I am honored, in this next chapter of my life, to serve and support faculty
throughout Christian higher education toward faith learning integration.
Find out how it happened by watching this week’s Truth in Two (full text below).
Dr. Mark Eckel is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University. Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website) and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video).
Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
I was sitting in seat 26A just before the cabin doors closed on my flight to Denver when I received the December 2023 call. Dr. Dondi Costin, newly installed president of Liberty University, alerted me to an academic opportunity in Lynchburg Virginia. Dr. Costin and I did our PhD work together. We have been friends for two decades. At Dr. Costin’s request, I spoke to his faculty in 2019 when he was then president at Charleston Southern University. Now he was asking me to consider a position, serving in a field I have been working in most of my life: faith-learning integration.
In Christian higher education the phrase “faith-learning integration” means the institution is committed to teaching from a distinctively Christian point of view. In Dr. Costin’s inaugural address he clearly described biblical thinking, “If it’s ‘Christian’ it ought to be Christian.” Simply stated, a Christian university should seek to understand the world through The Word of God. All of life should be viewed through the lens of Scripture.
From the earliest lines of Genesis the phrase, “And God said” sets the authority for the Christian thinker. Teachers in Christian education should be in submission to Scriptural authority, what Deuteronomy 4 calls, “Your wisdom and understanding in the sight of all people.” Even before earth’s creation Proverbs 8 declares that personified Wisdom gives direction to Christian educators, where we find the paths of knowledge, prudence, insight, and counsel, which is the synthesis of our instruction.
So, from seat 26A into the future I am honored to be named the Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University. I am grateful for Dr. Costin’s invitation to submit an application, prompted by God’s Spirit, to support Christian professors as they help the next generation to see the world through the lens of the Word. For the Comenius Institute, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.
Congratulations Mark!
A great opportunity for you and for Liberty.
Yes, congrats!! God has guided you over the years and you’ve responded. May you continue to influence the youth, the next generation and even further generations for His glory. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
So hapoy for you. Tell Dr. Costin hello for me. I habe 2 degrees from Liberty. Enjoy this new season!
Will be thinking and praying for you. What a wonderful opportunity God has opened up for you. We will miss you.
A life of learning, integrating Biblical truths to the next generation has been lived out in your life and it is a privilege to say I know you, have been encouraged by you in my ordination thesis and consider you a friend. Congratulations my friend.
Congratulations, Mark! You were made for this!
Congratulations Mark! Ps 9:10 We’ll miss you, but rest assured. We won’t stop praying for your ministry. You’ve taught us so much about boldness in the secular university.
Congratulations, Dr. Eckel! I thank God for your new endeavor and know you will do well to God’s glory (1 Cor. 10:31). Harris (2004) rightly points out that “Only the Christian worldview supplies a complete, objective, and rational explanation for all of existence” (p. 4). God has equipped you with the knowledge, wisdom, skill, and experience to ensure teaching and learning begin with a biblical framework that results in a “coherent, unified system of understanding, [and] and a full knowledge and harmony of all truth” (p. 5). In an age of postmodernity, we “must be intentional about making the connections between [our] faith and the knowledge claims [we] encounter and careful to keep the Biblical framework in the foreground as the structuring principle of truth” (p. 5).
Thanks for always being there to speak into my life from a Biblical framework and a level of transparency that never fails to connect and resonate personally.
Dr. Eckel, I love you, and may the Lord richly bless you, your ministry, and a new season of ministry work. Always remember that God has blessed you with many sons in academia.
T. Crenshaw
Congratulations on your new position in ministry. I wish you the very best.
Mike Bryant, Ed.D.