There are many ways to draw attention to the person of Christ with your scholarly colleagues. Two very important ways of doing that are 1) you’re awarness of the “plausiblity structures" of academic culture and seasoning your speech with salt; 2) the second is the coherence between how you live—what you do—and the words that you say (and how you say it).
No doubt as an insider to the academic culture you have some sense of its norms, practices and shibboleths, but there may be some serious value to intensively studying your surroundings. Compare with Paul’s visit to Athens re-counted in Acts 17, where we see in verse 17:23 Paul saying to the Athenians, “… For while I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD…” So, in that case Paul spent sometime doing his homework before he addressed them and went on to transition to a proclaimation of the gospel. See verses 32-34 for their mixed response.
Of course, this is not the only way to witness to another community, but we wish to enage in the conversation about how to do this and do so elsewhere on this site.
Check this important resource we’ve created to help you with that:
Mentoring the Journey Before They Become Followers of Jesus
and
Other Resources
- Introduction (Fothcoming)
- White Paper on Peer to Peer Journey Guidance in Academe
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 1
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 2
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 3
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 4
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 5
- ACI Article: A Funny Thing Happened...