mission

As servants and partners to the University of South Florida, our mission is to create spaces of hospitality, dialogue, reflection, and formation for students, faculty, and staff to encounter the intellectual and spiritual riches of the historic Christian faith in the pursuit of truth, goodness, beauty, and joy, which is uniquely and ultimately reflected in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).

vision

Our vision is to build an enduring Center for Christian Studies at the University of South Florida that will foster the intellectual and spiritual development of its students; serving as both salt and light to the university community and the Tampa Bay region while also sending and seeding world-class Christian scholars, business, civic, and church leaders into our community and beyond

Values

We aspire to embody the following values in the pursuit of our mission:

  • We open both the environments we curate and our lives as well to the University of South Florida community so that each person we encounter will be welcomed, loved, and appreciated as whole people, for whom every aspect of their lives matters to God.

  • We want to listen carefully to God and others, to question our assumptions, to think rigorously in order to discover truth, goodness, beauty, and, ultimately, joy. We will try to admit what we do not know even as we cherish what we do, to always honor the lives and stories of others as we share our own, and to explore with intellectual honesty and courage the contours of our own misunderstanding so that we might draw closer to what is true and real.

  •  We want to foster an environment and a culture of unity by creating spaces for Christians of every tradition to share in all that we have to offer.

  • We create a space where genuine questions, doubts, and intellectual exploration are welcomed and engaged with depth and respect. We believe that faith and reason are complementary, not contradictory, and invite curious skeptics to join us in rigorous, honest dialogue about life's most important questions.

  • To see every aspect of our lives and calling as something that can be done as a witness to the truth, beauty, and goodness found in the kingdom of God. And to pursue unity, wholeness, and a life that faithfully reflects the love and teachings of Christ in every context.

  • We want to cultivate practices that order our lives to the true, good, and beautiful, believing that following Jesus is a process of learning, growth, and development that is intellectual, practical, and spiritual.

  • We want not merely to reflect on the Christian faith but the object of that faith. In all we do to honor and pursue Jesus Christ as the self-disclosure of the triune God, revealed in Scripture, and to embody and convey the conviction that a flourishing life is ultimately, and only found in a relationship with him.

  • We want to have a bias for serving, sharing, and giving. We will look to give and not take from the University community, and in everything we do, to embody an ethic of love as defined by the example of Jesus, who gave all that he had for the people he came to heal, serve, and redeem.