University outreach

This morning I met with the Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor for Research at the U. of Illinois. This was part of my responsibilities with IBM but it gave me a chance to tell them of my future employment and describe the goals of the ASA. Neither of them are Christians but both expressed, after initial surprise, a great deal of interest and eagerly sought the website. In fact, Chip Zukowski, the Vice Chancellor, went so far as to say that he really wanted the University to be the place where the dialog among various viewpoints of science and Christian faith would occur. He gave me some names and organizations in the university for follow-up and urged me to consider having some of our discussion on campus.

I'm not sure what, if anything, will come out of this but it gave me a different perspective of how we at ASA might reach out to the secular university communities. I have long felt there was an enormous opportunity there but had, and still don't have, a good idea of how ASA could penetrate that space. I had assumed Inter-Varsity or Campus Crusade might be good entry points. But, as Burgy and Glenn point out, the YEC's have "won" in many of their chapters. However, as far as I can tell, the YEC's have not "won" in the university science departments except perhaps to the extent they may have convinced the scientists that all Christians necessarily oppose science. Yet, I sense, if the Illini are at all representative or if they weren't just in a good mood because of the Final Four, that there may be a real willingness in the scientific community to engage in dialog in areas of religion and science. Perhaps ASA can gain a presence in these dialogs directly. Perhaps I'm dreaming.

In any case, I think we can all join together in prayer to seek God's guidance in gaining a pro-active outreach for ASA. Humanly speaking, the task seems daunting and formidable. But let us pray that our eyes will be opened to perceive God's leading and that we will have the courage to follow Him through any door he might open.

Randy
Received on Thu Mar 31 21:41:43 2005