julie enjoys singing in the sanctuary choir at First Baptist Church, Waco (which is a good thing, because her husband, Rev. David Bolin, directs the church`s music program!) and she is an avid reader. Rachel, their daughter, studies music education at Baylor and their son, Daniel, is a senior at Midway High School.
You must "excuse our mess" when you come to visit us this fall. Hammers and nails and paint will be flying around as the Center gets new carpet and doors, and even moves a wall out of the way. We will try to be as quiet as we can during construction, so as not to disturb Winfred Moore and the rest of the crew in the Institute for Ministry Effectiveness – they on the other end of our suite, up here on the fourth floor of Pat Neff Hall.
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Planning begins this summer for the Center`s new journal of Christian ethics. Designed for a wide audience of Christians "in the pew", this new quarterly will debut in September 2001.
The new journal will offer a mix of short articles, inspirational segments, worship aids (new hymns and songs, prayers and responsive readings), interviews, reviews of books, and Christian art (some classics, but others newly-commissioned). Most issues of the journal will focus on a specific topic – so each issue can be saved on your shelf and used in small group study.
I will say more about the topics for the new journal in just a moment, but first let me introduce to you three editors. They are talented and exciting individuals. And they are excited about this journal.
Dr. David Garland, one of our best-known New Testament scholars and now Professor of Christian Scriptures at George W. Truett Theological Seminary, is editor for proclamation and worship. David is a wonderful preacher himself, and he will bring together writers and musicians to produce the worship aids.
Frederick Buechner got it right when he said:
Phrases like Worship Service and Service of Worship are tautologies. To worship God means to serve him. Basically there are two ways to do it. One way is to do things for him that he needs to have done – run errands for him, carry messages for him, fight on his side, feed his lambs, and so on. The other way is to do things for him that you need to do – sing songs for him, create beautiful things for him, give things up for him, tell him what`s on your mind and in your heart, in general rejoice in him and make a fool of yourself for him the way lovers have always made fools of themselves for the one they love. [Quoted by William H. Willimon, The Service of God: How Worship and Ethics are Related (1983), p. 8]
Let`s fess up. Too often we wrongly separate worship and ethics: our praying and praising and singing are not very humble or ethically insightful, and our social action not very worshipful. We`ll work on doing better.
Art and ethics – now here is another wrongly divorced pair. Putting the visual inspiration and guidance back into our moral lives will be a challenge. Our art editor, Dr. Heidi Hornik, is just the person to help us here. An Assistant Professor of Art History at Baylor, Heidi directs the university`s Martin Museum. She is also art editor for the forthcoming Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary Series.
Dr. Norman Wirzba will edit book review articles. Norman, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown College, is an experienced reviewer for Christian Century magazine. Wendell Berry, the well-known poet-philosopher, environmental essayist and farmer recently recruited Norman to edit his work for new themed anthologies.
I will be editing the articles for the journal and working with David, Heidi, and Norman to develop topics for each issue. Some journal issues will address a moral concern (such as aging, capital punishment, church discipline and restoration, consumerism, ethics of missionary work, pornography, or world hunger). Sometimes they will focus on an aspect of Christian character (like confession, forgiveness, stewardship, suffering, or vocation/calling). Other topics will be people or movements (perhaps Augustine, John and Charles Wesley, Clarence Jordan, early church ethics, Islamic ethics, or popular movies and stories) and Biblical themes (such as creation ethics, law and gospel, Psalms, or the love command).
Which topics would you like to see addressed in the journal? What topics are we not talking to one another about, but we should be? For what topics do we need more helpful resources for church members – resources that are solid in content, expressed more clearly and more carefully?
We are working with focus groups – that`s a technical term for a gang of people who are toting #2 pencils – to see what topics are most helpful. For instance, at our workshop at the CBF General Assembly in Orlando a number of people shared their preferences with us. We have canvassed church groups and Baylor students too.
I will not tell you what topics others have recommended – yet. First, you should have a chance to tell us your own favorites. So, please email, phone or write to us. We will be happy to send a copy of our topic preference sheet to you. Just tell us how you want us to send it – electrons (email or fax) or paper. We have both.
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What will the Center for Christian Ethics be doing in the next few years? Enter, for a moment, into my dreams …
I dream of a place where a minister and church members receive encouragement and financial support to study a local moral concern, like the roots of homelessness in their town, and then they construct an innovative ministry plan for the church. Or, a new seminary accepts a grant allowing it to host a leading Christian ethicist, and then to build up its Christian ethics studies.
I dream that a church member downloads (from an attractive new website) lessons and worship resources to nourish her Sunday school topics class. While online, she orders inexpensive copies of back issues of the new journal for class members. (I`m dreaming she received her first copy of the journal as a free gift from the Center!)
I imagine a lawyer has just read the most interesting Christian discussion of prison reform in the new journal and now she is composing an email letter to the authors. She will receive a response in a CCE on-line forum. Or, a public school teacher returns from a conference on teaching as Christian vocation. He has met new friends in other towns whom he will email, and an education student at the university whom he will mentor.
I dream that a third-world Christian receives support to study and write about Christian ethics – for our benefit in North America. We all begin to see more clearly as we look at the world with the help of this Christian mind informed by another culture.
I imagine solid commentaries for newspapers and magazines, and position papers that enlighten public leaders on a range of ethical issues.
I see a pastor in the third world searching a CCE web-based information bank on Christian ethics – a web address that was recommended by his CCE-provided visiting instructor. The instructor is back home in Arkansas now – eyes wider open after that oversees study/teaching opportunity. The instructor`s church is connected more personally to that third-world pastor and his ministry.
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Part of my task is to seek financial support for these projects: producing creative ethics-related resources for church people, in print and online; providing study opportunities for undergraduates, Christian laypersons and ministers; creating places for Christians to gather respectfully and to confront the moral concerns in our culture; and supporting the teaching of Christian ethics in churches and in the new seminaries.
I hope that you will be dreaming with me, and praying for me and for the Center for Christian Ethics. Many of you have supported the Center with your money and prayers for a decade. Now that we are poised on the launching pad, your support is needed more than ever.
Dr. Robert B. Kruschwitz is the new Director of the Center for Christian Ethics. He comes to the Center this summer from Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY, where he chaired the philosophy department. He received the George Walker Redding Faculty Award for Outstanding Christian Service from Georgetown College in 1997 for his leadership in integrating Christian faith with teaching and research.
