Making the Dean's List

by Peter Greer and Chris Horst

I regard this book to be valuable because it serves as a salutary reminder to Christian organizations - and those who seek to serve and lead them - of the ongoing need and challenge to remain “mission true.”

Even as Baylor’s mission writ large is “to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community,” Baylor’s Truett Seminary exists in particular “to equip men and women for gospel ministry in and alongside Christ’s Church.” Taken together, then, we are Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana. Far from shibboleths or sound-bytes, these missional statements ground and guide us “to light the ways of time.”

This book impressed upon me anew that our collective stewardship of Baylor and her mission as a Christian research university in the Baptist tradition is nothing less than a sacred trust. In the words of Baylor’s eighth President Samuel Palmer Brooks in his so-called “Immortal Message,” we are to “have a care for [Baylor].” For a season, this season, we have been “hand[ed] the torch.”

Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World

by Larry W. Hurtado

My academic discipline is New Testament studies and early Christianity, but I find it difficult to stay current in and to keep contributing to my field, given my responsibilities as dean. Thankfully Dr. Carey C. Newman, director of Baylor University Press, makes it easier for me to stay conversant in my discipline by publishing important studies and drawing them to my attention. Destroyer of the gods is one such study.

In this accessible, insightful book, Hurtado maintains that Christianity thrived in the first three centuries AD due to its distinctiveness within its ambient culture. Although frequently lambasted by self-respecting Romans for flouting the socio-religious conventions of the day, Hurtado demonstrates how the faith flourished as a trans-ethnic movement that rejected traditional Greco-Roman gods, produced and promulgated authoritative written texts and demanded counter-cultural ethical excellence of its converts. Although a historical work, it takes little imagination for one to see contemporary connections, not least in the Western world.

Teaching and Christian Imagination

by David I. Smith and Susan M. Felch

Despite my other responsibilities as dean, I continue to teach at least two academic courses a year at Baylor’s Truett Seminary. I find teaching life-giving and am continually amazed by the students I am privileged to teach.

My wife Carolyn is also an educator, and from time to time she will help me to know what I should be reading to become a better teacher. This collaborative work that she placed before me calls and challenges teachers to re-envision and renew their vocation and craft by pondering three master metaphors: pilgrimage, gardening and building. Far from humdrum, teaching and learning is to be a journey, cultivating impressionable lives and constructing important frameworks.

The first aspirational goal of Pro Futuris is “Transformational Education.” Such begins and ends with excellence in instruction. Teaching and Christian Imagination contends that for both teachers and learners “business as usual” should never be usual.