President Brenneman

Related links:

• View photos from the 2013 Baccalaureate service
• Read the press release about the service
• Commencement speech by Dan Charles, NPR’s food and agriculture correspondent (full-text)

Baccalaureate sermon, delivered by Dr. James E. Brenneman, President of Goshen College on Sunday, April 28, 2013 in the Goshen College Church-Chapel

Scripture Reading:  Ephesians 3:16-19

I.

Today, I am full of joy and profoundly grateful. I rejoice with you and all your loved ones that you made it to the finish line of your respective degree programs, be that a bachelors or masters at Goshen College. I am grateful that you have drunk deeply from the well of knowledge and grateful that in the process you have learned something of the height and depth of the love of God.

Knowledge and love, love and knowledge – two sacred values worth pondering by any would-be graduate of any university, but even more so, a Goshen College graduate. And so, I am particularly grateful, that the Senior Class Planning Committee chose for this baccalaureate service the scripture from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – a prayer that combines love and knowledge, knowledge and love.

II.

“Knowledge is power” so we’re told by the philosophers, social scientists, civil rights activists, educators, infomaniacs, and just about everyone else. Love is power, we’re told. If so, A.J. Jacobs should be one of the mightiest men alive. He’s the editor of Esquire Magazine who wrote the New York Times best-selling book entitled: The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. A.J. spent more than a year reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, all 44 million words, from a-ak, which is an ancient East Asian music, to Zyweic, which is a town in Poland known for its beer.

A.J.’s the same guy who later wrote the bestseller, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible in which “he lets his beard grow so unruly that he’s regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and worries about stoning an adulterer he knows, and he tells the absolute truth in all situations – much to his wife’s chagrin.” AJ’s wife also hated it when AJ was writing Know-It-All  because he would tend to throw up his new-found knowledge about almost everything into regular dinner party conversation with friends. For example, one cold night upon arrival at a friend’s home, their friend Shannon opened the door with the usual banter, “A little nippy out there.” To which, A.J. responded, “Not quite as cold as Antarctica’s Vostok Station, which reached a record 128 degrees below zero, but it’s still a little cold.”

Another time at a seafood restaurant, he pointed out, just as the abalone was being served – using less delicate language than I am about to – “Do you know how many “be-hinds” the abalone has? For those of you who just have to know, the answer is five. We all know a few “know-it-alls’ don’t we? At times, know-it-alls are insufferable.

And yet, like any college worth its salt and tuition, we at Goshen College have encouraged you, invited you, prodded you to learn everything you could about everything you can all the time and everywhere and to do so for the rest of your lives. We wanted you to know as much as you could within your particular major or minor or double majors or triple minors and everything in-between. We take pride that your degree hails from among the top 10 percent of all colleges and universities among thousands by almost every measurable criterion by almost any comparative lists. We are thrilled that you will go on to earn Ph.D.’s at a rate per number of graduates higher than almost any school in the nation. Haven’t we done our best to create “know-it-alls” of most, if not all, of you?  At the very least we want to make  “know-as-much-as-you-cans” of all of you. And isn’t that a good thing? Well, yes, of course it is, but …

For the most part, the central project of most western colleges and universities has been to gain and dispense knowledge – to help the students become, well, “know-it-alls.” We are constantly testing your knowledge in college, something that we should do. Yet, “love” is seldom a distinct category for which we design curricula. “To love well” is not usually on a typical course syllabus as one of the stated outcomes of a class.

A math professor was asked in a recent survey of thousands of college teachers, whether he thought part of his role was to develop the moral and spiritual formation of students. Likely typical of his profession on this survey, “I only do math, not spiritual development,” he replied. “That is not in my area of competence.” We seem to have become so silo-like in our respective disciplines that the original intent of universities to develop students of character has all but disappeared. By the way, that math professor was not from Goshen College.

So it was absolutely refreshing to me when choosing the scripture lesson for this occasion, you went against the grain of higher education to describe what you thought was a great Goshen College education. After assessing all your hard work, all those long hours of study, all the newly gained skills and many learned accomplishments. After all that! And as great as that may be, when all’s said and done, you did the exceptional thing. You returned to the prayer of St. Paul to summarize your Goshen College experience. For you, the most important take-away was not simply raw, bare-boned “know-it-all-ism.” The most important take-away was to have been, as the Apostle Paul said, “rooted and established in love,” love of God, love for each other, and love for the world.

There it is: love and knowledge, a formidable team. From Socrates to Nietzsche to Levinas and Habermas, western philosophers have debated about the relationship between knowledge and love and power. St. Paul seems to be aware of those links: “I pray that you will have the power,” he writes, I pray you will have the “power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (of God), and to know this love that surpasses knowledge.”  Now that’s an epistemology worthy of a Ph.D. dissertation, one, I hope, will be written by one of you in this room someday. “To know a love that surpasses knowledge.” Amazing.

III.

In the 14th century, an anonymous English monk wrote a sublime work entitled, “The Cloud of Unknowing.” He wrote it to counsel a young person, a student of his, as to the limits of knowledge, especially in knowing God. For him, if there is to be a breakthrough to God, it would not likely come about by “knowing it all.” Rather, he writes: “… God can well be loved, but God cannot be thought … You must step above thought stoutly but deftly, with a devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat on that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love, and, whatever happens, do not give up.” Love in the cloud of unknowing is a love that encompasses the best of learning pedagogies, yet surpasses knowledge. Love in the cloud of unknowing is worthy of our life-long pursuit.

A love that surpasses knowledge, in the end, as St. Paul said, is what “endures forever.” A love that surpasses knowledge can bridge differences, profound differences in what we know to be certain for ourselves, even when someone else is certain about his or her perspective. When Jesus said, “Love your enemies,” it was not just a nice cliché. He was using a form of moral reasoning typical of rabbinic argumentation: state the extreme instance, such that every lesser instance is more attainable and expected. Jesus sensed that until one learned to love someone who profoundly disagrees with you, you, we, have not truly known love. Indeed, one of the best ways to learn, to grow, to know-it-all, is to wrestle with alternative points of view. To not learn to love difference is to stunt one’s mind and, sadly, one’s heart as well.

I hope that as you leave GC, you have learned to love someone you may have otherwise not known had you not come to GC. I hope you have learned to love someone of a different faith perspective, a different interpretation of Holy Scripture, a different life-orientation. Jesus isn’t asking us to agree. Jesus is asking us to love in the midst of our differences with a “love that surpasses knowledge.”

When I look around, I think you have caught the Spirit of that Love, a love that has aided you in adjusting to college, of missing home, of sorrowful estrangements, and losses. Together we suffered the unfathomable deaths of Professor Jim Miller and fellow student Millicent Morros.  And yes, there were anxieties over tests, of choosing a major, of the unknown future. But through it all, we discovered together that “love surpasses knowledge.”

IV.

The same Spirit of love permeated your lives in small and hugely significant ways. I remember the year when most of you arrived on campus (2009-2010), you helped the Athletic department raise enough money in its Leaf Relief Project to dig a fresh-water well at St. Mary’s Mumias Secondary school in Kakamega, Kenya. The following year (2010-2011) some of you travelled to the Mideast to help with summer camp programs at Wi’am, the Palestinian Peace and Reconciliation Center established by Marcelle Zoughbi’s father. During the harsh winter of 2012, you, along with faculty and staff, helped raise $25,000 and build a new Habitat for Humanity house for the family of Eddie Mayorga, a Goshen College Physical Plant staff member. I remember that during the ground breaking, Eddie reached out his hands and said in Spanish, “If I could hug every one of you I would. I thank God … for the support that you have given me.” And then, as if that wasn’t enough, you took-on another house-build for another family this year.

You have volunteered to tutor for the love of kids, you composted waste for the love of the earth, you prayed around the clock for a whole week several different years for the love of God and the world. Your senior class gift is among the top amounts given: given to support Prism programing, SST endowment, and a Community Gardens project.

You have held newborns in Nicaragua, taught English in Cambodia, served the deaf community in Peru, held basketball camps down the street. You have learned to live lives of service and learning on every inhabitable continent on earth. By my estimation, in the four years you were here at Goshen College, all students, along with faculty, staff, and administrators showed God’s love for others with more than 60,000 service hours per year that you were here! You, my dear students, have embodied a “love that surpasses knowledge.”

V.

If as you leave GC, you have more questions than when you arrived; if you are not, in fact, “know-it-alls,” if you have come to the edge of all you know; and yet have learned a bit more about how to love God, love yourself, love others and love creation, then you have received an education of a lifetime.

In the end, though, I believe that to know such love, is less about our capacity to “beat on the thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love,” than it is a simple gift unbidden by us from an all-knowing God, who broke through the clouds of unknowing as the Christ, and continues to do so, to bid us welcome! In the end, in his great epistemological masterpiece on Love (1 Corin.13), St. Paul concludes:  “faith, hope and love, abide, but the greatest of these is love.”

So, graduates of 2013, I pray with St. Paul and all your beloved professors, that more than any diploma presented to you later today, that each of you for the rest of your days may continue to “receive power to know the height and depth and the breadth and the width of the love of God in Christ – a love that surpasses all knowledge.”

Goshen College President James E. Brenneman spoke during the opening convocation on Wednesday, Sept. 5.
Photo by Jodi H. Beyeler.

Related links:

• View photos from the 2012-13 opening convocation and Applause Tunnel.
• Read a full transcript of President Brenneman’s speech “On Becoming a Passionate Learner” (as prepared for delivery).

GOSHEN, Ind. — Goshen College President James E. Brenneman opened the new school year with an impassioned call to action – that all Goshen students fulfill their God-given potential by becoming life-long passionate learners.

“As you enter Goshen College for the first time or as you get ready to graduate this year or if you are anywhere in between, I implore you, while you are here, catch the contagion of passionate learning. Become the passionate lovers of learning that God invites each of us to be. If you do, you will never be the same for the rest of your days,” he said.

Speaking on Wednesday, Sept. 5 at the first all-campus convocation of the 2012-2013 academic year, the president offered faith, academic and career advice during an address titled “On Becoming a Passionate Learner.”

Brenneman, a 1977 graduate of Goshen College who is starting his seventh year as president, began by welcoming students, faculty and staff to a new school year. He led the crowd in cheering for seniors, juniors and sophomores, first-year and transfer students, fans of technology and those who love books, newspapers and learning.

The president’s primary message focused on passionate learning, one of the college’s core values, and a subject for in-depth discussion and reflection during the coming school year. The college’s other core values are Christ-centeredness, servant leadership, global citizenship and compassionate peacemaking.

In introducing the topic, Brenneman recalled the colorful life of Professor Emeritus Merle E. Jacobs, an avid researcher of dragonflies, fruit flies, fish and birds. Jacobs, who taught at Goshen from 1953-54 and 1964-85, died in April 2008.

Brenneman said that when Jacobs was a boy, growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Pennsylvania, he loved all birds but was most passionate about yellow canaries. From a pair of birds, Jacobs developed a flock of 67 canaries – all living inside his family’s home. Fifty years later, Professor Jacobs was Brenneman’s genetics professor at Goshen College.

“Professor Jacobs was still obsessed with canaries and other birds, but he had branched out making quite a name for himself studying the genetics of aging in fruit flies. He loved his fruit flies almost as much as his canaries and almost as much as current Assistant Professor of Biology Andy Ammons loves his honeybees,” Brenneman said.

“If any of you haven’t yet stood in the midst of thousands of honey bees swarming all around you, while Dr. Ammons gives a lecture on the sex lives of honey bees, you haven’t yet lived on the edge of learning,” he said. “Professor Jacobs embodied, as Assistant Professor Ammons still embodies, the core value of passionate learning.”

Besides helping to develop greater expertise in one’s chosen vocation, Brenneman said that a passion for learning would have practical career implications for graduates.

“I can almost guarantee, that when you go to your first post-graduation job interview, one of the top questions you will be asked is this: ‘What are you passionate about?’” Brenneman said. “In his best-selling book, Corner Office, Adam Bryant interviewed over 700 leading CEOs in America and asked them: ‘What qualities do you see most often in those who succeed?’ Their overwhelming response was ‘passionate curiosity.’”

Although many people may believe a passion for learning is commonplace, Brenneman said in fact it is a “revolutionary” idea: “In the western philosophical tradition, the juxtaposition of passion with learning was damnable. The word passion, or pathos, was associated at one extreme with intense suffering, as in ‘the passion of Christ.’ Indeed, for nearly 2,400 years or so in learning circles, the idea of passion or pathos was considered a counterpoint to thinking or learning, like two magnetic learning poles repelling each other.”

Brenneman said the western tradition idealized thinking and belittled feelings, because it was believed that ideas were best accessed through reason, whereas passions were dangerous and misleading and operated on the lower level of human nature.

“God, by contrast, was considered ‘Pure Thought’ whose divine essence was thinking. God was above joy and sorrow and passion,” Brenneman said. “So it was that for nearly 2,000 years, Christian and Jewish theologians were embarrassed by the God portrayed in Scripture – a God full of passion; sometimes angry, sometimes elated, sometimes jealous, sometimes forgiving, at times weeping, showing compassion, intimate, personal.”

Given those longstanding biases, Brenneman said that Goshen College’s decision to claim passionate learning as a core value, “goes against the grain of the old story of western learning tradition and reclaims a missing piece – supported by Scripture – of a truly comprehensive liberal arts education.”

Brenneman pointed out that Albert Einstein had many passions outside physics, including sailing, playing his violin and building elaborate houses of cards. Einstein stated that his varied experiences sparked his creative imagination. In fact, Einstein credited the musical perception he developed as a child as the creative force behind his greatest insight, the Theory of Relativity.

“I find it rather ironic, then, that in our quest these days to strengthen science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs in our schools, we are more and more inclined to cut budgets for the arts and music, somehow imagining that those programs should be extracurricular and play second fiddle to the hard sciences,” Brenneman said. “So to our shame and to the long-term learning deficit at the highest levels of learning, students are getting more math without music, more science without images, more engineering without poetry, more technology without intuition and knowledge without imagination.”

Fortunately, Brenneman said, passionate learning is celebrated at Goshen College among students and faculty. He described a number of faculty members who are living out their passions for learning by exploring the physics of sound and shapes of bells, connecting with God and others through art, discovering a gene that causes blindness in homing pigeons and much more.

He also paid tribute to Rocio Díaz, the community outreach coordinator for the Center for Intercultural and International Education (CIIE), who is pursuing a bachelor’s degree at Goshen College despite great odds. “Here is a Latina first-generation immigrant to the United States, a mother who first helped put her own two daughters through college, and then, while working full-time, taking classes in her second language, has managed to go to GC and keep her GPA up to 3.7. Wow! That’s a passion for learning.”

Brenneman encouraged students to pursue passionate learning with all of their senses — a quest, he said, that was grounded in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

“When Jesus claimed that all of Scripture could be summed up in two phrases, the first of the two, pretty much defines, theologically, the meaning of being passionate: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your might.’

“Jesus uses the word love and adds intensity to it. Love combines with passion to multiply endurance, discipline and self-sacrifice – all the ingredients you need to succeed over time,” Brenneman said. “So Jesus says, to love, desire, with all your senses. Love with every ounce of your mental powers. Love with every tensile of every muscle. Love passionately, love intensely, love with all you got.”

Brenneman’s remarks were preceded and followed by music. Assistant Professor of Music Christopher Fashun performed a percussion solo on a marimba. Afterward, Department Chair and Professor of Music Beverly Lapp and a string quartet led the campus community in singing the Alma Mater.

Afterward, and in what has become an 11-year tradition, the Goshen College “Tunnel of Welcome” or “Applause Avenue” was formed — two lines departed the sanctuary led by faculty and staff, who applauded the seniors, juniors, sophomores and finally the first-year students. Normally, the line progresses outside the building, but rainfall prompted a change in destination and all were treated to popsicles in the church Fellowship Hall.

–Written by Richard R. Aguirre

Goshen College President James E. Brenneman spoke during the opening convocation on Wednesday, Sept. 5.
Photo by Jodi H. Beyeler.

Related links:

• View photos from the 2012-13 opening convocation and Applause Tunnel.
• Read the press release about the convocation

Fall Opening Convocation message, delivered by Dr. James E. Brenneman, President of Goshen College, on Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012, in the Goshen College Church-Chapel (as prepared for delivery)

Little Merle Jacobs was absolutely passionate about canaries. He loved all birds really.  For example, he loved chickens, even hypnotizing one once. He built his own telescope, not so much to watch stars, but to watch birds. And there were plenty bird species to watch in the Appalachian Mountains of southwest Pennsylvania, where he was born into a family of 11 children.

Merle loved birds, but was obsessed with yellow canaries. His aunt gave him a male and a female canary once and it wasn’t long until he had 67 canaries – all living in their house. Yep. His mom and dad aided and abetted his passion, giving up a closed in back porch that opened into his bedroom. The canaries were free to fly in and out of his bedroom at leisure. He also kept mice in the room as the scavengers cleaning up the fallen seeds, which the canaries dropped. I wonder who cleaned up what the mice dropped? (See his autobiography, Mr. Darwin Misread Miss Peacock’s Mind).

Some 50 years later, I had the privilege of having Professor Merle Jacobs as my genetics professor here at Goshen College. Professor Jacobs was still obsessed with canaries and other birds, but he had branched out making quite a name for himself studying the genetics of aging in fruit flies. He loved his fruit flies almost as much as his canaries and almost as much as current Assistant Professor of Biology Andy Ammons, loves his honeybees.

If any of you haven’t yet stood in the midst of thousands of honey bees swarming all around you, while Dr. Ammons gives a lecture on the sex lives of honey bees, you haven’t yet lived on the edge of learning. Let me just say, if humans were more like honey bees, look out men. And long live women, especially the queen bee. Professor Jacobs embodied, as Assistant Professor Ammons still embodies, the core value of passionate learning.

In our last convocation at the end of the last school year, I announced that the core value we would focus on together this school year was Christ-centered passionate learning. I can almost guarantee, that when you go to your first post-graduation job interview, one of the top questions you will be asked is this: “What are you passionate about?” If asked that question today, would you have answer?

In his best-selling book, Corner Office, Adam Bryant interviewed over 700 leading CEOs in America and asked them: “What qualities do you see most often in those who succeed?” Their overwhelming response was: “passionate curiosity.”

So, what are you passionate about? I won’t ask you to respond to that question today, but I would recommend that by the end of this year, and certainly by the time you go for your first job interview, you might have a ready response.

Let me tell you how revolutionary the core value of passionate learning truly is! In the Western philosophical tradition, the juxtaposition of passion with learning was damnable. The word passion or pathos was associated at one extreme with intense suffering, as in “the passion of Christ.” Indeed, for nearly 2,400 years or so in learning circles, the idea of passion or pathos was considered a counterpoint to thinking or learning (a-pathos/ without passion), like two magnetic learning poles repelling each other.

Literally, since the time of Plato in 400 BC, on through Philo, Aristotle, the Stoics, Maimonides, Aquinas, Descarte, and Kant, the standard story of learning in the whole Western tradition idealized thinking and belittled feeling. It was thought that ideas were best accessed only through reason, whereas passions were dangerous and misleading and operated on the lower level of human nature. God, by contrast, was considered “Pure Thought” whose divine essence was thinking. God was above joy and sorrow and passion. God was the Unmoved Mover. Apathy –  not sympathy or empathy – was said by Maimonides (Spinoza/Kant) to be the supreme core value. Impassionate learning and the capacity for impersonal objectivity became the norm for learning, especially in the sciences.

So it was that for nearly 2,000 years, Christian and Jewish theologians were embarrassed by the God portrayed in Scripture – a God full of passion; sometimes angry, sometimes elated, sometimes jealous, sometimes forgiving, at times weeping, showing compassion, intimate, personal, sympathetic was a crudity. Even more intolerable to such a world-view, was a God who came into this world of passions in human form: God-in-Christ. Given the standard philosophical assumptions of what by then had become the whole scientific world view, and given the bad insertions of theology into science from time to time, it became pretty easy to separate such a pathetic (pathos-filled) God from the rational enterprise of learning.

So when Goshen College goes on record saying a core value of ours is passionate learning, it is a wonderful, amazing confession that goes “against the grain” of the old story of Western learning tradition and reclaims a missing piece (supported by Scripture) of a truly comprehensive liberal arts education. Fortunately, over the past 50-60 years, a new story is being told of amazing new learning styles and methods that include the whole range of human experience.

If we would have asked Albert Einstein what his passions were, he probably would have answered, sailing, playing his violin, smoking his pipe and building houses of cards (he once built a house of cards fourteen stories high). All of these experiences, he said, sparked his creative imagination. Einstein once told the great music educator, Shinichi Suzuki, that the theory of relativity came to him by intuition and only because his parents had him play the violin since he was 6. It was his musical perception, Einstein said, that provided the venue and the creative force behind his greatest insight, theory of relativity.

Since music has both a spatial dimension (hearing in space) and a time dimension (meter), it may have been this relative connection between time/space that would aid him in creating his famous time/space equation – after the fact as it were. Einstein once claimed that language (including the mathematical equations he came up with) were only secondary explanations (second order learning) of what he intuited or subconsciously felt or discovered to be true.

I find it rather ironic, then, that in our quest these days to strengthen science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs in our schools, we are more and more inclined to cut budgets for the arts and music somehow imagining that those programs should be extracurricular and play second fiddle to the hard sciences. So to our shame and to the long-term learning deficit at the highest levels of learning, students are getting more math without music, more science without images, more engineering without poetry, more technology without intuition and knowledge without imagination (something Einstein said was an oxymoron). Let me underscore why then, here at Goshen College, we celebrate the core value of passionate learning as the best form of learning available to us. (See, “Imagine That! Einstein on Creative Thinking” by Michelle and Robert Root-Berstein, Psychology Today, 03.31.10).

I marvel at the fact that Goshen College Professor of Physics John Buschert is so very passionate about the connection between the physics of sound and shapes of bells. I love that Chad Coleman, our director of residence life, also known as ‘iChad,’ is so passionate about technology that he can make luddites like me and you get goose bumps when he talks about the amazing gift technology is to the world of learning.

I stand in awe at how Rocio Diaz, Community Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Intercultural and International Education (CIIE), embodies passionate learning viscerally.  Her enthusiasm and dogged determination to pursue her very own B.A. at Goshen College is truly amazing and against all odds. Here is a Latina first generation immigrant to the United States, a mother who her first helped put her own two daughters through college, and then, while working full-time, taking classes in her second language, has managed to go to GC and keep her GPA up to 3.7. Wow! That’s a passion for learning!

I am deeply moved by Assistant Professor of Art Kristi Glick’s passion for beauty in the particular enables her to connect with others and to God in amazingly profound ways as a maker and creator; or Professor of Bible, Religion & Philosophy Jo Ann Brandt, whose love of drama and movies led her to an amazing new way of reading St. John’s gospel impressing the scholarly world.

And then there is Professor of Chemistry Dan Smith, the “Bird Man,” a Chemist excited by homing pigeons, who, in the process of his pursuing his passion for the color of pigeons (not a chemical quest), discovered a gene for blindness in homing pigeons with possible historic implications for blindness more generally. Of course, the list of passionate professors and administrators and students could go on endlessly as it should be here at Goshen College.

So, what are you passionate about? What is it that invites your whole self to get all your senses involved in the joy of learning? In his book, Teaching that Transforms, Professor of History John D. Roth rightly argues that the outcomes of a good Christ-centered education must involve all our senses: sight or perception, touch or embodiment, taste or discernment, hearing or listening, finding one’s voice or vocation, and smell or attending the unseen presence around us. Such embodied learning must never be simply about student learning outcomes, but also must ring true to the way of learning and teaching all along the way.

When Jesus claimed that all of Scripture could be summed up in two phrases, the first of the two, pretty much defines, theologically, the meaning of being passionate: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your might.”

Jesus uses the word love and adds intensity to it. Love combines with passion to multiply endurance, discipline, and self-sacrifice – all the ingredients you need to succeed over time. The passion hormone, dopamine, isn’t enough to sustain such a rigorous commitment to learning. The love hormone oxytocin, sometimes called the trust hormone, the empathy hormone, the sympathy hormone, helps us truly learn during those times the passion ebbs and flows, as it must.

So Jesus says, love (desire) with all your senses; love with every ounce of your mental powers; love with every tensile of every muscle; love passionately, love intensely, love with all you got.

As you enter Goshen College for the first time or as you get ready to graduate this year or if you are anywhere in between, I implore you, while you are here, catch the contagion of passionate learning. Become the passionate lovers of learning that God invites each of us to be. If you do, you will never be the same for the rest of your days.”

James Townsend

GOSHEN, Ind. – Goshen College President Jim Brenneman has named James Townsend as the college’s new vice president for enrollment management and marketing. Bringing more than 25 years of higher education leadership and experience to the position, Townsend oversees the Admissions Office, Financial Aid Office and the Public Relations Office, and serves on the President’s Council. He began his role in June 2012.

Brenneman said, “We are excited to have James Townsend join our leadership team. He comes with a successful track record in enrollment management and marketing, and brings special energy and expertise in social media and web-based recruitment. The combination of James’ personal rapport, professional skills and spiritual commitment to the Goshen College core values, makes him a great fit for this position.”

Prior to coming to Goshen, Townsend (better known on campus as “JT”) served in leadership roles at LeTourneau University and Abilene Christian University, both located in Texas. He was an admissions counselor, assistant director of admissions and director of enrollment marketing at Abilene Christian University; and he was the freshman year experience instructor, director of admissions and senior director of enrollment services at LeTourneau University. Townsend serves as the chair of the undergraduate council in the North American Coalition of Christian Admission Professionals (NACCAP) and has presented sessions on social media, sustainability in Christian higher education and admissions counseling.

“What an honor it is to become part of such a tradition of academic excellence within a compassionate Christian environment,” said Townsend. “Goshen College is one of the few that truly engages students in exploring what it means to serve others locally and globally, and I look forward to sharing this message with students and parents here in Indiana and around the nation.”

Townsend received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Abilene Christian University in 1989, an M.B.A. in human resources in 2005 from LeTourneau University and is expected to receive an Ed.D. in educational leadership in higher education from Grand Canyon University in 2013. His dissertation research is about servant leadership and conflict management in higher education.

Townsend also serves on the President’s Council with the vice president for academic affairs, vice president for student life, vice president for institutional advancement and vice president for finance. He can be reached at james.townsend@goshen.edu or (574) 535-7368.

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College Assistant Director of Public Relations Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.

We kicked off the school year by focusing on the core value of Servant Leadership. Mid-year, we poured out our hearts and hammers to help Habitat for Humanity build a home for custodial staff member Eddie Mayorga and his family. As the year closed, we sent a new batch of Servant Leaders into the world as ambassadors of Goshen College.

In saying goodbye to members of the Class of 2012, I reminded them that their true vocations, no matter their majors, were to be Ambassadors for Christ and Diplomats of Reconciliation. I asked them to consider a few basic questions: In a world where those on all sides of every issue consider themselves to be prophets, do we need more prophets running around? In a world where those on all sides of every issue consider themselves to be “rightly dividing the Word of Truth,” do we need more clever exegetes and historical deconstructionists? In a world filled with moral ambiguity and indulgence, do we need ever more rigid legal and ethical guidelines, judicial decisions, and coercive moral arbiters? In a world of ever more selective identity politics, do we need more excommunications by the right or left, the red or blue, the purple or other-than-purple? I sincerely doubt it.

We are called, instead, to bring former enemies together, to unite friend and foe. How radical is that? Amid pervasive ideological conflict, being an ambassador, a diplomat, may be the most radically counter-cultural calling. To be a diplomat of reconciliation may truly be more radical than that of an apostle, a prophet, a priest; more so than a preacher, a teacher, a nurse; beyond that of an artist, an engineer, or judge. Whatever one’s profession, there is no greater vocation needed on earth, no more timely calling than to be an Ambassador for Christ, a Diplomat of Reconciliation.

Recently, I led a group to one of the most conflict-riddled places on earth, Palestine/Israel. While there, we visited a great Christian leader, the Rev. Zoughbi Zoughbi, founder and director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center. He also happens to be the father of Marcelle Zoughbi ’13.  Some of our students spent last summer serving in Wi’am’s summer programs for kids. Wi’am in Arabic means “cordial relationships” – developing relationships across profound differences. That is exactly what Zoughbi Zoughbi’s team does, day in and day out, year after year. In our parting, he presented me with a red stole with white Jerusalem crosses embroidered in its fabric. I wore the stole at our Baccalaureate service as a sign of our common bond in Christ, our common call to be Diplomats of Reconciliation and our solidarity with him in his holy work.

In a time of division, demonization, and polarization without end, Wendell Berry reminds us, “the ground of our reconciliation will have to be larger than the ground of our divisions.” The role of prophet may just have to give way substantially to that of diplomat, ambassador, and reconciler.

Jesus said in his great Sermon on the Mount, which underlies the mission of Goshen College, “if we are only friends with friends, how are we different from anyone else? Anyone can do that. Rather, it is when we are able to befriend foes that the true miracle of our faith is made plain for all to see.” It is that “second-mile” love that demonstrates whether or not we are truly Christ-followers. Our greatest challenge today may simply be to deeply befriend someone with whom we have profound disagreements.

Would that each of us find that friend or better, make a friend, who is so different from us that the opportunity to be an Ambassador for Christ, a Diplomat of Reconciliation, is truly an opportunity of a lifetime. In so doing, our lives will truly manifest the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. In so doing, healing and hope will be born anew in this broken world, little by little, peace by peace.

Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward

RELATED LINKS

• Photos of commencement weekend activities
• Baccalaureate sermon by Dr. James E. Brenneman
• Senior reflections at Baccalaureate
• Press Release: announcing the 114th Goshen College commencement

GOSHEN, Ind. — Goshen College’s Class of 2012 received degrees on Sunday, April 22 after being encouraged to become “ambassadors of reconciliation” and to experience the healing and fulfillment possible through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

The Class of 2012 consisted of 234 graduates who were awarded the following degrees: 146 Bachelor of Arts, 43 Bachelor of Science in Nursing, 22 Bachelor of Science, 13 Master of Science as family nurse practitioners and 10 Master of Arts in Environmental Education.

At a morning baccalaureate worship service in the college’s Church-Chapel, President James E. Brenneman delivered a sermon titled “Five-Core Diplomats,” based on 2 Corinthians 5:16-20, in which the Apostle Paul encouraged believers to regard themselves as part of a new creation and ambassadors of reconciliation.

Brenneman told the graduates that over the past fours years they had experienced tumultuous times, including two wars, rapid cultural and technological changes, a stock market crash, the second worst recession in U.S. history, a divisive presidential election and a breakdown in the nation’s civil discourse.

“In times like these, various fears and paranoia are nourished in the extreme by prophets on all sides of the ideological spectrum, exacerbated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh on one side and Bill Maher on the other,” he said. “Today, even our churches, for heaven’s sake, while less segregated by race than when I went to college, are more segregated by political ideology and political party than ever before.”

Amid such contentiousness, Brenneman said he was pleased that students selected 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 as their worship Scripture, because of its call for people to become “ambassadors of Christ, diplomats of hope and ambassadors of reconciliation.”

“In the closing days of our lives together here on this campus, our sending Scripture reminds us that we are called to be God’s representatives on earth as in heavenÉ ambassadors of reconciliation — the bringing of former enemies together, uniting friends and foes alike. How radical is that? Profoundly so,” Brenneman said. “There is no greater vocation on earth, no more timely calling than to be an ambassador of Christ, an ambassador of reconciliation.”

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ called on his followers to befriend foes, Brenneman said, adding that it remains a great challenge for Christians to befriend those with whom they have profound disagreements.

Still, Brenneman said Christians could do this. He pointed to the example of the Rev. Zoughbi Zoughbi, founder and director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center in Bethlehem, and father of Marcelle Al-Zoughbi, a junior at Goshen College.

“In the greatest of ironies, in the birthplace of Jesus, the little town of Bethlehem, a 30-foot high dividing wall between Israel and Palestine literally passes right along the property line of the center, with a machine-gun laden watch-tower looking down on to the garden of the center,” Brenneman said. “Zoughbi has spent a lifetime in ‘citizen-diplomacy,’ working to break down walls of separation between people – especially between Jews, Christians and Muslims —who claim a common God through their common ancestor, Abraham, but are now locked in and traumatized by violent confrontation.”

Although Brenneman conceded that it is difficult to be an ambassador and a reconciler in a world torn by division and demonization, he said that many Goshen College graduates have demonstrated the ability to befriend those with significant differences and to model gracious love.

“As you depart, may you leave as diplomats, ambassadors of a life-changing story – hopefully learned and reinforced throughout your years here – a story shaped by the five core values of which you are now so familiar: to be compassionate peacemakers, passionate learners, servant leaders, global citizens, centered in the life and teachings of Christ.”

Brenneman closed his sermon with a final wish: “Would that you find that friend, who is so different from you, that the opportunity to be an ambassador of reconciliation is truly an opportunity of a lifetime É such that your lives manifest the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven and healing and hope would come to this broken world little by little, peace by peace.”

At 3 p.m. Sunday, 138 current and retired faculty members led the graduates in a procession into the gymnasium of the Roman Gingerich Recreation-Fitness Center for the 114^th Goshen College Commencement. The Goshen College Commencement Orchestra, directed by Assistant Professor of Music Christopher Fashun, played pre-commencement music and a processional.

Brenneman welcomed a crowd of about 2,000 people gathered for the ceremony by recalling the many hardships, joys and tears over the past four years.

“Our journey together has been filled with lots of hard work, late nights, deep learning, joyful memories, 100,000 questions, and some helpful guidance, we pray, along the way,” he said. “We shared lots of fun, some pranks, loads of goodwill, times of profound sorrow and even a few severe mercies.”

Speaking for the faculty and staff as well, Brenneman shared that he continues to grieve the loss of Professor of Biology James S. Miller, 58, who was killed during a home invasion robbery at his Goshen home on Oct. 9, 2011. Brenneman led the audience in observing a moment of silence for Professor Miller, whose name and photo appeared in the printed commencement program.

After an invocation and the hymn, “I sing the mighty power of God,” Brenneman introduced the commencement speaker — Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward, the Bishop of Coventry, in England, from 1985 to 1997.

Barrington-Ward, who has been a regular speaker for Goshen College’s Arts in London May term course, received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, where he later served as chaplain and dean. He served as Bishop of Coventry from 1985 to 1997 and currently is a bishop with pastoral care of the University of Cambridge. In 2001, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George by Queen Elizabeth.

In his commencement address, “Becoming What You Are: Exploring the Great Exchange,” Barrington-Ward talked about two personal discoveries — God’s meaning in the person of Jesus Christ and a simple prayer from the earliest days of Christianity. He called the interplay between the discoveries as two parts of an “exchange” between God and humanity arrived at through Jesus Christ.

When he was a young man teaching in Germany, Barrington-Ward said he was moved by a sermon in which the pastor described the “sweet exchange” of God becoming human in the person of Jesus Christ, accepting the depths of humanity and offering the hope of a final transformation as a new creation.

“All human experiences or glimpses of God or of the divine of all the faiths and philosophies that exist are really supported by this one happening,” Barrington-Ward said. “The reality of God, the divine eternal Spirit, whom many seek, is here universally confirmed as having entered into this new relationship with humankind.”

Much later in life, Barrington-Ward said he sought help because he was having difficulty praying. He found a solution — a one-sentence prayer constantly repeated — at a Russian Eastern Orthodox monastery. That is where he first heard the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Barrington-Ward said listening to constant recitations of the Jesus Prayer transformed his faith by giving him a way to more fully connect to God and to reduce distractions.

Barrington-Ward closed his speech by hoping that the graduates and all others might find help “exploring more of the infinite resources which have been made available to us in the person of God in Christ, through the Spirit, and of the unsearchable riches of that ‘great exchange’ which are still open for us, to draw upon more and more deeply, as we grow ever more fully into union in the Spirit through Christ with God.”

After Barrington-Ward’s address, Ken Pletcher was honored for his diverse service to the college over three decades. Before working as a major gift officer for the last five years, Pletcher served for seven years as athletic director and for 10 years in a number of capacities, including as a teacher, coach, intramural sports director and in admissions positions.

The graduates on hand Sunday then received their degrees and signed their names in the Goshen College historical book – a tradition linking them to generations of alumni.

Presiding over the conferring of degrees was President Brenneman, who congratulated graduates after Academic Dean Anita K. Stalter announced their names. Assisting in the presentation of master’s degrees were David Ostergren, director of the graduate program in environmental education, and Brenda Srof, director of the graduate program in nursing.

After the degrees were conferred, the graduates, the faculty and the audience joined in the singing of the Goshen College Alma Mater.

Also taking part in commencement were two parents of graduating seniors: Marcia Yoder-Schrock, the mother of Isaac Yoder-Schrock, both of Donnellson, Iowa, who offered the invocation, and Ritch Hochstetler, the father of Austin Hochstetler of Goshen, who gave the benediction.

After the benediction, faculty and administrators lined the main corridor of the Recreation-Fitness Center and applauded the departing seniors. The “applause tunnel” tradition also takes place at the beginning of each academic year to welcome students back to campus.

Represented in this year’s graduating class were students from 25 states, including 115 from Indiana, and from 11 countries.

The class included 21 graduates with double majors. Twenty-three students graduated with highest honors – grade point averages of 3.9 to a perfect 4.0. In addition, 67 others were on track to achieve GPAs of 3.60 and above.

The academic program with the largest number of graduating students was nursing, which held its traditional pinning ceremony the day before commencement to recognize the 20 individuals who completed the traditional, four-year program. In addition, 23 individuals were granted degrees through the Bachelor of Science in nursing degree completion program and 13 individuals got Master of Science in nursing degrees.

Other top majors in the Class of 2012 were organizational leadership (22), biology (16), Interdisciplinary (14), history (10), psychology (10), English (8) and social work (8).

Of the graduates, 123 took the Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility, a national program at more than 100 colleges and universities. By signing the pledge, the graduates promised to “explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work.”

Graduates and faculty members planned the morning baccalaureate service. It featured an instrumental prelude on piano by graduating seniors Lisa Horst, a music major from Dillon, Mont., and Elspeth Stalter, a music/English major from Iowa City, Iowa.

The service formally began with a welcome from Jessica Camacho, a nursing major from Goshen, followed by a congregational hymn, “Here in this place,” led by Jay Mast, a theater/music major from Goshen. Senior reflections were offered by Hannah Epp, a peace, justice and conflict studies major from Henderson, Neb., Daisy Gaspar, an elementary education/special education major from Goshen, Anna Ruth, an English major from Harleysville, Pa., and Isaac Yoder-Schrock, a physics major from Donnellson, Iowa.

After singing the hymn, “We are the people of God’s peace,” there was the reading of a Scripture litany, based on 2 Corinthians 5:16-20, written by graduate Stephanie Hollenberg. The litany was read by sisters Alyssa Goodman, a nursing major, and Lindsay Goodman, an American Sign Language major, both from Nappanee.

After President Brenneman’s sermon, a senior vocal ensemble — made up of 19 graduates — sang “Yesu Ninakupenda,” which means “Jesus I love you, you are my friend, I will serve you, throughout my life.”

After the benediction, the baccalaureate services concluding with the sending song, “Wake up Everybody,” by John Legend and the Roots, performed by eight seniors.

Other events during the busy weekend at Goshen College included a senior program, which showcased the artistic, comedic and musical talent of the Class of 2012, a senior art exhibit, academic department receptions for graduates and their families, a reception for adult programs and an evening reception hosted by President Brenneman and his wife, Dr. Terri J. Plank Brenneman.

CLASS OF 2012 HIGHLIGHTS
Total number of graduates: 234
Number by category: 13 candidates for Master of Science degrees, 10 candidates for Master of Arts degrees, 146 candidates for Bachelor of Arts degrees, 43 candidates for Bachelor of Science in nursing degrees; and 22 candidates for Bachelor of Science degrees
Number of double majors: 21
Number of students graduating with highest honors — grade point averages of 3.9 to a perfect 4.0 (based on grades as of December 2011): 23
Number of students graduating with GPAs of 3.60 and above (based on grades as of December 2011): 67
Number of states represented in this year’s graduating class: 25
Number from Indiana: 115
Number of countries represented (other than U.S.): 11
Number of graduates by top programs of study: nursing, 43; organizational leadership, 22; biology,16; interdisciplinary, 14; history, 10; psychology, 10; English, 8; social work, 8.

— Written by Richard R. Aguirre

EDITOR’S NOTE: For more information, contact Richard R. Aguirre, director of public relations, at (574) 535-7571 or rraguirre@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S. News & World Report’s ”America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.

President Jim Brenneman

Baccalaureate sermon, delivered by Dr. James E. Brenneman, President of Goshen College on Sunday, April 22, 2012 at the Goshen College Church-Chapel

Scripture Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:16-20

What a delight to be present together in God’s House with family and friends of our graduates from all around the world. I am reminded that the canopy of God’s grace is wide and broad, ancient and ever new creating at Goshen College that sacred space of learning, transformation and hope. Thank you for being here to celebrate with us the joy of a great commencement day.

2008, the year when many of you graduating today first came to Goshen College, was the year of Joe the Plumber, Barak Obama’s election, the year Puppycam went viral, the buzzword “Tweet” came into its own, 7” high heels were cool in Hollywood, and High School Musical 3 came out. Now, high heels lost an inch, maybe; texting has become the lingua franca; we’re in the middle of another Presidential campaign and Zac Efron has come of age in a new movie – thankfully, not HSM4. How time flies.

Don’t be surprised, however, if, someday, when you are a grandmother or grandfather and after your grandchild figures out when you came to Goshen College, they exclaim, “Wow, grandma, you mean you lived through the Great Recession of 2008? You probably don’t need reminding that just two months after most of you arrived on campus, the second biggest stock market crash in history shook our world, which quite literally made the usual first year stressors of college (new roommates, time management, relationships, grades, homesickness) seem like a whole lot of piling on.

To top it off, you began and endured throughout most of your college years two wars, non-stop political campaigning, and a near total loss in our national and civil discourse. And bookending your experience in this your last year, we experienced the unprecedented tragic death of our esteemed Professor of Biology, Jim Miller.

Wendell Berry, in his essay, “The Purpose of a Coherent Community,” [in The Way of Ignorance, 76-77]. reminds us that “there is no escape from the issue of context.” If it is true, as he says, that “the context of everything is everything else,” then the context and times of your college experience have meant that all the usual debates that happen on every college campus almost every year – conversations about the meaning and practice of faith, justice, patriotism, decision-making, identity, inclusion, politics — took on the zeitgeist (the spirit) of the times in which we live. Even though we sometimes like to see ourselves as not being swept up by cultural norms (i.e., being counter-cultural), it seems we have not been immune from the cultural influence of our fragmented times.

In times like these, various fears and paranoias are nourished in the extreme by prophets on all sides of the ideological spectrum, exacerbated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh on one side and Bill Maher on the other. Today, even our churches, while less segregated by race (at least ideologically speaking) than in the past, are more segregated by political ideology and political party than ever before. We are quite literally, “Divided by God” as a recent NY Times article declared [Ross Douthat, The New York Times, Sunday Review, April, 8, 2012, 1 & 6.]. Christ seems less and less the center of our common faith, than whether we are Democrat or Republican or a Tea Partier or Occupy Wall-Streeter. Into this milieu, your college careers unfolded.

So, I find it wonderfully refreshing that the Baccalaureate Committee of your peers chose for our sending message, the wonderful, powerful, liberating call of the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian church and so also writing to us. St. Paul calls us to become Ambassadors/Diplomats: “Ambassadors of Christ!” Ambassadors of hope. Diplomats of Reconciliation!

In a world where everyone on all sides of every issue in whatever profession considers himself or herself a prophet, do we really need more prophets running around? In a world where everyone on all sides of every issue considers himself or herself to be “rightly dividing the Word of Truth,” do we really need more clever exegetes and historical deconstructionists? In a world gone wild with moral ambiguity and indulgence, do we simply need ever more rigid legal and ethical guidelines, judicial decisions, and coercive moral arbiters? In a world of ever more selective identity politics, do we really need more excommunications by the right or left, the red or blue, the purple or other-than-purple? I sincerely doubt it.

In the closing days of our lives together here on this campus, our sending scripture reminds us that we part having been called to be God’s representatives on earth as in heaven: Ambassadors for Christ; Diplomats of Reconciliation. We are called to bring former enemies together, to unite friend and foe alike. How radical is that? In a world fraught with ideological conflict, being an ambassador, a diplomat, may just be the most radically counter-cultural calling one could ever hope to have. To be a diplomat of reconciliation is more radical than that of an apostle, a prophet, a priest; more so than a preacher, a teacher, a nurse; beyond that of an artist, an engineer, or judge. Whatever one’s major or profession, there is no greater vocation on earth. No more timely calling. None. Than the call to be an Ambassador, a Diplomat. An ambassador of Christ. A Diplomat of Reconciliation.

Jesus said in his great Sermon on the Mount, which underlies the mission of Goshen College, “if we are only friends with friends, how are we different from anyone else? Anyone can do that. Rather, it is when we are able to befriend foes that the true miracle of our faith is made plain for all to see.” It is that ‘second-mile’ love that demonstrates whether or not we are truly Christ-followers.

Here’s how it works – as simple and as difficult as this. God came to us in Christ, while we were still enemies of God, in order to re-establish a right relationship with God. And now, God has given each and every one of us this same “ministry of reconciliation.” Our greatest challenge going forward, especially in the day and age in which we live, may simply be to deeply befriend someone with whom we have profound disagreements.

The late great ethicist and theologian, Dr. James McClendon, a long-time friend, and sometime attender of our congregation in Pasadena, wrote a three volume systematic theology from an Anabaptist perspective. This work was his “last will and testament,” his magnum opus, the crown jewel of his life’s work. In his dying days, he literally thought he might not be able to finish the third and most significant volume of this trilogy. And so he turned to someone he trusted who knew him so well as to be able to complete his work for him. Someone who would write with the same voice, the same feeling, who would defend and reason with the same force and sense as he himself would were he to do so. The great irony of this relationship was that he and his friend disagreed on some of the most profound issues of life and faith. You see, his friend was an atheist. And at Dr. McClendon’s memorial service, his atheist friend eulogized Dr. McClendon by saying he knew of no other person who so profoundly showed him the meaning of the Christian call to be an Ambassadors of Reconciliation, a Diplomat for Christ.

I just returned from leading a group to one of the most conflict-riddled places on planet earth, Palestine/Israel. While there, we visited one of the great Christian leaders of that region, Rev. Zoughbi Zoughbi, founder and director of Wi’am, the Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center. He also happens to be the father of GC Junior, Marcelle Zoughbi. [I know some of you students here this morning spent last summer helping with Wi’am’s summer programs for kids. Zoughbi asked me to bring you greetings and heartfelt appreciation for your labor of love in this troubled land]. Wi’amin Arabic simply means, “cordial relationships” – developing relationships across profound differences. That is exactly what Zoughbi Zoughbi and his team do, day in and day out, year after year.

In the greatest of ironies, in the birthplace of Jesus, the little town of Bethlehem – where this Center is following Apostle Paul’s call to break down the walls of separation between enemies – a 30 foot high dividing wall between Israel and Palestine literally passes right along the property line of the Center. There in the garden, with a machine-gun laden watch-tower looking down on us, we gathered to have coffee with Zoughbi and his staff. You see Wi’am believes peacemaking and reconciliation often happens over coffee – sip by sip – in what Zoughbi calls ‘citizen-diplomacy.’ Zoughbi and his team have worked a lifetime to break down walls of separation between people – especially between Jews, Christians and Muslims — people who claim a common God through their common ancestor, Abraham – now locked in and traumatized by years of violent confrontation. In our parting, he presented me with the stole I am wearing today (red stole with Jerusalem crosses). I told him I would wear it at this service as a visual reminder of our common bond in Christ, our common call to be “Ambassadors of Reconciliation” and our solidarity with him in his holy work.

In a world of division, demonization, and polarization without end, as Wendell Berry reminds us, “the ground of our reconciliation will have to be larger than the ground of our divisions” going forward. The role of prophet may just have to give way a bit to that of diplomat, ambassador, and reconciler.

I know many of you. I have watched many of you work hard to befriend and get to know others who are very different than yourselves. Keep up the good work. You are an inspiration to me and others who see such gracious love on display and in action. I hope all of us leave GC with friendships of a lifetime, not just with those who are a lot like us, but also, those with whom we still have significant differences.

Being Ambassadors of Reconciliation isn’t about being the perfect diplomat. Rather, it’s a calling to live the kind of life that models what it means to be forgiven by and reconciled to God so that we can do the same for those around us, foe and friend alike.

As you depart, may you leave as diplomats, ambassadors of a life-changing story – hopefully learned and reinforced throughout your years here – a story shaped by the five core values of which you are now so familiar: to be compassionate peacemakers, passionate learners, servant leaders, global citizens, centered in the life and teachings of Christ (Christ-centered).

Would that you find that friend or better, make a friend, who is so different from you that the opportunity to be an Ambassador of Reconciliation, a Diplomat of Hope, is truly an opportunity of a lifetime. Would that you make a friend – someone you trust or trusts you no matter your profound differences. In so doing, your lives will truly manifest the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. In so doing, healing and hope will be born anew in this broken world little by little, peace by peace.

Not so long ago, I watched with my son the latest of a series of movies called “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” based on a toy line of varying humanoid or robot creatures able to transform into everyday vehicles, electronic gadgets or space crafts and back again: the Autobots versus the Deceptions. No doubt some of you when you were kids had a transformer or two in your toy box.

It only dawned on me recently that some of the fascination with these identity shape shifters might have something to do with our deepest longings, the desire to be transformed in spirit, mind, and, perhaps, even in bodily.

In our Martin Luther King, Jr. convo this year, Dr. Vincent Harding tapped into this deep longing of ours when he responded to Yolo Lopez-Perez’s question about the relationship between our identity as a college (or as individuals) and our relationships with each other. He recommended that whoever we are, we should not grasp too tightly to our identity as if it were a stone pillar that needs to be preserved at all costs. Instead, he said we should see our identities more like that of caterpillars for whom change, radical structural change, is destiny.

This past weekend, I sat through three showings of the Goshen High School musical, The Wizard of Oz, and was reminded again of the possibility and power of identity transformation: The cowardly lion who gains courage; the witless scarecrow who discovers he has a brain, after all; the tin man who learns he, indeed, has a heart; and runaway Dorothy, realizes that there really is “no place like home.” A powerful story of identity transformation times four.

Sandwiched between these several experiences, two of you (students) came to my office and wondered aloud whether we at Goshen College really truly believe in the transforming power Christ to change for the world for the better or to transform us, each one of us, personally into becoming the people God wants us to become. I left that meeting — we left that meeting — determined to renew our commitment to speak about the power of God through Christ’s Spirit to transform us and others, to transform our individual lives and our campus life — body, soul, spirit — in order to experience God’s best intentions for each and every one of us.

I believe that one of the hallmarks of a good college education, and, certainly, the value added dimension of a Christian college education, is the possibility that each one of us might undergo a changeover, an identity transformation, a conversion should be, at least one good outcome of a good education.

The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, says it this way, “be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2). Be transformed! (Greek, “be metamorphosized”). That is, be morphed into something greater than you presently are. Be “transfigured” (same Greek word, Matthew).

Transformation of our minds, transformation of our knowledge base, our professional skills, our social conscience and our spiritual lives must be the rule – not the exception – here at GC.

What I love about the analogy of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a beautiful monarch butterfly is that both bodily forms have the same exact DNA structure. The DNA structure of the organism encodes for both body forms. During metamorphosis, some new genes are turned on that modify the body shape of the organism and produce the final butterfly body shape. In addition, many of the same genes are expressed exactly the same in both body forms. In other words, the core or essence of the organism is the same even while the bodily form morphs into something far more spectacular than ever before and that offers a whole new life experience. The difference between a caterpillar and butterfly is simultaneously of little consequence genetically and of immense consequence experientially.

In terms of our identity as a college or as individuals, the analogy of metamorphosis, of being transformed or transfigured means it’s possible to be essentially and deeply connected with our past, to our history and spiritual DNA, and to also be radically transfigured — transformed into something far greater than we have yet imagined ourselves to be.

The kind of metamorphosis or transformation or transfiguration the Bible speaks of – isn’t simply a matter of lining up our highest ideals or restating our common confessions or making sure the rules or boundaries of our various identities are drawn ever more clearly and then setting out to achieve those goals, perfect our self-image, guard our boundaries. Such a life may at first glance seem admirable or ‘noble’ or safe, but it may also simply be a caterpillar life well lived.

By contrast, Parker Palmer, the great Quaker educator, suggests that true transformation happens best when you, “Let Your Life Speak” (the title of his book after an old Quaker adage). Metamorphosis happens when, in his words, “you live the life that wants to live in you.” You live the life that wants to live in you!

Metamorphosis happens when the Spirit turns on the spiritual genes that already lie in each one of us, while we are still in our caterpillar selves. In order for that kind of liberating metamorphosis to happen, Palmer invites us to create the kind of quiet, trusting conditions that allows our soul to speak its truth to us, that allows the Spirit to awaken our true selves to us. Such an awakening may involve identifying natural talents and limitations within us and helping them break free, instead of trying to live the life someone else wishes you to live or the life you are trying desperately to live and falling short.

Metamorphosis cannot transform caterpillars into Monarchs if caterpillars are absolutely secure in their status, safe in self-assumption, and sealed off from the challenge of others and the Spirit. If transformation happens by the renewing of our minds, then education that transforms or transfigures our minds and liberates our souls must not become a tool of indoctrination that fails to challenge our perfections or identity markers,- however noble or good or sincere.

Metamorphosis may be one of the hardest experiences we ever undertake as ordinary folk. The morphing of caterpillars into Monarch butterflies can feel heart and soul wrenching. The shape shifting that happens between crawl inching on a leaf and flying into the sun might be as terrifying as it is liberating. And yet, such a miracle lies dormant in each one of us at some time or another, maybe today, or again and again in the various cycles of our lives. Metamorphosis need not, must not, be a once in a lifetime experience. We should always be ready for the Holy Spirit to transform us from who we are to whom we are called to be.

Such transformation, if and when it happens, can be a reinvention of life, as we know it. Metamorphosis is a version of spiritual muscle pulling. Transformation requires a rewriting of our individual story into a whole new story: God’s story. Someone once described such a rewritten life as being like “yanking cruel drunken abusive foul-mouthed Pap out of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and putting him in a whole new story as the loving gentle dad who Huck always dreamed of.”

Metamorphosis can turn a cowardly vacillating Christ-denying fisherman into a great preacher, the rock upon which the church is built. Metamorphosis can change self-doubt into confidence; bitterness and anger and cynicism into forgiveness, joy and hopefulness.

Metamorphosis can transform a Christian young man, hooked on cigarettes with low self-esteem in order to shape-shift him someday into becoming President of Goshen College. And that feels to me as miraculous as a caterpillar turned Monarch! Or caterpillar turned President.

Metamorphosis can wrench sin from sinful people and feel like hell. But it can also convert hell into heaven, transform what is meant for evil into good, and transfigure sinners into saints.

If there are going to be among us now or in the future, Sojourner Truths or Dietrich Bonhoeffers or Fannie Lou Hammers or Albert Schweitzers or Severo Ochoas or Leymah Gebowees or Zoughbi Zoughbis — Spirit-led Monarchs, all — who each in his or her own way helped or are helping still transform the world for the good – then let us hope and pray and believe that such a transformation of our minds, such a transfiguration of our hearts, such a metamorphosis of our souls is among the primary outcomes of our education here at GC.

My prayer is that we will be such a community where the Spirit of God stirs up and turns on those spiritual genes within each one of us, no matter our need or lack thereof.  Would that Goshen College be that community that inspires such a vision of transformation. Let us be those sisters and brothers, that family of faith, that provides for each other the “transforming space” we all need to shape shift from caterpillars to Monarchs!

• TRANSCRIPT: Speech delivered by President Brenneman at the Fall 2011 Opening Convocation

GOSHEN, Ind. – Goshen College President James E. Brenneman opened the new school year by encouraging first-year and continuing students to become “servant leaders” in the local community and the wider world.”Every one of you has been given a high charge to become servant leaders, a calling that may take you to the highest leadership positions in the world, or to the hovels of a refugee camp, or many places in between,” Brenneman said. “Martin Luther King, Jr., said of his calling, which is true of your own, my own, our own, ‘After you have discovered what you are called for, you should set about to do it with all the power that you have in your system. Do it as if God Almighty ordained you at this particular moment in history to do it.’”

Brenneman estimated that each year, Goshen College students, staff, faculty and administrators provide at least 30,000 hours of service in various ways nearby and all around the world. “And I believe we can do even better than that and will,” he said. “So go for it, servant leaders. Lead as if God ordained you to do so at this particular moment in history, and with all the power you can muster.”

Brenneman, speaking Wednesday, Aug. 31 at the first all-campus convocation of the 2011-2012 academic year, offered a humorous, reflective and challenging call to action during an address titled “Culture for Service Leadership: A Paradox Worth Living.” His 20-minute message, which contained numerous scriptural references and was illustrated with PowerPoint slides, was delivered to more than 600 people in the Church-Chapel.

Brenneman, a 1977 graduate of Goshen College who is starting his sixth year as president, began by welcoming students, faculty and staff to the “second happiest place on earth (after Disneyland).” He led the crowd in cheering for new and returning students as well as faculty and staff members.

He also gave a special welcome to Kennard Martin, a Physical Plant employee who will complete 50 years of service to the college on Sept. 6. “He embodies a servant’s heart. His is a labor of love,” Brenneman said of Martin. “He gets up before dawn, stays late when needed. He has mown our lawns, plowed our walks in the winter, day in and day out, for 50 years.”

Brenneman presented Martin with a plaque and proclaimed 2011-2012 as “The Year of Kennard Martin, Leader in Service.” Brenneman congratulated a visibly surprised Martin and the audience responded with a standing ovation that lasted for several moments.

The president’s main message focused on servant leadership, one of the college’s core values, and a subject for in-depth discussion and reflection in the coming school year. Goshen’s other core values are Christ-centeredness, passionate learning, global citizenship and compassionate peacemaking.

In his introductory remarks, Brenneman pointed out that “servant leadership” presents a paradox — a statement or concept that is seemingly contradictory, inconsistent or opposed to common sense or logic, and yet is true.

“The juxtaposition of ‘servant’ with ‘leadership’ creates a paradox, an odd coupling to be sure,” Brenneman said. “‘Servant’ suggests vulnerability, one who serves, or performs duties for another person or master or employer. ‘Leadership’ suggests king of the beasts or a person who takes charge of a situation or workplace. A leader leads, directs or has commanding authority or influence over others. A servant follows. A leader has followers. Servant leadership is a paradox.”

Brenneman explained that the paradox of “servant leadership” was introduced into the modern lexicon in 1970 by business leader Robert Greenleaf, who had worked for AT&T for 40 years and came to believe that the old styles of command and performance leadership were outdated, outmoded, and ultimately, unproductive. Combining the words “servant” and “leadership,” Greenleaf believed, would result in something more profound.

In doing so, Greenleaf acknowledged that he was borrowing from the paradoxical leadership style found in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, who was king, but of an upside down kingdom where the last was to be first and the first, last, Brenneman said. “It was Jesus who said to his disciples when they were arguing over who would be top dog in the kingdom, ‘Here I am among you as one who serves (Luke 22:27).’ Jesus: servant leader/God becoming convict, Author of Life, dying on a cross. A paradox.”

Another business leader, Max Dupree, former chairman of Herman Miller, Inc., boiled down servant leadership to one of responsibility and gratitude, Brenneman said. “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say ‘thank you.’ In between, a leader is to be a servant.”

Brenneman went on to suggest several characteristics of Christ-centered servant leadership that he recommended become central to the lives of Goshen students.”First, a servant leader embraces vulnerability as a strength. One of the great images of such vulnerable strength is that of water. Water is paradoxically soft and strong; it yields, caresses, soothes, heals, bathes, quenches, and sustains, yet water can wear a solid, rigid immovable rock into sand and patiently chisel a loamy riverbank into the Grand Canyon,” the president said.

“Such a servant leader listens with willful patience to others whose opinions differ, whose perspectives may not be the same as hers, trusting in the power of the Spirit, or the imagination and creativity of new ideas, to emerge by being openly vulnerable.”

He also encouraged students to live with joy — and laughter. “Laughter at oneself or one’s predicament is a ready sign of a Christ-like servant leader,” he said. “Nelson Mandela turned his own history into a humorous aside when he answered a reporter’s question with a quip: ‘In my country we go to prison first and then become President.’ Mother Teresa said of her labor of love, ‘I know that a loving God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that God didn’t love me so much.’”

Brenneman said a servant leader also shapes culture by defining reality or influencing culture for the common good. “A servant leader promotes a vision that is expansive, contagious and inviting. When Neil Armstrong stepped from the lunar module onto the moon for the first time, he wasn’t thinking about himself or simply his own national identity or parochial perspective, he simply said, “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for (hu)mankind.”

“Servant leaders do not stand on the sidelines or harp from a distance. They work to implement their vision in real life situations and times and bear the responsibility of its burden. They do not simply deconstruct hegemonies or critique domination systems,” he said. “They take up the harder challenges, like moon walking (both kinds), constructing new paradigms and practices always with a view for the common good.”

Brenneman challenged students to move beyond being “counter-cultural” and to become “intercultural,” and to lead culture or cultures to the better place and a nobler calling. “When Jesus said we are to ‘love our enemies,’ he was defining reality and went to work to create it. His goal never was to be counter-cultural, so much as to pull culture forward to that place where former enemies become friends.

“As Goshen College students, as future graduates, you now have been given a calling to become servant leaders, across disciplines and intellectual and cultural silos, to become truly intercultural leaders in service — whatever major or profession or career path you take. I am calling on each one of you to become  ‘Culture for Service’ leaders — leaders in service.”

Brenneman concluded by reminding students of the power and value of prayer. He cited two favorites prayers from Anne Lamott, a novelist and nonfiction writer. “Praying both together make them ideal for all would be servant leaders. Simply put, they are: ‘O Lord, help me, help me, help me!’ And ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’”

After Brenneman’s remarks, Assistant Professor of Music Scott Hochstetler led the audience in singing the Alma Mater.

Afterward, and in what has become a 10-year tradition, the Goshen College “Tunnel of Welcome” or “Applause Avenue” formed outside the church, in two lines that eventually converged. Faculty, staff and students walked past their peers to sustained applause, and then joined and extended the lines for seniors, juniors, sophomores and first-year students to pass by. The applause of welcome continued until the Church-Chapel emptied and the line stretched into Schrock Plaza. Once there, students and faculty were treated to popsicles and given buttons that proclaim “I love GC.”

–Written by Richard R. Aguirre

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.

Each year for the whole year, as a campus community, we focus our attention on one of our five core values within the context of being a Christ-centered liberal arts college. This year, we are considering the core value of “Servant Leadership.”

This particular image (slide showing two physicians) not only illustrates whom we might consider prototypical  “servant leaders.” It also illustrates the struggle of defining the meaning, itself. What we have here – don’t groan – is a “pair o’docs.”

As you know, a paradox is a statement or concept that is seemingly contradictory, inconsistent or opposed to common sense or logic, and yet is true. Some paradoxes, for example, are of an oxymoronic nature (images of plastic glasses and eyeglasses, the “Senate Intelligence” Committee and a self-described anarchist with the statement “Anarchists Rule!”).

Some paradoxes have to do with reality not quite fitting our categories. For example, the  “platypus”  — mammal, reptile, bird? Its recently mapped genome has reptilian, mammal and bird genetic coding. A paradox.

The literary paradox includes verbal irony, where the speaker or writer communicates the opposite of what they mean. For example, when we say, something is “as clear as mud.”

Then there is the “buttered cat paradox” based upon the tongue-in-cheek combination of two adages: “Cats always land on their feet.” And, “Buttered toast always lands buttered side down.” Put the two together and, voila, you get a perpetual motion hovercraft.

The juxtaposition of “Servant” with “Leadership” creates a paradox, an odd coupling to be sure.   Servant suggests “vulnerability, one who serves, or performs duties for another person or master or employer.” “Leadership” suggests “king of the beasts” or a person who “takes charge” of a situation or workplace. A leader leads, directs, or has commanding authority or influence over others. A servant follows. A leader has followers. Servant-leadership is a paradox.

The paradox, “servant leadership” was introduced into the modern lexicon in 1970 by business leader Robert Greenleaf, who had worked for AT&T for 40 years in many different leadership capacities and believed that in the information age, where service and technology industries rule, the old styles of command and performance leadership were outdated, outmoded, and ultimately, unproductive.

By intertwining the word “servant” and “leadership,” Greenleaf believed, that together the words said something far more profound, and true than either word separately and alone.

Of course, Greenleaf acknowledged that his formulation was simply a borrowing of a much older paradoxical leadership style found in the life and teaching of Jesus. Jesus brought together the paradoxical nature of God as Creator and Creature, Transcendent and Immanent, Almighty and Vulnerable, Divine and Human. Jesus was king, but of an upside down kingdom where the last was to be first and the first, last. It was Jesus who said to his disciples when they were arguing over who would be top dog in the kingdom, “Here I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27). Jesus, servant leader/God becoming convict, Author of Life, dying on a cross. Paradox!

Greenleaf said, “Servant leadership begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.” Emphasizing either half of the paradox, leader-first or servant-first, Greenleaf felt diminishes the infinite in-between varieties, blends, and shadings of strong and effective leadership. Context determines which side of the paradox to emphasize when.

Max Dupree, Chairman and CEO of Herman Miller, Inc., an innovative Fortune 500 furniture company, has authored a number of books on leadership (such as “Leadership Jazz”). He boils down servant leadership to one of responsibility and gratitude: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say ‘thank you.’ In between, a leader is to be a servant.”

Both Greenleaf and Dupree speak about the “in between-ness” of the paradox of servant leadership. With those definitions as a backdrop, let me suggest several characteristics of the kind of Christ-centered Servant Leadership that I hope will become a core part of your lives as you study, learn, and later graduate from Goshen College.

First, a servant leader embraces vulnerability as strength. One of the great images of such “vulnerable strength,” is that of water. Water is paradoxically soft and strong; it yields, caresses, soothes, heals, bathes, quenches, and sustains, yet water can wear a solid, rigid immovable rock into sand and patiently chisel a loamy riverbank into the Grand Canyon. As Job says of God’s strength, “You’re like water that washes away stones, (14:18).”

Such a servant leader listens with willful patience to others whose opinions differ, whose perspectives may not be the same as hers, trusting in the power of the Spirit, or the imagination and creativity of new ideas, to emerge by being openly vulnerable.

Steve Jobs in a commencement address at Stanford University, said that Apple would not have happened the way it did, had he not almost incidentally taken a calligraphy class that by all outward signs had nothing to do with his interest in computer technology. Calligraphy lies at the heart of the Apple phenomenon. What a wonderful case for the importance of a liberal arts education. He credits his success to an openness to see, listen, observe, imagine new things, in new ways, new ideas from new perspectives, often as not insights gained from others.

Another sure sign of a servant leader who embraces vulnerability as strength, is laughter. And not just any old laugh, but mostly laughter at herself or himself or laughing at the absurdities of immovable opinions or intractable positions. “Laughter at oneself” or one’s predicament is a ready sign of a Christ-like servant leader. Nelson Mandela turned his own history into a humorous aside when he answered a reporter’s question with a quip: “In my country we go to prison first and then become President.” Mother Teresa said of her labor of love, “I know that a loving God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that God didn’t love me so much.”

Patient observation, listening, observing, and laughing – all signs of strong servant leaders.

Second. A servant leader shapes culture  —  “defines reality,” influences culture, for the common good. A servant leader promotes a vision that is expansive, contagious, and inviting.  When Neil Armstrong stepped from the lunar module onto the moon for the first time, he wasn’t thinking about himself or simply his own national identity or parochial perspective, he simply said, “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for (hu)mankind.”

Servant leaders do not stand on the sidelines or harp from a distance. They work to implement their vision in real life situations and times and bear the responsibility of its burden. They do not simply deconstruct hegemonies or critique domination systems. They take up the harder challenges, like moon walking (both kinds), constructing new paradigms and practices always with a view for the common good.

Being “counter-cultural” is settling for second best. A servant leader must have the courage to become truly “inter-cultural,” to lead culture or cultures to the better place, the higher plain, the nobler calling. When Jesus said we are to “love our enemies,” he was defining reality and went to work to create it. His goal never was to be counter-cultural, so much as to pull culture forward to that place where former enemies become friends. Such an outcome requires profound “inter-cultural” leadership at all levels of society now more than ever before.

As a Goshen College student, as future graduates, you now have been given a calling to become Servant Leaders, across disciplines and intellectual and cultural silos, to become truly intercultural leaders in service — whatever major or profession or career path you take. I am calling on each one of you to become  “Culture for Service” leaders — leaders in service.

Here at Goshen College, we are well on our way. By my estimate, each year, Goshen College students, staff, faculty and administrators provide at least 30,000 hours of service in various ways nearby and all around the world through our Inquiry programs, Leaf Relief, Celebrate Service Day, internships, Study-Service Term and more. Amazing! And I believe we can do even better than that and will. I have instituted an Employee Community Service program that invites any employee who wishes to do up to two days of community service annually to do so with pay as a token of our blessing and sign of our commitment to Service Leadership.

Every one of you has been given a high-charge to become Servant Leaders, a calling that may take you to the highest leadership positions in the world, or to the hovels of a refugee camp, or many places in between. Servant leaders all. Martin Luther King, Jr., said of his calling, which is true of your own, my own, our own: “After (you have) discovered what (you are) called for, (you) should set about to do it with all the power that (you) have in (your) system.  Do it as if God Almighty ordained you at this particular moment in history to do it.”

So go for it, Servant Leaders. Lead as if God ordained you to do so at this particular moment in history, and so with all the power you can muster.

A servant leader, also, abounds in gratitude. I recently received a note from Fallon Will Nyce, a 2005 graduate, who is a technology architect for the Fortune 150 Company, Whirlpool. She wrote:  “I’m thankful for colleges like Goshen that are nurturing graduates to look beyond themselves as they step out into the world. It’s those graduates who are changing lives everywhere you look, and sometimes in unexpected, unconventional ways.”

She recently blogged on her web blog, ITMillennial, how the core value “servant leadership” has become so important to her in the corporate context of her life. She always thought that “servant leadership” was mostly for NGO and Peace Corp types, who went into service in poverty-stricken areas in the United States and developing countries. It wasn’t really meant for “an ‘evil’ business major like me… was I wrong, so very, very wrong.”

For Fallon, “servant-leadership” works in the corporate contexts like hers where her role is to remove barriers from those she leads so that they become freer, wiser, more likely themselves to become servants. She writes, “I finally get that… Servant Leadership applies to me as much as anyone else who graduated from Goshen College.” “Thank you.”

End of story. Fallon’s thanks, her gratitude, seals her fortune and destiny as a true Servant Leader, one we can all be proud of. I commend her to you to emulate, who like Christ before her, embraces a vulnerable strength, boldly shaping the culture around her, and doing so with a touch of humor and a heart full of gratitude.

As we close our time together, I want to remind us of one last quality of all great Christ-centered servant leaders. They take time away to pray. Bob Yoder, our campus minister, reminded us at the all-employee retreat how Jesus did a whole lot of praying. I would like to leave you, then, with two short prayers that I have been praying lately that I got from Anne Lamott. These are, by her own account, her favorite two prayers. In praying both, side-by-side, a paradox is created in the praying. Praying both together make them ideal for all would be servant leaders. Simply put, they are:

“O Lord,
“Help me, Help me, Help me.”
And, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Thank you all for listening. Now, go out and lead the world.