Wheaton College Installs New President
Wheaton College inaugurated its newest president on Friday.
Dr. Philip Graham Ryken succeeds Dr. Duane Litfin as the eighth president of the prominent evangelical college in Illinois.
"I am here because I believe that God has appointed this College as a vital instrument in the worldwide work of his kingdom," Ryken said during his inaugural address, according to a press release. "This is no safe retreat, but a strategic base of operations for the global advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the discipleship of the Christian mind."
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Ryken is a 1988 graduate of Wheaton College. He was serving as senior minister of the 1,500-large Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia when he was selected earlier this year to lead the private liberal arts college. The selection was made after a more than two-year search.
In his speech Friday, the Wheaton native outlined a vision calling for global engagement.
"Through excellence in Christian liberal arts education, we have a place of worldwide service, in a century that will offer us unprecedented opportunities for global engagement," he said.
"Imagine the leaders of African colleges revitalizing our evangelical convictions out of the strength of their historic Christian orthodoxy. Imagine the professors at the rising Christian universities of China learning how to integrate learning with faith in wise collaboration with faculty from Wheaton College," Ryken envisioned. "Imagine more students from South and Central America enriching our campus community by sharing their experience of suffering and joy before returning home with the treasures of the liberal arts in the Christian tradition.
"Imagine these things and you begin to imagine a mission as big and as beautiful as the kingdom of God itself."
Ryken is a council member of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and a Board of Trustees member at Westminster Theological Seminary and Wheaton College. He has lectured at schools around the world and has published more than 30 books, including City on a Hill: Recovering the Biblical Pattern for the Church in the 21st Century.
Wheaton has an enrollment of approximately 2,400 undergraduates and 500 graduate students. Established in 1860, Wheaton College's mission is "to help build the church and improve society worldwide by promoting the development of whole and effective Christians through excellence in programs of Christian higher education." Evangelist Billy Graham is one of the college's most renowned graduates.
