The Vision

When you plant bold seeds in South Carolina soil, you expect them to grow strong and true. Charleston Southern University was planted in North Charleston in 1964, watered by prayer and tended by faithful stewards over several decades. Now ready to bloom, CSU is quickly moving in the direction of an exciting vision, aided by the efforts of the newly established Center for Christian Leadership (CCL). I arrived at CSU in June of 2007 and have since been given the honor of acting as the director of the CCL.

When the administration and Board of Trustees adopted a new vision statement in 2006, to be a Christian university nationally recognized for integrating faith in learning, leading and serving, they were acknowledging that CSU’s future is an exciting one in which the university will take its expected role as a leading institution among Christian colleges and universities.

The achievement of this vision builds upon the faithful work of two presidents, dozens of board members, hundreds of faculty and staff, the South Carolina Baptist Convention, and thousands of friends and alumni of the University. Indeed, the second half-century of Charleston Southern must see the school emerge as a national leader in Christian higher education.

Yet, while anybody can state a vision, achieving that vision requires a plan, dedication and a mechanism for getting there. At CSU, one critical part of this plan is the Center for Christian Leadership. While the CCL at CSU has been in the works for several years, we have decided to move forward even before we have the level of resources we know will be necessary to be most successful in the future. Currently, the CCL is tasked with leading efforts to develop faculty members’ abilities to integrate the Christian faith in the classroom across all academic disciplines.

Center for Christian Leadership Mission: Provide programs, resources and opportunities that continually develop distinctively Christian leaders among CSU faculty, staff, students and partners.

Center for Christian Leadership Vision: Become a leading voice of Christian thought while preparing leaders for Christian action.

The Plan

Along these lines, we have in the past year initiated several annual events. Thirty-five faculty members participated in the Faculty Biblical Worldview Seminar, several weeks of readings, discussions and deep exploration of the basic biblical doctrines that undergird CSU’s mission and the elements of a biblical worldview that can guide our thinking as we seek to integrate faith and learning at the highest levels. An even greater number of faculty members are currently involved in Faculty Faith Integration Seminars, spread out over several weeks in the spring. Beginning in March, a number of highly experienced scholars from across the country visited CSU to share their faith integration experiences and insights to faculty members in numerous disciplines. The Annual Values and Ethics Lecture Series will continue in the fall to bring well-known Christian thinkers and speakers to campus, creating conversation around issues that impact the whole Christian community. Finally, April brings the Faculty Faith Integration Forum, where the CSU family can see how professors are integrating the Christian faith in various courses and majors.

The Place

All of these efforts are aimed at moving CSU in the direction of realizing the University’s vision. While most of the Center’s activity thus far has been spread out across the campus, the Center for Christian Leadership cannot remain a virtual center indefinitely. Much progress has been made in designing, drawing and raising funds for the Christian Leadership Center building, a place where the CSU community can concentrate its efforts to excel at distinctively Christian higher education. This building – which will be appropriately and prominently placed in the center of campus – will provide much-needed classroom space, seminar rooms, meeting rooms, resource/library space, research space for faculty and students to engage in scholarly exploration of their disciplines, and space for large conferences that bring others to the campus to share in our Christian mission. The building will also contain a strategic clustering of faculty offices that allows for conversation and leadership in the area of faith and learning.

The Product

So what do we hope to accomplish through these efforts? Besides the institutional goals associated with achieving CSU’s vision, we are working toward graduating CSU students who have encountered Christ and His gospel, serve society in all areas with distinction, lead their organizations and communities and can be strong, competent Christian voices in a multicultural world. At the same time, while recognizing that CSU already has professors who are faithful servants of Christ, the Center works to ensure our faculty are people who lead the Christian community in teaching, writing and thinking about cultural challenges from a Christian perspective. Finally, over time, the Center is working to develop partners and constituents who share critical aspects of our mission and vision and can also benefit from the efforts and programs of the CCL.

The Partnership

By God’s grace, we will continue to move forward in building the Center for Christian Leadership, and we look forward to that day when we can break ground on the CLC building. In the meantime, I will continue to work with my faithful colleagues to use the Center as the rallying point for the good work of building faithful, Christian leaders among our faculty, staff, students and graduates. We welcome all who wish to partner with us on this fabulous journey. A beautiful university continues to emerge out of the soil of North Charleston, and there is still plenty of room for those who would provide the water to help it grow.