Upcoming Opportunities
NEW Opportunity for Spiritual Formation!
On the second Wednesday of every month, starting on Wednesday, 10 September 2025 at 1400 UTC, Dr. Nita Kotiuga will lead a group exploring various forms of experiencing God together through prayer. This will be a time of listening and teaching, followed by sharing. Depending on the type of prayerful experience being explored, meetings will last 1 to 1.5 hours.
Participants will explore the following as a beginning to our journey together.
Praying through different styles of prayer (these could be several sessions)
Exploring the benefits of journaling
Scheduled times to pray for each other
Learning how to contemplate Scripture
Learning how to meditate with Scripture
Exploring a prayer walk
Exploring spiritual pathways to discover a personal style
Exploring individual spirituality practices for the Enneagram
Be sure to have your Bible readily accessible as well as pen and paper, because handwriting slows us down to help us express more accurately how we feel.
Dr Kotiuga says, ‘I am looking forward to engaging with each of you, as we receive God’s love for us and respond to him with love.’ If you have any questions, please feel free to contact her at nita.kotiuga@bgu.edu.
Be sure to register for this exciting new opportunity!
The Library Reading Group meets the first Friday of every month. The next meeting, on Friday, 5 September at 1400 UTC, will discuss chapter 7 of the important, foundational book for our work as Christian academics, The Outrageous Idea of a Missional Professor: The International Edition, by Paul Gould and edited by an international editorial team.
If you would like to participate, be sure to register for what has been and continues to be a fruitful discussion!
In each conversation, participants share exciting insights about what it means to be a ‘missional professor’ in their local context. Various presenters lead discussions. If you would like to lead a session (or have an idea for a future topic), please contact Dr Marlene Hines, the Society Librarian, at mhines@societyofchristianscholars.org.
Upcoming Conferences
The 3rd All Africa Conference of Christian Scholars will be hosted by the Society of Christian Scholars Uganda this August. See more details below:
Lebanon Conference at Arab Bible Theological Seminary (ABTS), Lebanon
Middle East Consultation 2025: Practicing Reconciliation in the Middle East
Dates: September 23-26, 2025
From MEC website:
The purpose of this year’s Middle East Consultation is to explore interpersonal reconciliation as a significant step towards interpersonal peace and its role in creating healthier communities. This will include discussions of the successes and failures, achievements, and shortcomings of initiatives taken by pre-selected practitioners and reflected upon through a biblical-contextual lens to equip the Church to become a community of peace and an agent for reconciliation as it seeks God’s transformation for itself for societies.
MEC 2025 will seek to deepen participants’ understanding of interpersonal reconciliation theories and practices in Arab societies. It will also provide learning opportunities drawn from the experiences of various faculty members at ABTS and other Arab practitioners in the field as they come together to discuss opportunities to engage in interpersonal reconciliation initiatives across the Arab world.
Accordingly, MEC 2025 will host several participants who are experienced theologians and practitioners in interpersonal reconciliation from different Arab countries. This diverse MENA region focus group of specialists will address localized interpersonal reconciliation in three key areas of practice: confession, forgiveness, and confrontation. This will be followed by workshops on contextual and practical initiatives. Conversations will produce panel discussions on specific topics that help us develop the presented theories in a manner aligned with Scripture and address the culture of honor and shame in our societies.
Interpersonal reconciliation is contingent on the following three steps: Confession, Forgiveness, and Confrontation.
Confession: This will include confession of faith in God and in the context of confrontation, we will address confession of sins to God and to others. We will hear about how leaders addressed and practiced confession in their own lives and ministries amidst a culture of shame and honor.
Forgiveness: The role of forgiveness in the reconciliation process is key, particularly as we highlight the need for accountability and truth-telling as essential components of forgiveness in the process of interpersonal reconciliation. We will also hear how leaders addressed the challenges of forgiveness in their different contexts. Is forgiveness a journey or a decision? And what is the difference between forgiveness and pardoning?
Confrontation: Lovingly naming and identifying points of conflict or offense with others who hurt us is challenging. Here, we are seeking to apply biblical truth to issues of conflict in order to restore the person and hopefully, the relationship. We will hear about how theologians and practitioners from the MENA region have addressed the topic of confrontation biblically and practically in their own contexts and identify what hinders confrontation.
Note: Since this consultation has been postponed from September 2024, we decided to bring updates from the following nations that are or have been at war like Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
Join MEC 2025
Join the conference September 23, 24, 25, and 26 (till noon) as we immerse ourselves in rich conversations on interpersonal reconciliation, a vital component of peace, as we engage in practical and contextual workshops on the theories and practices of interpersonal reconciliation.
MEC 2025 will be held in Arabic with English translation.
All workshops will be held at ABTS and in-person.
Society Library
Reminder: Issue 2 of the SOPHIA Study Guide Series, ‘Research as Worship’, is now available in English, French, Spanish and soon to be Chinese translations! Our goal is to develop a core set of study guides that address the fundamental aspects of each of the five areas around which the Society seeks to encourage scholars to have redemptive influence in the pluralistic university.
This month’s Library Reading Corner feature, includes an annotated bibliography of five library resources under the categories of Pursuing Vocational Excellence and Engaging Unbelief.
These resources provide further reading related to our July 2025 webinar, Walking Together through the Everyday Life of the University, by Dr. Jaime Peña-Álvarez.
Successful Exercise to Teach New Faculty How to Integrate a Christian Worldview by Robert Herron
This paper provides guidance to Christian faculty members serving in either pluralistic or Christian universities on strategies to apply in the process of integrating the Christian faith with their respective academic disciplines.
Medicine and Theology by Danielle Jacquart
This chapter preview of Crossing Boundaries at Medieval Universities focuses on the interdisciplinary studies of early scholars who were students in dual-degree programmes of theology and medicine dating back to the 14th century. The resource contributes to the discussion on the relationship between the sciences and Christian theology.
Resources on Science and Christian Faith by Shirley Roels
This revised resource page provides updated links for materials relating to teaching and learning, supplied by Dr Shirley Roels, Director of the International Network of Christian Higher Education (INCHE).
A Time-Strapped Reality: Christian Faculty Perceptions on Research Expectations and Job Satisfaction by Hailey A. Manicone, Bruce K. Bell, Robert B. Bingham, Jacob T. Byrd, and Kimberley S. Cashman
This report presents qualitative phenomenological research on the perceptions of Christian faculty who engage in research and how their research activity contributes to their job satisfaction.
The Nature of Workplace Mentoring Relationships Among Faculty Members in Christian Higher Education by Shelly Cunningham
The article focuses on the application of mentorship strategies in orientation programmes of higher education institutions and provides guidance for Christian lecturers/tutors in higher education for mentoring students throughout their period of study.
Upcoming Webinars
Be sure to check the Webinars Page for third-party webinars that are often added on short notice and for updated presenters and topics that may be helpful in equipping you to bring the gospel to bear in your university context.
Holistic Apologetics: Re-Imagining Apologetics for the 21st Century by Seidel Abel Boanerges – Thursday, 21 August 2025 at 1400 UTC
Many Christians think apologetics is only for the intellectually gifted. Comments like, ‘I can’t argue like you’ or ‘I don’t understand philosophy or logic’ reveal how many Christians feel excluded from the conversation. Christian academics may have similar sentiments, especially when philosophy and logic are not their areas of expertise. While some have recently called for more creativity and imagination in apologetics, it still remains largely rational and verbal—creating barriers for many.
On Thursday, 21 August 2025 at 1400 UTC, Revd Dr Seidel Abel Boanerges, Associate Professor in the Abner J. Langley and Harold L. Mitton Chair of Church Leadership and Director of Mentored Ministry at Acadia Divinity College, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada, will discuss, based on his 2025 book Holistic Apologetics, how apologetics might be reimagined through the lenses of the kingdom of God and the missio Dei. He argues that it must move beyond intellectualism and highlights the value of spiritual apologetics (healing, miracles, prophecy), artistic apologetics (literature, drama, film), and action-based apologetics (justice, compassion, solidarity). In the end, he seeks to make apologetics accessible to all, encouraging every believer, regardless of intellectual ability, that they too can be an apologist.
Register and join the conversation today!
The Importance of Intellectual Virtues for a Polarized World by Elmer Thiessen – Thursday, 18 September 2025 at 1400 UTC
We live in polarizing times, whether politically, economically, or culturally. These rifts are plaguing all our institutions, including the church and the university. Perhaps the solution to the deep divides in our contemporary world and in the church and in our universities is not to be found in more information, education, rationality, or critical thinking. Rather, we need to cultivate intellectual virtues such as the love of knowledge and truth, intellectual humility, and committed openness.
On Thursday, 18 September 2025 at 1400 UTC, Elmer Thiessen, retired Professor of Philosophy at Medicine Hat College in Alberta, Canada, will introduce the general nature of intellectual virtues and vices and their treatment in recent philosophical literature. Then he will assess the current conversation in light of what Scripture has to say about intellectual virtues and vices.
Following this background discussion, he will focus on exploring three central intellectual virtues – love of knowledge and truth, intellectual humility, and committed openness, together with their corresponding vices. Other virtues and vices could be discussed, but Prof. Thiessen believes that these three are especially important for our troubled and divided age.
His goal is to nurture an appreciation for the practical importance of each of these intellectual virtues as a way of overcoming the deep divides that plague societies, churches, and universities, particularly in the Western world. Since many participants in the webinar will be from the Majority World, he will invite their perspectives on how these intellectual virtues and vices resonate in their own local contexts.
In preparation for this conversation, we encourage you to read the preface and introduction to Prof. Thiessen’s book Healthy Christian Minds: A Biblical, Practical, and Sometimes Philosophical Exploration of Intellectual Virtues and Vices (2024) and/or his article in the Evangelical Review of Theology entitled ‘In Pursuit of Intellectual Virtue‘ (2022).
You can also take this assessment to help you discern how well you have internalized the ‘love of knowledge and truth’.
If you would like to order the book, Cascade Publishing has generously offered a 40% discount when purchasing through their website; use code CHRISTIANMINDS40 at checkout by following the link here.
Don’t miss this exciting conversation! Be sure to register today!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in the Addenda are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the Society of Christian Scholars.
