Following Christ as a faculty member at the U of I is both a wonderful privilege and opportunity to grow in Christ, as well as a responsibility to serve Christ and the university.
Connecting with other Christians on campus is very helpful to grow in Christ where God has called us, and that is the university world.  Since we spend so much of our lives at the university, we think God intends this to be a key place to love God and our neighbors.

Here are some important questions we seek to address in various ways in community together.

• What does it mean to integrate our faith, learning and practice?  What does this look like in practice?  How can we help one another do this in our scholarship, writing, presenting, and teaching? What competes with our ultimate loyalty and loves?

• What role does Christian community on campus play in our spiritual formation, the integration of faith and academic calling, and on our outreach to those around us?

• How best can we be salt and light here at the U of I?  How can we help our colleagues and friends discover or re-discover the Lord Jesus Christ and enter into his kingship?  How can we serve the university in ways that express the love of Christ?

• How is it that we can put Christ and his kingship first in our lives?  What are the practices and disciplines that help us keep focused on Christ and grow deeply in him? How can we help one another also not lose an outward focus?

These and other questions must constantly be revisited as Christians at the university.  What better place to address these questions than with Christian colleagues on campus!

Toward that end we seek to provide opportunities, or create spaces to explore answers to these essential questions. We bring in a speakers (both within and without the U of I) to speak on a variety of issues, providing some smaller group opportunities to share, pray, and read and discuss papers and books on pertinent topics.  

Being a faculty member or post-doc or staff member is not all important, but it is important.  Together this year let us work to grow deeper in Christ and serve Christ and the university.