First Presbyterian Church, Columbia
July 4, 2010
Wow, that was a very flattering introduction! It sounded like the kind of thing I would only have hoped for at my funeral. I know this job will be tough, but surely we can put off the eulogies for a few more years.
Along those lines, I spoke with Andy Putnam, moderator elect of the ARP general synod yesterday. He said I should tell you that I am actually just the student body president and pretend there had been a misunderstanding. I thought that would be too mean. I thought I would do better to reassure you on that front that, although I may not have any grey hair yet, I have been assured that my new job would take care of that.
Erskine is not a church, and it is more than 170 years old. So since the theme of this year’s Thornwell Lecture series is church planting, I would like to begin by admitting that as the President of Erskine College and Seminary, I am uniquely UNqualified to give this lecture.
But I developed a conviction many years ago that I sincerely hope many of you in this church share. That is: when Professor Ferguson asks you to do something, you say ‘yes.’
Professor Ferguson asked me to come and speak to you, he asked me to share my thoughts about Erskine. As you might imagine, that is a subject I am pretty fascinated with right now, so thank you for indulging me. If you don’t really care that much about Erskine, shame on you! Your punishment will be complete and utter boredom for the next 45 minutes as I address those of you who consider yourselves part of the greater Erskine community.
This being Independence Day, I want to first tell a little light-hearted story about Professor Ferguson, and then say something very serious about Erskine.
First the story: I remember, in a systematic theology course around ten years ago, Professor Ferguson talking about going back and forth from Scotland to the US. At that time, he was bouncing back and forth several times a year, so his passport was filling up with stamps. He had recently dealt with a border control officer who was frustrated in his efforts to find a blank space to add yet another short-term visa. Whereas Professor Ferguson had been tempted to feel like an important, desirable, trans-Atlantic world leader, the officer was somewhat less than impressed. Apparently, the officer looked at our beloved Professor Ferguson rather scornfully, saying, “Mr. Ferguson, it looks like you need to figure out where your citizenship should lie and stay there.”
I am not sure what you all have done about Professor Ferguson’s citizenship, but I hope you force him to celebrate the 4th of July with us.
I tell that story not because I care very much about Professor Ferguson’s immigration status, but because it is Independence Day, and I have something important to say about Erskine’s allegiance.
Over the next 30 years, I hope and expect that Erskine will change. Erskine will grow in purity, strength, and quality. But Erskine must always be a faithful, truly self-governing institution of the ARP Church, and as long as I am at the helm, I will do all that I can to ensure that Erskine will always be Erskine.
Perhaps more importantly this Independence Day (and more relevant to my story about Professor Ferguson) I stand before you today as Erskine’s President, overjoyed that, although it has been a very difficult Spring for all of us, Erskine has not and does not intend to ever declare its independence from the ARP Church.
But right now, even as I stand before you full of optimism and faith that God is at work all is not well at Erskine. This will be the first of three major points I would like to make to you this morning: All is not well at Erskine.
A very serious series of misunderstandings concerning the relationship between Erskine and the ARP Church has resulted in a severe governance dispute. As many of you know even better than I, this dispute came to a head this Spring, and as a result, I took office last Thursday with Erskine College under a warning from its accrediting body. As you know, this cannot be taken lightly.
I am extremely grateful for the unanimous vote of support I received from the Erskine Board of Trustees. And I am extremely grateful for the enthusiastic and tangible support I received from the ARP general synod, which resulted not only in the continued funding of Erskine, but also a resolution agreed upon by counsel for both sides and passed by an overwhelming majority of the court to resolve this dispute concerning Erskine’s governance. That resolution affirmed and clarified Erskine’s mandate to be a faithful, truly self-governing institution of the ARP Church. As a result, I am fully confident that when our accrediting body visits Erskine College in the Spring of 2011, it will find our house in order, and will recognize that Erskine continues to serve as salt and as light to the world of higher education.
But the difficulties we currently face cannot and must not be taken lightly.
We must ask ourselves not only how we can ensure that this governance dispute is fully and clearly resolved, but also how we got into it to begin with. I don’t know all the ins and outs of who said what and what was posted on what blog, but I DO understand the root of this problem, and I intend to address it in the next few minutes.
But first, while I will not point fingers, I feel I would be remiss if I did not name a few names.
Before I name names, however, I need to acknowledge that the true heroes of this battle for the purity and the peace of Erskine are the ones that worked quietly, diligently, and vigorously behind the scenes. I do not know all of these people. Neither do you. That was the way they offered their service. None of us will ever hear many of their names. But I trust that they will be rewarded one day, whether that be with mansions in heaven or the more imminent quiet satisfaction of a job well done.
At the very beginning of the first conversation I ever had with your past senior minister, the Rev. Dr. John R. de Witt, he told me that I might not should be talking to him. He told me that he is a man who has utterly lost his reputation. He felt that he had taken a stand for what he thought was right and things had broken loose all around him so that he did not see the way ahead and he feared that he would never again be thought of as a man motivated by the love of God. To the extent that that is true, brothers and sisters, all is not well at Erskine.
As a preacher of the Gospel for more than 40 years, Dr. de Witt knows better than most that the line between good and evil is real. It must never be ignored or soft-pedaled, or blurred in any way. But Dr. de Witt also knows that the line between good and evil does not fall between ARP ministers and their congregations. It does not fall between ideologues and men and women of action. It does not fall between one clique of students and another. It does not even fall between Christians and non-Christians. It certainly does not fall between the ARP Moderator’s Commission and the Erskine Board of Trustees. Dr. de Witt knows, perhaps better than anyone else in this room, that the line between good and evil can be most accurately drawn somewhere around the middle of the heart of every mere human who has ever lived.
We all bear the divine image, but we have all borne it unfaithfully. Happily, through the work of redemption Christ has accomplished for us who are united with him, we have a solidly grounded hope; but that redemption will only be fully applied upon his return. So until then, we must all labor to fill the earth (which includes ourselves!) and subdue it with the love and the justice of the Father.
I do not know Dr. de Witt very well. But I do know him to be a man of the Gospel, and as such I will not sit quietly if his reputation is truly in jeopardy. I know that many in the Erskine community have either strongly disagreed with or misunderstood many of his actions. I cannot say that I understand and agree with all of them myself. But I believe that he is my brother in Christ, and as such I commit to stand by him personally and to continue laboring alongside him for the purity and the peace of the invisible church (which is the bride of Christ), and the visible church (especially the ARP) and the ministries and institutions of the visible church (especially Erskine College and Seminary).
Although they may appear to be opposed to Dr. de Witt and his supporters, I would also like to say a few words in defense of several other men who have put their reputations on the line for the sake of Erskine—Dr. Richard Taylor, Dr. Parker Young, and J. David Chestnut. These are the three Erskine trustees who, out of concern that the principles of self-governance might otherwise be compromised, solicited the input of God-ordained civil magistrates. Whether you agree with their actions or not, it would be very difficult to argue that they have acted out of any greater motive than their love for Erskine and their passion for her integrity. I grieve, and I hope that you grieve with me, that the situation this spring escalated to the point that these men felt conscience-bound to bring this issue before the civil courts.
Although, as I mentioned earlier, I am overjoyed that Erskine’s governance issues have been clearly addressed, and the intent that Erskine be a faithful, truly self-governing institution of the ARP Church has been duly affirmed, personal reputations and personal relationships are still suffering. So all is not well at Erskine.
Regardless of how you may have felt in the past about the four people I have just mentioned — de Witt, Taylor, Young, and Chestnut — and regardless of how you may have felt in the past about the many others that each of them represent (whether in part or in whole), I ask you now, for the sake of the gospel, and for the sake of Erskine, to forgive.
As men and women of integrity, how we act must be better than how we feel. And real love is not a feeling, but an action. Let us give it freely to one another, just as it is freely offered to each of us by the Triune God of the Universe through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
As I stand before you this morning, all is not well at Erskine. But why not? I promised earlier to address the root of the problem. Let me do so briefly now.
If you will forgive me, I would like to approach this issue through an extended quotation that many of you will find offensive. It is, without question, rather harsh. But it is also true. It addresses the full Erskine community (and beyond) when it says:
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
I told you it was harsh. Though this may sound like something cooked up in the Erskine blogosphere, I assure you that they are the words of the Apostle Paul, quoting loosely from Psalm 14. If you read this passage in context, you will know that this quotation plays a crucial role in the Apostle Paul’s explanation of what Christianity is all about.
Manhattan-based pastor Tim Keller summarizes Paul’s explanation of Christianity in this way: “Good news! You are worse than you ever dared to imagine, but God loves you more than you ever dared to hope.”
Paul is only telling us the bad news so that he can highlight the good news. That is also my intent this morning. To understand the solution to our problem, we must first understand the nature and the severity of our problem.
All is not well at Erskine because all is not well in the Universe. Christ, our savior, has accomplished our redemption, but it will not be fully applied until he returns. And especially in times such as these, his return seems painfully, painfully slow.
Let me explain. For those of us who are in Christ, our free, complete, and absolute righteousness is secure, but it is also yet to come. It is sealed with the deposit of the Holy Sprit, but not all of our decisions are yet spirit-filled.
And so we are left (at least for now) with this horrible nuance—the root of Erskine’s problems—the fact that we—the very people who long for her purity—continue to sin. And as if that were not enough, our sins have stewed together with the sins of others in the greater Erskine community. And as if that were not enough, the fact that we at Erskine are such a tight-knit community has contributed a sort of pressure-cooker effect to speed the intensity and severity—at times even the violence—of what might otherwise be considered rightly motivated actions.
All is not well at Erskine. Our problems run as deep as human nature itself. But there is hope. We are not lost.
Erskine is an institution. It is not a person. So we cannot say that Christ died for Erskine to save Erskine from our sins.
Erskine is a human institution. It was founded by humans and built by humans, and its problems are human problems. But God has used Erskine mightily in the past, and I have every expectation that He will use it for many, many years into the future. Because God has chosen to use Erskine so mightily in the lives of so many people, and because God has used so many people to craft Erskine into such a thing of beauty, I believe that God cares about Erskine. But we can’t just stick our heads in the sand and pretend that God will work without us. We cannot wait lazily in anticipation of a miracle. God says that if His people, who are called by His name, will humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked ways, He will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
Brothers and sisters, let us commit to join together to pray for Erskine passionately and faithfully. We are on the cusp of sweet reconciliation and a lasting, educated, and purified peace. But peace at Erskine will not come on its own. We must work together, praying that the spirit of God would descend on Due West and each one of us with such power that our sins are overwhelmed with the spirit of wisdom, and of forgiveness, and of love.
This is no passive enterprise. All is not well at Erskine. But all can be made well through the power of our Triune God working through us, his image bearers. That is the second major point I wanted to make to you this morning. The first is that all is not well, the second is that all can be made well, and now for my third major point: I want to paint a picture for you of what I believe Erskine can and should look like.
In its Statement of the Philosophy of Christian Higher Education of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Manual of Authorities and Duties says, and I quote, “the Church should ask itself continually what it is doing and what it ought to be doing in the field of education.”
In the next few minutes, I will explain my view of what the church is doing and should be doing in the field of higher education.
First, I will say that the ARP Church is and should be acting in the field of higher education through Erskine. And Erskine is and should be, a faithful, truly self-governing institution of the ARP Church. The ARP Church founded Erskine, and is actively involved, and should continue to be actively involved, in ensuring her ongoing strength.
But what does it look like for Erskine to be true to her mission as a Christian Liberal Arts College and Seminary? To put it concisely, and here I will quote those who have gone before me, she must “equip students to flourish by providing an excellent liberal arts education in a Christ-centered environment where learning and biblical truth are integrated to develop the whole person.”
I would like to share with you briefly a few ideas concerning how I believe that mission can be most effectively implemented. I believe that Erskine College and Seminary will be most effective when it is clearly and passionately focused on three core principles: Academic Integrity, Financial Sustainability, and Service to the Poor.
First, let me explain what I mean by Academic Integrity.
Here I will try to wake you up a little bit with a statement that might be a bit controversial. I am not a huge fan of the phrase “integration of faith and learning.” I think it is a good phrase. It has served us well. But I think we can do better.
As many of you know, the phrase became hugely popular in evangelical circles in the 1970’s. This was largely because of the influence of one of my greatest heroes, Francis Schaffer. His wife, Edith, was pretty amazing too, by the way. I used to make all of my students (especially the men) read her book, The Hidden Art of Homemaking. As I mentioned, I believe that the phrase served us well. For example, it played a key role in the Philosophy of Christian Higher Education produced by the ARP in 1977, which is an unbelievably fine and important document that articulates what Christian commitment and excellence in learning should look like. But let’s think a little more about the phrase itself.
What kind of faith would we be talking about if it existed independently of learning? Do we really think we would want that kind of faith getting in and messing up our institutions of higher education? And who ever thought learning could be done in a spiritual vacuum? Seriously? How did we ever get so far down the path of secular humanism that we thought this stuff made sense? Stupid faith should be rejected, not brought into our system. And likewise, data without context is just noise.
Now, if I know my audience at all, I know that at least those of you who are still listening are squirming in your seats right now. You are probably wanting to scream out something like:
“But that is not what we mean by the integration of faith and learning!! We are talking about OUR faith, which is informed by millennia of learning, not some stupid faith! And we are talking about OUR learning, which is done in the context of God’s creation using the faculties he gave us to effectively bear His image, not just a disorganized flow of raw data!”
If that is what you are doing right now, then I have made my point. Because if you are wanting to clarify what you mean by the phrase ‘integration of faith and learning,’ my critique of the phrase has served its purpose. I don’t particularly like the phrase because in many circles it has become an empty slogan of dead liturgy, and what the phrase means is way too important to abandon to the mindless mortuary of recitation and sloganeering.
Upholding the principle of academic integrity means that our work has to hold water. It must fit together. We cannot have gaping holes in our reasoning, which means that we cannot leave out the parts of the puzzle that we are afraid might offend hypersensitive, special interest ideologues.
We must uphold the great liberal arts tradition of focusing on the big picture. We cannot do any one subject in a vacuum. This doesn’t just mean that what is taught in politics classes needs to be upheld by what is taught in bible classes. It also means that what is taught in the politics department needs to be upheld by what is taught in the biology department; and that what is taught in the biology department needs to be upheld by what is taught in the art department. I am not saying that all faculty are going to agree with one another all the time (the Lord knows that will never happen!), but what I am saying is that all truth is God’s truth. I will not say that theology is the queen of the sciences, but I will say clearly to anyone who cares to ask who the king is, because the king I believe in is king of all! We cannot say anything without that statement having at least some implication on our understanding of everything. That is why we must focus on the impact our learning makes on our understanding of the big picture. It all has to fit together. That is why I am a fan of the liberal arts tradition, and that is what I mean by academic integrity.
But I am not finished with this point. Because learning requires growth, and growth requires change. As a result, the only kind of academic integrity worth having is nauseatingly dynamic. I used the word nauseating there for a reason. The kind of dynamism that characterizes the academic integrity I am advocating is gut wrenchingly difficult work. Not only does it keep you at the limit of your digestive capability, but it is always twisting and turning and stretching you at your core. It is difficult. But it is worth it. It is painful. But that is what growth looks like. And growth is required for true human flourishing.
One more, very closely related point: For students to flourish academically, they must be nurtured and protected from unhealthy threats and intimidation. The same must be said for faculty. Academic flourishing is an act of creativity. Creativity is born of freedom. Freedom is born of Trust. Trust is born of trustworthiness. And trustworthiness is born of faithfulness. Here we see again that Erskine must be a faithful, truly self-governing institution of the ARP Church.
Closely related to the principle of academic integrity is my responsibility as president to see that the academic community—both students and faculty—are defended from threats and intimidation. I must defend them up to the point that they are utterly indefensible. And if they are ever found to be utterly indefensible, they must be removed. But they should never be left to defend themselves. They have much more important work to do.
Now I have two more core principles and I am almost out of time. The good thing is that one of my remaining points is very simple, so I can cover it quickly. And the other is very, very complex, so I will simply introduce it as an impetus for further thought.
My second core principle is financial sustainability, and although that principle can be very difficult, it is also very simple.
We cannot spend more money than we receive. If we can’t pay people, we cannot ask them to continue coming to work. And if we can’t pay them enough, we can’t blame them when they go somewhere else to work. But I can’t pay them without the sacrificial gifts of the greater Erskine community. You understand that. The members of this church are some of the most generous in the greater Erskine community. As a result, I am happy to report that Erskine continues to be in strong financial shape. But don’t just send us your money. Send us your sons and your daughters and their friends and their relatives. We have the community, we have the technical expertise, and we have the vision. All we need is money and students to be a financially sustainable, self-governing institution of the ARP Church.
And this brings me to my last point, because I believe that there would be no use in either academic integrity or financial sustainability if we did not use them to serve the poor.
I know that is controversial. And I know that my naming service to the poor as one of my core principles will be somewhat confusing. I also know that service to the poor is not simple. If you doubt the complexity here, just try defining what it means to be poor. Think for a minute about the different types of poverty, and the very complex and various causes of the different types of poverty. As I just mentioned, this concept is way too complicated to fully explain here. I must confess that I am only beginning to understand it myself. But let me at least give you a few key points to chew on.
First, I must say that I believe very firmly that what typically passes as service to the poor is hopelessly superficial. I know that sounds harsh, so please, let me push a little further and see if this makes sense.
If our society is unjust, our most noble charities are at best whitewash on the tomb of oppression. So what does a just society look like? Well, that is a very abstract question that deserves a very abstract answer. A just society starts with the true king being restored to his rightful throne. True service to the poor is not a mater of placating beggars, it is a matter of setting captives free. Our most oppressive captor is death, and death has its root in human sinfulness. But praise God, because death has been swallowed up in victory by the finished work of Christ.
So why do our members still die? Why are there still captives to set free? Why does the human condition continue to be plagued with poverty? I know the answer, despite the fact that I do not yet fully understand it. Jesus has accomplished our redemption, but it will only be fully applied when He returns.
But does that mean that we should sit by and watch people suffer while we await His return? May it never be! Although I wish we had time to discuss this further, I need to respect your schedule. Thank you for bearing with me, and allowing me to share my vision for Erskine and how I hope to guide her and my King guides me through these trying times. I will close now with these words from Hebrews Chapter 12, verses 12-14. After spending a good deal of time talking about the suffering Christian endure as we await our Savior’s return, and how God uses that suffering for our good, the writer of Hebrews says:
“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;”
For His glory and our good. Thank you.
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