ABHE’s 62nd Annual Meeting will be held February 19-21, 2009 at the very popular 2008 meeting venue, the Florida Hotel and Conference Center at the Florida Mall. The meeting will feature plenary speakers, a pre-convention workshop, and a special workshop track exploring, through the theme of Engaging Culture Through Biblical Thinking, the implications of ABHE members’ commitment to ensure that their educational offerings are pervasively and intentionally biblical. We engage in biblical higher education – education that involves extensive and serious study of the text of God’s eternal Word, not in a posture of detachment and skepticism, but in a posture of discipleship and submission, seeking to understand the will of God so that we may conform to it, and the plan of God so that we may join Him in bringing about its fulfillment. This engagement with Scripture ensures that the formation of Christian worldview issues not merely from sincere devotion to Christ, but also out of a comprehensive grasp of biblical teaching and a well-honed and growing ability to bring sound theological thinking to bear upon every aspect of experience and empirical observation.

Alarming declines in biblical literacy and the resurgence in North America of neo-pagan ideologies and spirituality confront our institutions and their internal and external stakeholders. Powerful reality-defining cultural mechanisms call for truth to be forfeited in the name of tolerance. These trends and others require ABHE institutional boards, executive and academic leaders, and faculty members to renew their commitment and hone their capacity for cultivating biblical thinking that engages the present and future cultural milieu. We need to help students learn to recognize competing cultural assumptions and truth claims and to develop the capacity to formulate a thoughtful biblical witness in the face of shifting cultural and ideological realities.

Workshop Proposals:  The Annual Meeting will feature approximately 30 professional development workshop options. Workshop tracks will be offered for the following biblical higher education roles and professional interest areas:

• governance/trusteeship
• presidential leadership
• academic leadership
• biblical integration/Christian worldview
• assessment/planning
• library & information science
• accreditation procedures
• fund raising/resource development.

Proposals for 2009 Annual Meeting workshops should be submitted by June 30, 2008.  To obtain a workshop proposal submission form, click here or e-mail ABHE’s Communications Director, Carol Dibble - carol@abhe.org.

Plenary Speakers

• Peter Jones, Executive Director, Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet
• Woodrow Kroll, President, Back to the Bible
• J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University

Pre-Conference Workshop(s):

• Assessment: Rusty Waller/Javier Elizondo
• Developing and Teaching Biblical Worldview: tbd

Post-Conference Workshop(s):

• Librarians: Today’s Student in Social Networking [9am - 11am]
• COA: New Commissioner Orientation [9am - 10:30am]

Music/Worship:

• Jim Hart & Friends – Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies

Collaborating Organizations:

• Association of Business Administrators of Christian Colleges (ABACC) – workshop sessions accessible
• Association of Christian Librarians (ACL) – special workshop track available

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