Henry Center Objectives
1. Providing an articulate evangelical voice
The Henry Center provides an international and multicultural center of excellence in biblically informed reflection that presents an articulate evangelical voice in and to the church, academy, and world.
2. Creating a forum for mutual dialogue and collaboration
Both through our perennial ministries and our diverse, faculty-led initiatives, the Henry Center creates a forum in which biblical and theological scholars are able to listen to and learn from “others”—practitioners in ministry, minority voices, scholars from non-theological disciplines—about the promotion of biblical wisdom and about the ways in which diverse social and cultural factors often complicate, challenge, and contribute to our understanding of what it means to be biblical in particular contexts.
3. Financially and institutionally supporting wisdom-oriented theological reflection
To support each initiative by putting institutional resources at its disposal and by recalling each initiative to the central idea of the HCTU, namely, the pursuit of biblical wisdom for the sake of the whole church.
4. Identifying and theologically responding to crucial points of cultural crisis
To identify crucial points of cultural crisis and to develop practical strategies for engaging culture in the three domains of church, academy, and world.
5. Developing faith-based, wisdom-oriented methods of theological understanding
To develop methods of theological interpretation of Scripture and of biblical theology that will serve as paradigms of excellent evangelical practice.
6. Promoting the reform of theological education
To serve as a catalyst for a new wisdom-oriented model of higher theological education that will both be formed by TEDS faculty and inform curricular changes at TEDS and other confessionally based colleges and seminaries around the world.
7. Preserving a legacy
To train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world.