Cedarville Magazine, Fall 2013

Cedarville Magazine | 9 risen Lord, we can be reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:20). And it is to this “ministry of reconciliation” that we train our students to be ambassadors of Christ. Our task is not an easy one. Statistics show that anywhere from 50–80 percent of church-attending students drop out of church during their first or second year in college. Cedarville will be different. We will be intentionally Christian, holding high the local church by encouraging our students to join and maintain involvement. We will equip students to defend “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). I want to produce students who know what they believe, why they believe it, and can in turn defend their faith against competing worldviews. Accomplishing this goal will take intentional effort in our five-day- a-week chapel services, the Bible minor, and biblical integration into every course. The challenge is high. Even so, we will do what is hard because the consequences demand no less. With more than six billion people on the planet facing an eternity spent in heaven or hell, we must train a generation of Special Forces for the Gospel and unleash them on the world as ministers of reconciliation, showing Christ’s compassion and love. To put it simply, Cedarville will continue to be about calling and conviction. We will continue in the work of equipping students for the vocational calling God has placed on their lives while maintaining the conviction of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this issue of Cedarville Magazine , you will read some remarkable stories about one such endeavor at Cedarville. Our School of Pharmacy is just one of our intentionally Christian programs. Some of our pharmacy graduates will serve as light in dark places while filling prescriptions. Some will travel overseas to help provide needed medicine to heal the body and the Gospel to heal the soul. Some will work on cures for illnesses that affect millions but perhaps are not profitable enough to warrant the attention of major pharmaceutical companies. Some of our pharmacy graduates will work against the problem of overmedication in our nation and share with patients that the root of their problems lies in separation from their Creator, an issue that no pill can solve. I am thankful for the work of our dean, Marc Sweeney. Cedarville is fortunate to have him working for the Kingdom of God at our institution. He and a world-class faculty of gifted teachers, researchers, and practitioners train some of the best students anywhere in a state-of-the-art facility. We will never know the Gospel impact many of these students will have this side of heaven, but I suspect that one day the Great Physician will greet them with the words, “Well done, My good and faithful servant.” As you look through these pages, I think you will see what I already know. Cedarville produces personal and professional excellence with a Gospel purpose because we continue to stand for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Thomas White became Cedarville’s 10th President in 2013. He received his B.A. from Anderson University (South Carolina) and both his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is co-author of Franchising McChurch: Feeding Our Obsession with Easy Christianity , and he served as editor of First Freedom: The Baptist Perspective on Religious Liberty ; Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches ; and Upon This Rock . Pharmacy is just one example of biblical integration across Cedarville’s curriculum. God’s Word is foundational in every academic discipline.