In the Advanced Apologetics class I’m teaching at Kilns College this semester, we’ll be dealing this week with worldviews.  Just as Socrates said that “An unexamined life is not worth living,” so an unexamined–or inadequate–worldview is not worth keeping.  We’ll be looking at the various components of an adequate worldview, and then discussing some tests to apply to any given worldview (taken primarily from Kenneth Samples’ A World of Difference).

One such test is the Cumulative Test, which asks whether the worldview is supported by multiple lines of evidence that together augment the strength and breadth of the worldview’s explanatory power.  According to Samples,

Cambridge professor C.S. Lewis seems to have had this concept in mind when he described his reason for believing in the truth of Christianity.  He said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”  For Lewis, the Christian worldview illumined the world and all of life, particularly the enigmatic human condition.  The multiple strands of evidence in support of the Christian worldview had resulted in a cumulative case argument for the faith.

 

Join us Friday and Saturday, September 19th & 20th for a guest Art History lecture by Wes Hurd, co-founder and President of Bluetower Arts Foundation in Eugene, Oregon. He has as M.A. in Biblical Studies from Western Seminary, a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations and an M.F.A in Painting from the University of Oregon. He is also director of Art Project, an arts fellowship within Gutenberg College.

This event will begin Friday evening from 7-9 pm with dessert and coffee being served.  It will continue Saturday from 9 am-2 pm with a continental breakfast.  Cost will be $6 at the door for both days.  If you can’t make both days, feel free to come for just one day!  This is an event you won’t want to miss!  

 

This past Sunday, Kilns College had their Fall kick-off event!  It was a great evening filled with yummy food, fantastic music by Paul Wright and a powerful message by Jonathan Martin.  Here are some pictures from the event!

 

Paul Wright

 

Jonathan Martin

Join us Sunday evening, September 7th from 6-9 pm for the Kilns College Fall Kick-Off event!  We will have live music by a great artist, Paul Wright.  Jonathan Martin, author of Giving Wisely and Global Outreach Ministry Director at Good Shepherd will be our guest speaker.  There will also be plenty of yummy BBQ!  

Come hear about the college, the classes offered and the upcoming music, arts and human rights events at the Kilns. Everyone is welcome!

Make sure you join us for the Great Oregon Divot at the beautiful Aspen Lakes Golf Course in Sisters, OR, October 18, 2008 to benefit Kilns College.

The event will include a 4-person scramble, lunch, dinner and awards presentation. Featured events for the day will include: Hole in One Contests, Closest to the Pin Contest, Mulligans, Player Gifts, Longest Drive Contest, Putting Contest, Raffle, Super Ticket, Auction and much more.

To find out more information or register to play visit http://www.golfdigestplanner.com/7207-GreatOregonDivot/.

Here is just one way you can support Kilns College:

Donate Your Car or Truck to Kilns College:

All cars or trucks donated are repaired and sold with the proceeds goings to Kilns College. Tax deductible receipts are provided for the sold price of the vehicle. This is a great and cost effective way to support the college. Your help is very much appreciated. Call Ken Mays at 541-389-2100 for donations or questions.

If you have a donation, e-mail Lindsey Taft at lindsey@kilnscollege.org.

September 19th & 20th – Art History Lecture

Join us Friday and Saturday, September 19th & 20th for a guest Art History lecture by Wes Hurd, co-founder and President of Bluetower Arts Foundation in Eugene, Oregon. He has as M.A. in Biblical Studies from Western Seminary, a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations and an M.F.A in Painting from the University of Oregon. He is also director of Art Project, an arts fellowship within Gutenberg College.

This event will start Friday evening and continue on Saturday. Cost will be $6 at the door for both days.  Make sure you come and check it out!

Make sure you come to Antioch Church this Sunday, August 10th to hear about the vision of Kilns College.  Our goal is to birth an innovative school model that marries a classical education approach with a missions and social justice focus, attracting Christian college students from around the nation who are passionate and committed to changing the world.

There will be a booth set up in the hallway of Summit with registration packets that include our Course Outline for fall 2008, a Course Overview, a tri-fold describing Kilns College vision and mission and a Registration form w/return envelope.  Stop by, pick up a packet, meet the staff and faculty, ask questions and sign up for our newsletter. We hope to see you there!

FOUNDATIONS – MODULE 1 (HI 101)

Designed to give students a chronological progression of history from Creation to current events. Philosophies, religions, literature, culture, and ideas that shape humanity are all explored in this framework.  Insight is broken down into four modules.  The first two modules cover the ancient and classical world, including its ideas, developments, and people. Modules 3 and 4 cover the expanding and modern world, beginning with the collapse of the Roman Empire and ending with current global issues.

Recommended prerequisite: writing experience

Credits: 2, Instructor: Hunt

 

PERSONAL CALLING & MISSION (MI 101)

This class will look at the idea of personal calling and mission throughout scripture along with several select readings from throughout church history.  The topic deals with the idea of God’s purpose for your life and your own unique gifting and preparation for ministry.  Each student will engage in personal profile studies and assessments as well as spend time outside class in solitude exercises.  There will also be a lot of discussion on faith, submission, prayer and spiritual disciplines.  
 
The goal would be for each student to finish the class with a deeper trust in God’s sovereign purposes for their life, greater clarity and direction for ministry and a growing desire and ability to spend time with and listening to God.

Credits: 2, Instructor: Wytsma

 

THE BIBLE & ARCHAEOLOGY (BI 101)

The purpose of the course is to present an introductory examination of the relationship between the Biblical text and archaeology.  The main outcome goals are (1) to show how archaeology confirms the historical context of scripture, and (2) to show how archaeology illuminates the Biblical text.  

Credits: 2, Instructor: Caba

 

ADVANCED APOLOGETICS (PH 101)

The purpose of the course is to hone our abilities as ambassadors for Christ, to present a winsome and reasoned defense of the truth of Christianity.  The main goals are (1) to understand and address the key modern challenges to the validity of Christianity, (2) to provide students with the resources to go deeper into the various issues in modern apologetics, and (3) to understand the role of tact and character in apologetics ministry.

Credits: 2, Instructor: Gerhardt

The projected fall schedule is posted below. These classes/times/dates are subject to change.

Fall Term, September 8, 2008 – December 19, 2008                       

Night Classes: 

Foundations / Instructor: Kim Hunt /Mon, 6:30pm to 9:00pm

The Bible & Archaeology / Instructor: Mike Caba/ Tue, 6:30pm to 9:00pm

Personal Calling & Mission/ Instructor: Ken Wytsma/ Days: Thur, 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Advanced Apologetics/ Instructor: Rick Gerhardt/ Days: Thurs, 7:00pm to 9:00pm

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. 

A letter 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.

Click here and get ready to fill up your iPod.

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

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 below 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 so refreshing 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 an amazing day for me!  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.”