Please join us for a praise and worship time at UNT’s Goolsby Chapel!
This nondenominational service is open to the entire UNT community. Alan Albarran (Media Arts, formerly RTVF) will be talking about lessons from his life both within and beyond the university.
“Without worship, we go about miserable.”
—- A. W. Tozer
Sam Matteson, Professor Emeritus (physics) received the Nilson Award on November 16.
This is a national award given annually by Faculty Commons to one Christian faculty member at a public university who has demonstrated outstanding leadership.
Sam received his PhD from Baylor in 1976, and did postdoc work at Cal Tech. He worked at Texas Instruments as a research scientist until joining the UNT physics department in 1987.
We hope you were able to attend our kickoff worship service!
Joseph Oppong, (Geography & Assoc Dean Toulouse Graduate School) spoke about his journey from Asankrangwa, a small town in the Western region of Ghana, to life as a medical geographer and Christ-follower. He began in extreme poverty: abandoned by his father at three months of age, he lived with his mother, grandmother and eight siblings in a small room “about the size of my current office.”
He went quickly and easily through primary grades, but was unable to attend secondary school because of the family’s poverty. He moved to the city and found his father, who tricked Joseph into working for two years with the promise of paying for his education. Once his father’s deception was uncovered, he moved in with his brother, and had a steady job, yet more setbacks occurred.
“For the first time in my life, I had a regular monthly income; I rented a room, and began to ‘enjoy independent life.’ I liked to dance, drank occasionally, and loved the girls. I maintained this life style until 1972, the year my brother was going to graduate. Six months after graduation, my brother Anthony, died. I was devastated, and resolved that I should live it up because I would probably die like my brother.”
Life DID get better for Joseph. To skip ahead in his story, he did come to know Christ in college:
“Finally, after crying for what seemed an eternity, tears streaming down my face, I looked up and prayed roughly as follows: ‘God I know I messed up this life real bad. But if you are still interested in me, please take my life and make meaning out of it.’
The rest of his story can be read at Meet The Prof.
**While it was sponsored by the Christian Faculty-Administrator-Staff Fellowship, all of our events are open to the entire UNT community.
With classes starting later this month, we are having planning meetings and will have our fall event calendar posted soon.
Walter Bradley (Texas A&M; Baylor): Facing the Giants of Fear — Baby Steps of Faith; and Ministering in the Secular Academy — Lessons from 30 Years
Peter Moore (SMU): The Life Of An Exile
Dave Engle (OSU): Building A Leadership Team
Geri Forsberg: (Western Washington): Blessing the Academic Community
This conference was one of four sponsored by Faculty Commons in various cities this year. Others were held in Orlando, Birmingham and State College, PA. This fall conferences will be held in Minneapolis and Baton Rouge.
George Yancey has been involved with the Christian faculty group at UNT for many years, speaks at our meetings and leads a fellowship for Christians in graduate school. In his early years as a sociologist he studied racial diversity -‐-‐ or the lack of it -‐-‐ in Christian churches, and wrote several books including United by Faith, and Beyond Racial Gridlock.
Several years ago he felt a need to address what he saw as a growing bias against Christians on America’s university campuses. His survey of academics confirmed his suspicions, and resulted in several books documenting this: Compromising Scholarship, and So Many Christians, So Few Lions.
One conclusion from his research: “A small, but growing body of work indicates that in certain social areas Christians face real discrimination. Recently in the United States overt hostility toward certain Christians has been greater than overt hostility toward Jews.”
How should we respond to such hostility? That is the reason for his latest book Hostile Environment:
“An important challenge for Christians is to convince such individuals that they have the same rights to influence the public square as anyone else. Learning how to communicate, and hopefully find ways to co-‐exist, with them will help determine whether there will be a persistent cultural conflict or if a truce is possible.”