Category: Education
On Teaching Lambs
I lie awake at night, overwhelmed with the fear that I am participating in the greatest and most dangerous hubris, to think that I should teach. When I took my job at Houston Baptist University I knew, of course, that...
Day One from Oxford: A View from The Kilns
When I first named “Mere Orthodoxy,” I started from a very simple question: which writers had lived and written in such a way that I wanted to emulate? The answer was as immediate as the question was simple: Chesterton and...
Advice for Undergraduates Planning on Seminary
In April Fred Sanders asked me to write to some THI students who are anticipating seminary in their future. Today I officially started an M.Div. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, so it feels fitting to review the tips I wrote and share them...
I Went to Wheatstone. You Should Too.
Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of participating in Wheatstone Ministries’ annual summer conference, The Academy. The Academy is the most unusual of Summer Camps. High-schoolers of all ages, shapes, and sizes descend upon a chosen college campus, filling...
What’s unique about the Torrey Honors Institute?
That’s the question that I tried to wrestle with for Biola Connections, the alumni and friend magazine of the University. I’m a proud Perpetual Member of the program, a title that is a curiosity to many people but encapsulates the idiosyncratic (and...
To Go Where Two Men Have Gone Before
A few months ago I got a call that, quite unexpectedly, changed everything for me. It was from John Mark Reynolds, a name familiar to most of you here, founder of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola, new Provost of Houston...
Meet Paul Spears, Torrey Honors Institute’s new Director
The news that John Mark Reynolds is leaving Torrey was a bit of a blow to those who attended the program. John Mark’s personality and drive have left a mark on the program that will endure long into the future,...
Evangelical Universities and the Lingering Legacy of Fundamentalism?
Christopher Benson is a writer and educator living in Denver, Colorado. He writes regularly at Bensonian, and submitted the following as a guest post. Thomas Albert Howard, who is the Stephen Phillips Chair of History at Gordon College, and Karl...
Upon the Occasion of John Mark Reynolds Moving to Houston Baptist
My friend John Mark Reynolds just announced this evening that he is leaving his position as Director to become the new provost at Houston Baptist University.* In the common parlance, I am an alumnus of the Institute. But the program...
The Great Books Reader: A Giveaway
The Great Books Reader is the tapas of the great books canon. If you don’t know, ‘tapas’ is a Spanish appetizer that, over time, became popular and sophisticated enough that entire bars are dedicated to only serving it. The analogy...