by Webmanager | Sep 17, 2017
You see before you twenty-two hard-working Theatre Arts students and staff. Safely nested among them are the four cast members of Traveler in the Dark: Corey Ruehling as Sam Carter, world-famous surgeon; Christy Stone as Glory, his wife; Aaron Clabough as Stephen, Sam’s son, and Jon Van Pelt as Everett, a fiery, evangelical preacher and also Sam’s father. So why does it take more than eighteen people to pull off a play with only four characters? Every single one of Calvary Theatre’s majors has an integral role in support of this production. From stage management to set construction to costumes to sound to lighting to makeup to box office to concessions, we couldn’t do without any of them!
Some of the greatest opportunities theatre brings to its students are in the areas of leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. They’re innovators, designers, managers, and creators who implement the idea that theatre is service, to the text, to their fellow actors, to their audience, and to their Audience of One. And they have a great time doing it! Come see them serve a larger story during one of four performances of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman’s Traveler in the Dark: October 12 at 11:00 a.m., October 13 and 14 at 7:30 p.m. and October 15 at 2:00 p.m. The location is Liberty Chapel on Calvary’s campus, 15790 Elmwood Avenue, Kansas City. Tickets are now on sale! https://www.calvary.edu/theatre-box-office/
by Webmanager | Sep 14, 2017
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Thomas Ice will join the Calvary University faculty as Professor of Bible and Theology in January 2018. Upon Dr. Ice’s hiring, Dr. Cone, President of Calvary University, said, “We are excited about Dr. Ice at Calvary University. His work and ministry are emblematic of Calvary University’s commitment to the consistent application of the literal grammatical historical hermeneutic and dispensational thought.”
Dr. Ice is the Executive Director of The Pre-Trib Research Center, set to relocate to the Calvary University campus in January 2018 (though the annual meetings will continue to be held in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area). He founded The Center in 1994 with Dr. Tim LeHaye to research, teach, and defend the pretribulation rapture and related Bible prophecy doctrines. Dr. Ice has authored and co-authored over 30 books, written hundreds of articles, and is a frequent conference speaker. He has served as a pastor for 17 years. Dr. Ice has a B.A. from Howard Payne University, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a Ph.D. from Tyndale Theological Seminary, and has done post-doctoral work at the University of Wales in the United Kingdom.
If interested in learning more about the Pre-Trib Research Center, please visit www.pre-trib.org or consider attending the 26th Annual Pre-Trib Conference Dec 4-6, 2017 in Irving, TX.
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by Webmanager | Sep 10, 2017
The 2017 “Teacher Shortage Areas Nationwide Listing” has been released by the Department of Education. The news isn’t good. As a nation, we are experiencing a significant shortage of teachers in various subject areas and geographic locations. The news is good. With a teacher shortage comes opportunity.
For years we have heard there is a shortage of math and science teachers. For the 2016-2017 academic year, schools had difficulty filling openings for Math, Science, English, Speech & Theatre, and Social Sciences. Special Education and ESL/ELL continue to be shortage areas. But the really shocking news was that many parts of the nation have a shortage in Elementary Education.
Urban geographic areas have reported shortages of qualified teachers for years. Now shortages are appearing in rural areas as well. The State of Missouri reports shortages in the subject areas listed above as well as a shortage of teachers in over 90 of its 114 counties. Superintendents of rural schools recently reported that they are lucky if they have one qualified applicant per teaching position.
These shortages provide opportunity. In political science, the phrase “power vacuum” refers to a condition “when someone has lost control of something and no one has replaced them.” This phrase has been applied to loss of control by one government which is then replaced by another ideology. Opportunity comes to those who recognize an emptiness and has something to offer in filling the void. This national shortage of teachers creates a power vacuum.
Why should followers of Christ consider becoming teachers to fill this vacuum? Consider these reasons:
- Opportunity to be a witness in a lost world. Modeling Christ-like behavior within a classroom can be a strong witness to students who have never experienced selfless love, kindness, or forgiveness. While a teacher may not be able to teach Scripture in the public school, he or she can model and teach biblical principles of honesty, fairness, strong work ethic, forgiveness, compassion, and more.
- Opportunity to engage in spiritual battles. As a follower of Christ, a teacher has the power of the Holy Spirit as a partner in spiritual battle. Every day, Christian teachers pray over their classrooms and students’ desks before the day begins. Prayer journals record needs of each student and praises over progress. The more vessels of the Holy Spirit in a school, the more the light penetrates the darkness.
- Opportunity to become policy makers. Rather than abandon the public schools, Christ-followers should position themselves to become policy makers. Successful classroom teachers can become educational leaders who set policies for their buildings and districts, administrators, board members, state board of education members, federal lobbyists or employees of the national Department of Education. Experienced classroom teachers can become university teachers and mentor future teachers.
Influencers of a society or culture understand that the greatest impact comes with influencing children. Vladimir Lenin understood this opportunity and is credited with stating, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
Consider of all those children who have no one to influence them for Christ. Become a teacher.
Rose H. Henness is an Associate Professor at Calvary University. She teaches in the Education Department and the Ministry Studies Department. Her special interests are educational technological, education reform, pedagogy, andragogy, discipleship, and women’s studies.
by Webmanager | Aug 26, 2017
Do you remember making construction paper link chains to decorate elementary school classroom? The chains would be draped around the room. But sometimes, in the mornings, a chain would be hanging to the floor because one link had come unglued. A quick repair would have the link chain back to its expansive length again.
I’m reminded of those paper link chains in the theme passage I have chosen for this year.
“And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people, who will also be qualified to teach others. … Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:2, 15 NET)
As Paul realizes his time in ministry is short, he encourages Timothy to continue faithfully in what he has learned from Paul. But the message of Scripture must not end with Timothy! Paul exhorts Timothy to teacher others who then will teach those who follow after him.
Paul’s encouragement to Timothy reminds me of these link chains. Each follower of Christ has a responsibility to learn and then to teach others. This is the only way the truths of Scripture pass from generation to generation. We are part of link chains connecting us back to that small group of apostles who followed Jesus Christ.
Just as importantly, Paul cautions Timothy to accurately handle the truths of Scripture. The phrase “correctly handles” literally means to cut straight like a seamstress cuts fabric straight on the grain or a farmer plants a straight row.
Teachers of God’s Word must not twist it to fit their worldview, but strive to present the Word as God originally meant. Not an easy task thousands of years later in an entirely different culture, but a vitally important task.
So, as this new academic year begins at Calvary I hope you can see yourself in that link chain of teaching God’s Word from one generation to the next. I pray that no matter what your area of study, whether Education, Bible & Theology, or Theatre, you become a student of the Word who correctly handles its truth.
by Webmanager | Aug 23, 2017
In considering the role, responsibility, and limitations of the contemporary university in the present disunity (as displayed in Charlottesville), Chad Wellmon’s recent article, “For Moral Clarity, Don’t Look to Universities” underscores an urgency to which university leaders would do well to pay attention. Wellmon suggests that “The contemporary university, at least in its local form in Charlottesville, seems institutionally incapable of moral clarity.” He quantifies this incapability by noting that, “Universities cannot impart comprehensive visions of the good. They cannot provide ultimate moral ends. Their goods are proximate.” To address this state of affairs, Wellmon prescribes recognizing the limitations of the academy and that universities ought to be looking “outside themselves and partner[ing] with other moral traditions and civic communities.” He adds that “Our common pursuit of knowledge is richer and truer when it seeks contributions from the broadest diversity of peoples.”
In each of these assertions, Wellmon is on target. In these times we have focused so much on freedom of ideas and dialogue, that we have at times forgotten the basis of and reasons for those very freedoms and the worthiness of their pursuits. Lauding the freedoms without acknowledging the responsibilities embedded within the freedoms results in purposeless freedom so divorced from a moral center that it cannot be but ultimately abused. Once the freedom is abused in hatred, there is a cultural momentum to restrict the freedoms so that the hate can’t be expressed. Before long, the freedom of ideas and dialogue that is supposed to be such a cornerstone of our educational process becomes little more than propaganda for one side or the other. Hence our present milieu.
As Wellmon suggests, the typical ends of the university are not final ends: “to create and care for knowledge and to pass that knowledge on by teaching” is not the ultimate goal. The Apostle Paul once wrote to Timothy that “the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). The goal of the university ought not to be simply related to knowledge itself, it ought to be transparently identified in recognition of the purpose of the knowledge. Any institution of learning ought to be committed not just to promoting a body of knowledge (and a culture which values that knowledge) but to helping to contextualize that knowledge in order to help facilitate the proper use of that knowledge.
Thus, while Wellmon diagnoses that university leaders are captains of erudition and not leaders of communities bound to a common moral mission, perhaps this is actually part of the problem. We cannot divorce knowledge from worldview. As we engage and interact with knowledge, we do so from a perspective. That perspective impacts how we arrive at the knowledge, how we interpret it, and how we apply it. To pretend that the university setting provides an automatic immunity from such subjectivities is to blatantly misunderstand essential principles of worldview.
The pretended neutrality so prevalent in our university culture today is destructive in its deceptiveness, obscuring knowledge and the final ends for which it exists. This guise of objectivity provides for universities and their leaders a wall of excuse to hide behind. It is as if they can say, “We are simply providing information, and helping our students to think. We are not actually trying to lead them to any particular conclusion, and thus we are not to blame.” Yet all the while they are leading their students. The question is not whether or not universities and their leaders are setting a moral tone, the question is whether or not that tone is one worth setting and one worth following.
Instead of pretending a guise of objectivity, how helpful would it be if institutions of learning were simply transparent about their ideas of the sources, understanding, and applications of knowledge? Such transparency would be broadly beneficial to students, helping them to recognize that neutrality is not necessarily the goal – love is. And that love is not nebulous and undefined. There is meaning to it, there is a source, and there is provision for it. We can no longer pretend that there are no such particulars. Our culture is being ripped apart before our very eyes and the divisions which have long existed are becoming the narrative by which our society is defined. We can do better, and we are accountable to do just that.
As one leader of a university, I do not call on students to follow me or the university. I agree with Wellmon that the university is not the final bastion or arbiter of truth (as Wellmon correctly notes, we need to look beyond the university). However, we do seek to lead. We do seek to be transparent about the worldview vantage point we take, so that students will know what they are getting, and will be able to hold us accountable for what we are practicing and what we are teaching. They will know what our formula for love is and whether or not it is worthy.
(from drcone.com)
