To be an academic first and foremost means needing to have resistance and resilience with very challenging workloads, intellectual challenge within a higher education sector that is continually suffering poor funding. Universities are often seen by many in the church as the haven for atheists where the presence of God cannot be found.

Yet in any academic discipline, the Divine is in the detail and C-A-N- doesn't primarily exist to help academics create defence through apologetics, but rather to help the Christian academic identify what they like and do not like about their discipline and to work out how they can contribute a Christian perspective to it, but also identifying who "friends" are to help further their endeavours. This is the essence of shaping our disciplines for Christ. In bringing out the Divine in the detail this can also help show how a discipline points to the Gospel, which may give room for apologetics where they become necessary as a response to questioning. This can in turn go back in a cycle which helps the discipline to be shaped further from a Christian perspective thus providing a continuous enrichment. 

Bringing academics together is difficult because it is much of a solitary life outside of teaching in lectures/seminars, giving tutorials and attending meetings. Conferences are useful places to be but are often more an occasional thing due to the time and effort required to attend. However, on such occasions we have seen very positive times together in sharing honestly with one another about how as followers of the Lord Jesus he can build us in resistance and resilience. Furthermore a lot of the activity coming out of C-A-N- happens in many pockets where people work together to write publications

Prayer Points

1. Give thanks for the Christian academics that have served and are serving in our Universities where the Lord has called them to be.

2. Please pray for academics at this time who are suffering major cutbacks in some of our Universities facing redundancy as well as the strike action that is resulting in such places.

3. Please pray for our campaign, "C-A-N- 50" to reach Christian academics under the age of 50 in the UK, and if there are at least 50 of them, that we will find them.

If you are a Christian Academic who does not know C-A-N-, please visit our website and email tim.brown@c-a-n.org.uk to join our 1-2 monthly newsletter list and connect with us.