One year ago today I joined the faculty of Samford University to teach missions in the newly developed Christian Ministry program that would quickly become the university’s Christian Ministry Department and home to Samford’s Ministry Training Institute. It has been a wonderful year, filled with excitement and challenge and saturated with God’s grace. I wrote about my transition in a post HERE last June.
The Christian Ministry program was launched in August 2019 under the executive leadership of Scott Guffin. It was at the same time our new Christian Ministry major was made available to the students. Scott addressed this new initiative last October in THIS EPISODE of Strike the Match.
The past year has been a whirlwind of wonderful activity. Galen Jones joined our department in January. I survived zip-lining during our student-faculty department retreat. The number of student majors has almost doubled since last fall. We developed five new courses in missions and two minors: Church and Culture and Intercultural Engagement.
Samford is a great university. Of course, I am biased. But you don’t have to take my word for it. This week, Kiplinger‘s released its college and university rankings. Samford is in the top 10% of all institutions in the United States and is the highest ranked of all public and private universities in Alabama.
If you know of a future student looking for a place to study, please consider pointing him or her to Samford. If I may be of any assistance in this process, feel free to contact me at jd.payne@samford.edu
