Living Contentment out on Campus #2
What would our lives on campus look like if we modeled Paul’s approach to contentment as we touched on last week? How does viewing our career as a Christian lead to different choices?
First, we would make different choices, more costly ones.
Like Paul the Apostle’s claim that “to live is Christ”, contentment should encourage us to “stick our necks out” on campus through ministry to others in Jesus’ name and public identification as Christians.
At the same time, godly contentment should affect our entire careers. I am a consummate “hoop jumper”, as I have moved from one career milestone to the next. While such things are appropriate rewards for work well done, I have to fight allowing these things to define me, rather than my knowledge of and trust in Christ.
In all this, I have tried to trust God for the time to protect both family and campus ministry.
As a professor, I have set a “family first” policy in my own research group and within the department I chair. Starting as a Ph.D. student at Berkeley, I resolved to avoid working at night so that I could nurture my marriage to my bride, Susie.
When we were at Duke for my postdoc, our younger son, Christopher, was diagnosed with severe autism. Our family life has been forever changed as a result, but trusting God in the midst of life-altering events has led to great blessing.
As part of my “ministry” commitment, I have devoted time to speaking to student groups, to mentoring and sharing Christ with students, to serving as faculty advisor to student ministries, and through a team to organizing our local Christian faculty/staff fellowship.
I am a work in progress, but I hope and pray that I will continue to listen to God about these things. As was true for Paul, I have always found Him faithful.
As I interact with many Christian graduate students and faculty, they believe such a posture is unrealistic, and so they decide that a career as a professor at a major university is impossible, or, conversely, that all of their time should be devoted to their research and teaching on the campus.
I challenge each of us to make sure that we have asked God about these decisions.
Second, biblically based contentment will change how we deal with different circumstances.
How we handle adversity can be a powerful witness to non-Christian colleagues when state legislatures change tenure policies, amid budget cuts, or when our paper or grant proposal is rejected. It is also true in our personal lives—we learned that especially as we have adjusted to life with Christopher.
Finally, biblical contentment should lead to a different community.
Academia tends to select for individual achievement, especially through its reward structures, so choosing community over self is a perpetual challenge for me.
But when we share our lives and pray for one another, we can help one another to seek eternal contentment. I have been part of a weekly prayer cell with other faculty and staff for many years. It is a unique place to share the joys and struggles of life as a Christian on the campus and before God with my colleagues.
Also, our local faculty/staff fellowship organizes monthly luncheons in which we are challenged by a speaker to view our lives on campus in profoundly Christian ways.
In addition to the local community on my own campus, I have found it important to attend multi-campus events where I can be encouraged by other Christians with a heart for the university.
In this context, I can provide my strong endorsement for the faculty conference, A Common Call.
Can we learn, along with Paul, the “secret” of contentment?
I pray that we can. If we do, it will transform who we are and what we do for Christ on the campus.
Jeff Hardin
Univ. of Wisconsin