Why Churches Still Need Christian Colleges

By DAVID ERICKSON, PH.D.
Jacksonville College President

Every summer Christian parents and students around the country make life altering decisions about what comes next after high school. A biblically based, God-honoring, church-loving Christian college can be an important first step into a life of flourishing and faithfulness. Three truths shape why the work at places like Jacksonville College matters and why it’s worth defending and supporting.
 
EDUCATION IS NOT NEUTRAL GROUND
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,” Proverbs tells us, “fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7). Again in Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
 
Every college campus in America operates from a starting point about what is real, what is true and who human beings are. State universities are not neutral. They simply do not name their starting point out loud. A biology department that begins with materialism is teaching theology, even if it never admits it. A history department that treats every moral claim as a product of its era is teaching theology too.
 
We’re in a cultural moment when we’ve grown tired of institutions that claim objectivity while pushing agendas on our young people. At Jacksonville College we’re honest about our starting point: wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. It’s a fundamental claim about human knowledge: you cannot rightly understand creation while ignoring the Creator. Every subject and field of study flows from that, and it means we offer an education that isn’t pushed around by cultural winds but fixed on living out eternal truths in a shifting culture.
 
ALL THINGS HOLD TOGETHER IN CHRIST
Paul writes of Christ in Colossians 1:17, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” And in Colossians 2:3, that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
 
This is the theological heart of Christian higher education, and it is often the most misunderstood. Jacksonville College is not a secular curriculum with a chapel service and a few Bible classes added on. We work from a different foundation of what every discipline is for. Biology is the study of what God has made and sustains. History is the record of what God’s image bearers have done with their freedom, for better and worse. Business is stewardship of resources God has entrusted to us.
 
Students do not need to check their faith at the classroom door. Every subject already belongs to Christ. Teaching this way is not indoctrination. It is telling the truth about where knowledge comes from and how to live in response to it.
 
FORMED FOR THE GOOD OF THE CITY
When Judah was carried into exile in Babylon, God did not tell His people to isolate themselves until rescue came. Through the prophet Jeremiah, He said, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).
 
This is the purpose of Christian higher education. It may seem like a shelter from a hostile culture, but really it is formation for life within it. Jacksonville College is training the small business owners, pastors, nurses, teachers and accountants who will spend the next fifty years strengthening the towns and cities they call home. They will also spend the next fifty years nurturing and building churches in those communities.
 
Supporting Jacksonville College now, through enrolling or encouraging others to enroll, through financial support, or simply through telling the story of what this college is actually for, is not nostalgia for our youth or an earlier era of American life. It is our investment in the next generation with an institution that teaches them to love God with their whole mind and sends them out to serve their neighbors well.

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