Trinity Christian College

Rhoda Mattson

Associate Professor of Education

Director of the Education Unit

on faculty since 2008

Phone: 708.293.4527
Fax: 708-597-5858
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Education

LL.M., Loyola University, Chicago, Illinois, 2008
J.D., Thomas M. Cooley Law School, Lansing, Michigan, 2002
M.S., Pensacola Christian College, Pensacola, Florida, 1996
B.S., Pensacola Christian College, Pensacola, Florida, 1994

Professional and Personal Interests

When thinking about her world view of education, Rhoda Mattson refers to Eugene Peterson’s idea of a “Trinity-mapped country in which we know and believe in and serve God,” which he discusses in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. This idea considers the Father’s relationship to creation, the Son’s to history, and the Spirit’s to community.

For Mattson, education is part of the calling to seek after and find the wonder of God and his creation. “We live within a creation charged with value and goodness. It is a world worth exploring and knowing,” said Mattson. “And God himself has given us—his image-bearing creatures—a blessed charge to be fruitful and fill and subdue and rule his creation-world. This is the context in which we teach and learn.”

Jesus’ relationship to the history of the world begins at the creation but is made all the more prominent in the fall resulting in a great need for salvation and restoration. “Education is not just finding out what happened in the world and what the solutions are so that we can fix it,” said Mattson. “It is grappling with the messiness of history and participating in Jesus’ work by living a sacrificial life in Jesus’ name.”

The Spirit in the world of education is the Spirit of community, according to Mattson. In an academic world where education all too often encourages individualism, Mattson sees teaching as the task of meeting people where they’re at and extending the love of the Spirit to them.

“The task of teaching and learning in the context of God in Christ encourages an understanding that life is more than the satisfaction of my needs and wants and impulses,” said Mattson. “It is teaching and learning in the community of others suffused with the power of the Spirit whose fruits are love and joy and peace.”

Courses Taught

• General Methods
• Contemporary Issues Seminar

Papers Published and/or Presented

With Joy Meyer. “Co-Teaching as a Model for Student Teaching,” Dist. 157 – Hoover School. Calumet City, Illinois. November 2009.

“Being and Becoming the Beloved of the God of Jubilee,” Trinity Christian College. Palos Heights, Illinois. October 2009.