WHAT WE DO
“The thing being made in a university is humanity.”
~Wendell Berry
A Christian Study Center is an independent intellectual community rooted in Christian faith, located alongside a major university. We are a place where students and faculty can wrestle with hard questions about meaning, vocation, and how faith connects to their academic work.
37 peer institutions already have a center like this, including Yale, UVA, Michigan, UNC, Georgetown, and MIT. The Rice Christian Study Center formed an Advisory Committee in November 2025, hosted daily prayer in the Rice Memorial Center Chapel during the Spring 2026 semester, and became a registered student organization at Rice University in May 2026. We are just getting started.
PROGRAM FRAMEWORK
THREE WAYS TO GO DEEPER
WELCOME
creating space of belonging & community
Most Fridays, we gather around a table. Through lunches, public lectures, and monthly social, we create room for the kind of conversations that don’t happen in a classroom or a lab.
CORE PROGRAMS:
The Daily Office - Chapel
Veritas Forum Faculty-Student Lunch - Sept 18th, 2026
The Table Lunch Lectures - beginning Sept 25, 2026
Public Lectures
Monthly Socials
WISDOM
being transformed by the renewing of our minds
Reading groups, a faculty cohort, and the Augustine Collective student journal - spaces to go deeper than a single semester allows, and to think with others over time.
CORE PROGRAMS:
Faculty Reading Groups
Student Reading Groups
Augustine Collective Student Journal
Fellows Program
Summer Pilgrimages
WONDER
finding our places in the story of God
Vocational reading groups, theology of work seminars, mentorship circles, and retreats - for students who want to connect what they are studying to what they are called to do.
CORE PROGRAMS:
Vocational Reading Groups
Theology of Work seminars
Industry-Specific Offerings
Mentorship Circles
Vocational Discernment Retreats
WHY NOW?
WHY A CHRISTIAN STUDY
CENTER MATTERS AT RICE
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Rice University is a strategic mission field in Houston for shaping the next generation, and students there need more than events or encouragement. They need a place where faith, learning, and vocation come together—a place of welcome, wisdom, and belonging that helps them move from curiosity to conviction and from campus life to lifelong discipleship. The Rice Christian Study Center exists to meet that need by bridging the gap between the classroom, church, and vocational imagination - helping students and faculty discover God’s story and their place in it.
OUR MOVEMENT
THE CONSORTIUM OF CHRISTIAN STUDY CENTERS
The Consortium of Christian Study Centers grows out of the grassroots Christian Study Center movement. University-based study centers, influenced by destination study centers such as L’Abri and the lay theological education movement led by Regent College (Vancouver, BC), first emerged in North America in the 1970s and 1980s. The earliest centers include the Center for Christian Study (UVA, Charlottesville, 1975), New College Berkeley (UC Berkeley, 1977) and the MacLaurin Institute (UMN, Twin Cities, 1982). Today there are 37 Christian Study Centers across the US and the UK.
OUR PEOPLE
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
