Today I’m concluding my four-episode series on campus ministries. My guest is Karl Johnson, the Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, a unique initiative to minister to students on campuses throughout the U.S.

In this podcast we discuss:

• Karl’s struggle to integrate his faith and studies while at Cornell
  
• Why and how Karl established a Christian Study Center at Cornell (Chesterton House)
  
• “Residential ministry” as a focus of Chesterton House
  
• What Christian study centers are and their core ministry to students
  
• Where and how to find a Christian study center
  
• The history of Christian Study Centers, going back to L’Abri founded by Francis Schaeffer
  
• How study centers specifically serve undergraduate students
  
• Christian study center Fellows Programs–a form of “intellectual hospitality”
  
• How Christian study centers differ from and compliment other campus ministries
  
• The Consortium of Christian Study Centers’ shared Statement of Faith (The Apostle’s Creed)
  
• How the Consortium thinks about labels such as “conservative,” “progressive, ” and “Evangelical” Christianity
  
• Some “heros of the Faith” Christian study centers tend to hold up to students
  
• Forms of idolatry Christian students (and their parents) often fail to see while in college
  
• How students should understand the relationship between their faith and the university
  
• Some examples of how Christian study centers have engaged the university redemptively
  

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

• Consortium of Christian Study Centers
  
• Chesterton House at Cornell University
  
• Octet Collaborative at MIT
  
• Upper House at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
  
• Christian Study Center of Gainesville at the University of Florida
  
• Cambridge House Christian Study Center at the College of William and Mary
  
• Ligoneer Ministries (an example of a non-university-based Study center)
  
• Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
  
• George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship
  
• Charles E. Cotherman, To Think Christianly: A History of L’Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement
  
• James Davidson Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World
  
• Veritas Forum
  
• Hearts & Minds Bookstore