The leadership of Kilns College is beginning to kick around what to include in a “Statement of Faith,” which is a necessary sort of thing for a Christian college to have.  Normally, such a statement would include our beliefs about God, Scripture, the human condition, salvation, and perhaps one or two other items.

But today, it seems, one cannot simply lay out what it is one believes to be the truth about such things.  No, in our postmodern culture, one may first have to at least claim–if not actually go through the process of substantiating the claim–that there is such a thing as objective truth in the first place.

So, lest we put a good deal of effort into a corporate statement of faith only to have it viewed as a subjective exercise not meant to intersect with any absolute reality, I thought it best to establish up front that we at Kilns College hold to an objectivist view of truth.  That is, with the vast majority of thinkers throughout the history of Western civilization, we hold that some statements (ideas or beliefs) are true and that others are false, that some correspond to reality and others do not.

As an example, we are likely to make a statement such as, “Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, died by Roman crucifixion and was bodily raised on the third day.”  By making this claim, we are not merely saying that this particular belief works for us or has more meaning for us than it does for other people.  Rather, we would be claiming that this is a fundamental truth about Jesus Christ that matches reality at all times and for all people, regardless of whether or not they believe (agree with) it.

In this case, the truth value of the statement resides in Jesus–the object of the statement–and not in the claimant or anyone else considering the truth value (these latter would both be subjects).  We reject a subjectivist understanding of truth and affirm an objectivist understanding.

The subjectivist, relativist understanding of truth espoused by post-modernists is ultimately self-referentially absurd.  But rather than demonstrate that the way I normally would, let me come at it a different way, one appropriate to a school of higher education.

Just as relative morality makes nonsense of the concept of moral reform or moral improvement, a subjectivist view of truth makes unintelligible the concept of learning.  If there is no truth–no accurate understanding of the way things are–then gathering more knowledge is pointless.  You may continually change your understanding or the way you view things, but if there is no right understanding to which you have gotten closer, you might just as well be doing almost anything else.

Until a very short time ago, virtually everyone believed in objective truth, goodness, and beauty, and the goal of a liberal arts education was to raise up gentlemen and ladies by helping them align their thoughts, will, and emotions with that tuth, goodness, and beauty.

We at Kilns College still believe these things, and I hope that our statement of beliefs (when finished) will reflect this.

I’m leaving for Managua, Nicaragua in a matter of hours - at midnight, to be exact.  One of the things I’m most excited about for the students of Kilns College is the short term mission options we’ll be providing.

Working with the orphans of Managua, Nicaragua may be one of those options, along with whatever else God brings our way. We’re also excited about the study abroad options - all of which I hope to experience along with you.

Dios la Bendiga!

 

 

One of my favorite C.S. Lewis essays is Learning in War-Time, essentially the transcript of a talk in which he answered–for himself and his fellow-students–the question of what justified their remaining in academia when most of their peers were fighting the Nazis.  Here’s a sample of it…

A man’s upbringing, his talents, his circumstances, are usually a tolerable index of his vocation.  If our parents have sent us to Oxford, if our country allows us to remain there, this is prima facie evidence that the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life… I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God’s sake.  An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain.  We can therefore pursue knowledge as such, and beauty as such, in the sure confidence that by so doing we are either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others to do so.  Humility, no less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God. 

From Socrates, to Athens:

I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed him.

His name I need not mention. He was a politician whom I selected for examination, and the result was as follows. When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself … for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know …

When I left the politicians, I went to to the poets … And there, I said to myself, you will be detected. Now you will find out that you are most ignorant than they are … that showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. And the poets appeared to me to be much in the same case. And I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise …

At last I went to the artisans … but I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets. Because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom …

The truth is, O men of Athens, that god only is wise. And in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing. He is not speaking of Socrates. He is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, “He, O men, is the wisest who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.”

If you’re an avid podcast listener, here is a great church, with a great pastor with some great messages.

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Indians killed Danish Khawaja’s father.

The 12-year-old Pakistani boy with dark brown eyes lost his dad as a child to militants from India who fought for the controversial plot of land called Kashmir.

Like many Kashmiris, Danish’s father was a jihadist in the India-Pakistan conflict. And like many children in the region, Danish could have easily joined a jihadist group to strike back at those who killed his father.

Instead, he chose to become a doctor.

“I want to help people,” Danish said between classes on a muggy May morning in Muzaffarabad, the capital city of Azad Kashmir.

Danish is just one of hundreds of students supported by Kashmir Family Aid, a Bend-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The group assists children in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and in Azad Kashmir, where the Oct. 8, 2005 earthquake killed at least 73,000, left 3 million homeless and destroyed 8,000 of the region’s 11,000 primary and secondary schools.

Founded in 2005 by Sam Carpenter and directed by Christopher Stollar, KFA’s primary goal is to counter poverty and terrorism in the region by providing secular education to quake-affected children.

KFA focuses on math, science, history and English as an alternative to madrassas, Islamic fundamentalist schools. Some teach militant jihad to young children who will ultimately land paid jobs as jihadists once they become teenagers.

Since 2005, KFA has supported six private schools and about 1,200 students. Carpenter and Stollar toured some of these schools in May, directly handing cash to the teachers themselves.

Kashmir Family Aid’s new plans include constructing a building for orphans who currently study in tents because the 2005 earthquake destroyed their former building – crushing dozens of students. Teachers there make less than $60 a month and have not been paid for eight months. During the May visit, KFA covered some of their back wages.

Kashmir Family Aid also plans to pay other teachers, build bathrooms for schools that can have 400 students to one toilet, add classrooms to a primary school and, in some cases, provide general aid to destitute families.

KFA relies on recurring donations from corporate sponsors.

Less than $1,000 a month funds an entire school of 200 students with a faculty of 12. KFA will even take interested donors to Pakistan and Kashmir to meet the children – and see the schools for themselves.

For comprehensive information, visit www.kashmirfamily.org or call Stollar at 541-385-1970.

Tomorrow night (Sunday), there will be a vision talk in Prineville for Kilns College.

If you missed the previous two talks and would like to attend, simply e-mail us at support@kilnscollege.org and we will be happy to get you the directions!

Click here if you would like to listen to the audio message of the college’s vision.

If you haven’t yet signed up for the e-newsletter, go to www.kilnscollege.org and make sure to put in your e-mail address!!

As we get ready for round 2 of our Vision Deserts this Thursday, May 22nd at 7pm at our new location, http://www.hdccbend.org/news_events.htm, I thought I’d share our new look.

What’s behind the name and logo?  More to come so stay tuned…….

The subject of Kilns College is coming up in my day to day conversation - be it with the barista at Starbucks or my next door neighbor. So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive and people are asking me how they can be a part of it. So cool!

So how can you be a part of it? You can meet an immediate need if you’re so lead and that need is for funding/money! And when the dollars fall into place then we can start having some fun!

 

 

 

 

Christopher Stollar, the dean of faculty for Kilns College, will travel this week to Pakistan and Azad Kashmir to meet with an ex-jihadist who once fought India’s control of the Kashmir region as a top guerrilla leader. Now, the former Pakistani militant is running secular schools for destitute children and orphans

In mid-May, Stollar will visit with Tanveer Muhammad, a man who four years ago militants kidnapped and threatened to kill after he decided that the India-Pakistan war was “destroying Kashmir and its culture,” Newsday reported in October 2006 “He changed his name, hung up his gun and opened schools to provide secular education for orphans of the war.

Muhammad is one of several people in Pakistan that Stollar financially supports and plans to visit as part of a trip he is taking for Kashmir Family Aid, a Bend-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit that local resident Sam Carpenter founded and Stollar operates as director Kashmir Family Aid assists children in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and in Azad Kashmir, where the Oct. 8, 2005 earthquake killed at least 73,000, left 3 million homeless and destroyed 8,000 of the 11,000 schools in the Pakistani part of Kashmir, according to CNN and Newsday reports. As of 2007, fewer than 400 of those schools have been rebuilt, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle estimated. That means about 13 million children – out of some 27 million total – are still not enrolled in any school. More than 70 percent of females in Pakistan can’t read at all. In addition, the Central Intelligence Agency estimated that in fiscal year 2005-06 about one-fourth of Pakistan’s entire population lived below the poverty line.

Kashmir Family Aid’s primary goal is to assist in the education of quake-affected children in both Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and Azad Kashmir. Since 2005, KFA has supported seven private schools and about 1,500 students. The nonprofit has also given money to scores of women and covered two months of unpaid back payroll for 13 teachers in a financially-strapped private school run by Tanveer Muhammad, the ex-jihadist.

During this trip, Carpenter and Stollar will tour these schools and new ones they plan to support. They will also meet with the chief of police in Azad Kashmir, the special assistant to the Prime Minister, the chief justice of the high court and a high ranking official of the Pakistani Government Intelligence Bureau stationed in Islamabad. In the past, Carpenter has also met with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

Carpenter and Stollar plan to make regular trips to Pakistan with local residents and business leaders interested in supporting KFA’s cause. For just $5 a month – a little more than the cost of a latte – a student can be supported. For less than $1,000 a month, an entire school of 200 students with a faculty of 12 can be supported. We are looking for corporate sponsors.

For more information, visit www.kashmirfamily.org. You can also call Stollar at 541-385-1970 or e-mail him at chriss@kashmirfamily.org

Tomorrow evening (Thursday) at 7:00 p.m. is our first of two Vision Desserts.

Anyone is welcome to come and hear more about what is going on with the college.

The dessert is at the new college bookstore and retail space (The Kilns) at 550 Industrial Way, Suite #44 (see the map below).

We recently had our first event at the Kilns Bookstore in the Old Mill!  The event was for the Art Book; a publication Antioch Church in Bend is putting together filled with art done by artists from within the church and the community. 

We had a launch party with live music, food and pages displayed throughout the space from the Art Book.  Having recently finished giving The Kiln’s Bookstore a face-lift it was the perfect time and event to open it up to the public!  We are excited about the many events to come at the Kilns Bookstore!

 

 

So, as Darcy mentioned above Ken, Lindsey, Darcy and I just got back from Simi Valley where we had the privilege of spending some time with Francis Chan, the teaching pastor of Cornerstone Church.  This was a big event for me, having heard him preach last October at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. There is something to be said about someone who is bold enough to just say it like it is.  His passion for changing the face of the church and Christian education by getting back to the fundamentals of the bible and doing things the way it says is inspiring.

Now for many of you who know me, Christian speakers and events are really not my thing, but Tuesday was quite literally one of the best days I’ve ever experienced.  I actually think I might have gone a little overboard with the praise, just short of drooling all over him, yet he was gracious and even took a photo with us.  Even though the trip was rushed, the experience was worth it!

 

I had the honor of joining Kim, Ken, and Lindsey on a very recent road trip to Simi Valley where we met with the incredible Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone Church and founder of Eternity Bible College. I’ll let Ken fill you in on all the details when he decides to do so, but in the meantime, I must encourage every single one of you to check out Francis Chan on google or iTunes. He just wrote a book entitled “Crazy Love” which Kim and I had to privilege of receiving from him personally!

Francis’s style along with his ideas and teachings very much resemble the teachings of Ken Wytsma. Perhaps one of these days I’ll be reading a copy of a book by Ken…. and I’d expect to receive an autographed copy!

All in all, the future of Kiln’s College is very bright. I’m more encouraged than ever and more confident in the mission of Kiln’s College. The students God brings our way will be very blessed indeed.

If you sit back and listen to the daily interactions of the people around you in business, in school, in the media and in your personal relations, you will notice that we assume a vast number of foundational unspoken ideas about the way the world is, how it got here, what our role is, how we should behave and so on.  

This basic set of assumptions, sometimes referred to as a worldview, is not given to us by our DNA, nor is it directly revealed by nature.  Instead, it comes to us primarily through the education provided by our culture.

For those of us in western civilization it is important to realize that our worldview is the outgrowth of a discussion that stretches back over the millennia; back to the cradle of civilization.  If we are to be well educated, and if we are to educate others, we must access this discussion ourselves and show others the pathways to it.

Accordingly, a grounding in the classics, with the Bible as the centerpiece, will allow the Christian man or woman to enter the discussion in a knowledgeable way and in so doing be able to present the One in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 

 
 

Read “Three Cups of Tea,” a New York Times bestseller about an American who fights poverty and terrorism by building schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Taliban’s backyard.

“If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs.”

I firmly believe in education as a tool to change the world, and believe even more in the minds of people who choose to engage in education as a means to change the world. In the words of Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “When people lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality.” Also, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”

With the opening of the Kilns bookstore, we will be hosting two vision and fundraising events taking place May 15th and May 22nd, 2008 from 7-9 p.m.

These events are the perfect opportunity to hear more about all the recent changes, the mission and vision, see the new retail facilities and learn more about what is coming up and how you can be involved!

More info to come within the next week or two! For more information about the college, check out the HDCC website at http://www.hdccbend.org. We would love to see you all there!

I just finished an assigned 5,000-word paper on Romans 1:18-23 and the role and usefulness of general revelation (what all people know about God merely from the testimony of nature). The topic excites me, but the assignment didn’t, especially since past experience tells me that the particular prof for whom it was written cares far too much about style hoops and far too little about substance.

I’m also preparing to speak to a few hundred youth next Saturday on the subject of science and Christianity (mine will only be half of a 1-hour talk within a much larger–all day–event). In reseraching for both of these deals–the paper and the talk–I came across a quote (read before, but unremembered) that speaks to each and that also summarizes well what I believe and where I end up spending a bunch of my energy. It’s from astronomer, pastor, and Christian apologist Hugh Ross in his book, The Creator and the Cosmos…

Wherever we look in the realm of nature, we see evidence for God’s design and exquisite care for His creatures. Whether we examine the cosmos on its largest scale or its tiniest, His handiwork is evident. Whether we work in disciplines where simplicity and rigor predominate (for example, mathematics, astronomy, and physics) or in disciplines where complexity and information predominate (for example, biochemistry, botany, and zoology), God’s fingerprints are visible.

Because of the quickening pace of technology and scientific research, the picture of God’s attributes available to us through nature grows clearer. Further, since all the nations and cultures of the world are gaining scientific knowledge and technological competence, this testimony to God through nature is reaching out to all the peoples of the earth, paving the way for a surge of response to the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed by human messengers.