All the easy problems have pretty much been solved. What’s left is complexity that requires more than a narrow lens. I pity the politicians who are asked to resolve complex issues in a 90-second time frame during a debate. The list is long: hunger, infectious disease, refugees, undocumented immigrants, climate change, transnational crime, human trafficking, gender identification, religious freedom, terrorism, widening income disparity, Wall Street, lobbying, purchasing the presidency.
February 17, 2016 By 4 Comments
January 26, 2016 By 21 Comments
Championing Every Kind of Diversity—but Christian
In light of recent regulatory actions, several Christian universities have applied for a government-established exemption from Title IX. Most of the issues deal with gender identity, mission-fit hiring, and expectations regarding sexual behavior. Universities that apply for the exemption are being targeted by media and accused of doing everything allowable under the exemption.
According to the press, these universities are denying admission to pregnant mothers, expelling out-of-the closet students, and being homophobic to the Nth degree. I know a lot of Christian university presidents. This is neither the practice nor the desire of the ones I know.
So why are schools applying for the exemption?
August 27, 2015 By 4 Comments
Against the Odds – Why a Christian University in the Heart of Nashville is Thriving
As we go into the fall season, I am grateful for the strength of the university that I serve. We are seeing triple digit growth and are breaking all-time records for freshman enrollment, undergraduate enrollment, and total enrollment. The high-water marks of last year will soon trail the new numbers for this year.
Why? If you read articles about colleges, you’ll recognize that this pattern is not the norm. The pundits predict the demise of private Christian colleges. Tennessee has made community college free. Yes, we are competing with free. Everyone says tuition is skyrocketing and is out of control.
Church support for the Christian mission of a university is down. States are trimming funding for college. Many are declaring that a college degree is not worth what it costs, especially in terms of the number of years it takes to pay back a college loan. Liberal arts degrees are under attack as “too general” and “too vague” to offer a skill set that is marketable.
I read this stuff all the time. Most of it has been challenged statistically (and correctly) in studies done by the Council for Independent Colleges (CIC).
[Read more…]
June 12, 2015 By 2 Comments
Trust
The essence of biblical covenant relationships is found in the Hebrew word, chesed. When people enter covenant, chesed—which is often translated as “loving-kindness” or “steadfast love”—is established between them. Trust is implicit to the covenant relationship and suggests that we intend to behave in certain faithful ways toward each other while expecting the same in return. The beginning assumption is peace, not conflict; trust, not suspicion.
The church today needs a greater degree of trust in at least three different areas.
Generational Trust
An older generation needs to trust the missional spirit of a younger generation as they seek to reach their changing world. The pessimism about the younger generation is not valid. Our youth are in touch with the same God who found us early in our lives and dreamed through us the church as it became under our leadership.
February 24, 2015 By 18 Comments
Peace-Mongers and Spineless Leaders
Mega-churches explode in overnight growth, build big, borrow big, and explode big as they collapse. Compassionate non-profit ministries, rich in compassion, often drown in red ink. Christian colleges groan and die under the weight of complexity in a competitive world.
Why is it that people who intend such good through the creation of non-profit organizations often close the doors of the same organizations in embarrassed shame?
The Americanization of Christianity has shaped a religion that is, if anything, nice. Offense is intended toward no one. Being liked is the quest. Overlooking incompetency, arrogance, or laziness is easier than confronting it. And the result is that such organizations spiritualize their problems rather than confront them. They form a culture in which sabotage works. And given the human propensity toward evil, organizations eat the fruit of the culture they nourish.
Edwin Friedman writes in A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
In any type of institution whatsoever, when a self-directed, imaginative, energetic, or creative member is being consistently frustrated and sabotaged rather than encouraged and supported, what will turn out to be true one hundred percent of the time, regardless of whether the disrupters are supervisors, subordinates, or peers, is that the person at the very top of that institution is a peace-monger. By that I mean a highly anxious risk-avoider, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus, a middler, someone who is so incapable of taking well-defined stands that his disability seems to be genetic, someone who functions as if she had been filleted of backbone, someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas – one whiff, on goes the emotional gas mask, and he flits. Such leaders are often nice, if not charming (pages 13-14).
Serving as president of a Christian university, I can testify to the gravitational pull of the niceness. Rather than making hard choices, leaders are asked to make people feel good. “Forgive the person; he meant well.” “Love covers a multitude of sins.” “Don’t make waves.” “If you step out on a limb, the cost could be your job.” I’ve heard them all as excuses for not doing what is right for the organization.
The Americanized gospel has shaped us to expect the blessings we desire without any suffering en route. If we’re nice, we deserve to have it. A gospel that does not confront our selfishness, our narrowness, our incompetency, and our arrogance eventually forms us to be saboteurs of any leader who dares stand on conviction that disagrees with ours.
We have grown our own terrorists. Our institutions collapse, not from evil without, but from a cult of niceness within.
June 24, 2014 By 2 Comments
Is College Worth It?
Is college worth it?
This seems to be the big question these days. You know my prejudices before reading the rest of this post. And if I wrote only from the perspective of worldly wisdom, my answer would go like this:
The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else has reached a record high. “According to the new data, which is based on an analysis of Labor Department statistics by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, Americans with four-year college degrees made 98 percent more an hour on average in 2013 than people without a degree…. The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014.” (David Leonhardt, The Upshot, May 27, 2014) The value of a college education has never been higher. Trevecca students graduate with an average debt less than the price of a mid-sized used car and will go on to earn half-a-million to a million more during their lifetime than their non-degreed peers.
But this answer, while true, bows to the wrong God. Money has been elevated to a position once held by God, the ultimate justifier. President Obama and the US Department of Education are rolling out new requirements that the incomes of college graduates must be tracked for proof that they make money. The one common religion that encompasses the entire world is the pursuit of wealth. Now the only sanctioned reason for going to college is to make more money.
While I am committed to an education that enables a graduate to do great work, I believe the reason for a Christian university is much more radical. We are training cultural and economic missionaries who invade every field of human work with an alternate view of reality. Our graduates believe that the kingdom of God comes as we do the will of the Father on earth as it is done in heaven.
What if there was a college that graduated people marked by the character of God, whose work ethic was driven by their moral values, and whose concern for the neighbor made the world more just and gracious?
What if there was a college that taught its graduates how to make a life?
I went to one. I work at one. It’s called Trevecca. And it’s worth every penny.
January 28, 2014 By 3 Comments
Mentoring Young Adults: What Are We Thinking?
One of the better books I’ve read is Souls in Transition
January 23, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Good Bones
Looking for a house is an exhausting endeavor. Having moved a few times, I’ve logged enough hours to reflect. First impression is powerful – a painted front door, open spaces, fragrant aroma. I knew by how a house smelled whether my wife would like it or not. She could sniff a house and know if it would do. I was never able to talk her into a fixer-upper. It didn’t matter what my “vision of what this could become” was; it just didn’t smell right.
A friend of ours was also looking for a house. As he surveyed the available real estate, he was careful to look beyond the surface features of the house – the paint, the wallpaper, the carpet, the drapes, the smell. He was interested in the foundation and the load bearing walls. I was amused by his insistence that the house have “good bones.” All the rest could be altered, but you live with the structure of the bones.
December 17, 2013 By Leave a Comment
A Great Christmas Gift
What will you give your teenager for Christmas this year?
As parents of three daughters, Denise and I faced that question many times. And when each daughter reached her senior year, we found ourselves looking at funding the next chapter of her story – college. It would be the largest single expense item that we had encountered to date. Our Christmas savings plan would not cover this gift. What do we do? Do we look for the cheapest option, the live-at-home path, the online alternative? Or do we take a deep breath and consider the kind of formation we are purchasing for our child?
