Cedarville Magazine
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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.
