The Phone Call that Changed the Course of My Life

I was sitting in seat 26A just before the cabin doors closed on my flight to Denver when I received the December 2023 call. Dr. Dondi Costin, newly installed president of Liberty University, alerted me to an academic opportunity in Lynchburg Virginia. Dr. Costin and I did our PhD work together. We have been friends for two decades. At Dr. Costin’s request, I spoke to his faculty in 2019 when he was then president at Charleston Southern University. Now he was asking me to consider a position, serving in a field I have been working in most of my life: faith-learning integration.

In Christian higher education the phrase “faith-learning integration” means the institution is committed to teaching from a distinctively Christian point of view. In Dr. Costin’s inaugural address he clearly described biblical thinking, “If it’s ‘Christian’ it ought to be Christian.” Simply stated, a Christian university should seek to understand the world through The Word of God. All of life should be viewed through the lens of Scripture.

From the earliest lines of Genesis the phrase, “And God said” sets the authority for the Christian thinker. Teachers in Christian education should be in submission to Scriptural authority, what Deuteronomy 4 calls, “Your wisdom and understanding in the sight of all people.” Even before Earth’s creation Proverbs 8 declares that personified Wisdom gives direction to Christian educators, where we find the paths of knowledge, prudence, insight, and counsel, which is the synthesis of our instruction.

So, from seat 26A into the future I am honored to be named the Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University. I am grateful for Dr. Costin’s invitation to submit an application, prompted by God’s Spirit, to support Christian professors as they help the next generation to see the world through the lens of the Word. For the Comenius Institute, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.

[First published at MarkEckel.com]