Houston Baptist University inaugurates president

Posted: 12/01/06

Houston Baptist University inaugurates president

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

HOUSTON—Houston Baptist University installed Robert Sloan as the school’s third president Nov. 29, and the newly inaugurated president used the occasion to underscore his commitment to the integration of faith and learning—a recurring theme during his tenure as president of Baylor University.

Sloan told the diverse assembly—including the executive directors of the rival Baptist General Convention of Texas and Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, as well as representatives from about 100 universities—his last two or three years at Baylor had been “difficult and challenging.”

“I honestly never thought I would be a college president again,” he acknowledged.

But after he and his wife, Sue, spent considerable time in prayer and reflection, Sloan said he became convinced God had called him to Christian higher education.

Two factors made Houston Baptist University particularly attractive—its strong Christian commitment and its urban setting, he noted.

“Houston Baptist University has sought to be faithful to its confessional self-identity and to embrace it in an urban setting,” he said.

Commitment to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ means a Christian worldview should permeate every academic discipline, he asserted.

“There is no sphere of reality—no corner of the universe—outside the lordship of Jesus Christ,” Sloan said. “Therefore, we need fear no inquiry. We are to be fully engaged in the life of the mind.”

Few evangelical Christian universities exist in urban settings, and its strategic location gives HBU a special mission, he added.

“Our calling is in an urban setting, and we are to bear witness in the great city,” Sloan said. “Our witness must be borne in a city where the peoples of the earth come together—a center of culture and commerce.”

In the keynote address earlier in the inaugural ceremony, Ed Young, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Houston, likewise had stressed the importance of a distinctively Christian university in a culture dominated by secular “barbarians.”

“Barbarians are individuals who live by power for pleasure without principle,” Young said.

Duane Brooks, pastor of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, presented the spiritual charge to the new university president, encouraging Sloan to emulate “the ancient image of the shepherd (rather) than the modern image of the CEO.”

Brooks urged Sloan to lead in a loving way—love for God and for the people whom he will lead. Based on what he already had observed and knew about his former teacher, Brooks said Sloan was “immanently qualified” to carry out that charge.