Abilene Christian University Convocation Address

Original: AbileneChristian University Convocation Address

Paul Corts

September 11,2006

Abilene, Texas

"Greetings- President, Platform Party, Faculty, Students

One hundred yearsago today- September 11, 1906- Abilene Christian University held its first chapel to open theschool year for 25 students.  One hundred years ago, theclassrooms were cold, the living conditions were crowded, and waterhad to be brought in by a student-run bucket brigade from a welltwo blocks from campus.  One hundred years ago today, anothergreat chapter in the story of Christian higher education began.

For some of you,this may be your first time living away from home. You may havedifficult days when you feel lonely-but you arenot alone.  Not only are you surrounded by classmates goingthrough the same experiences, and by faculty who consider it aprivilege to support you, but you are part of a larger movementthat God set in motion centuries ago, involving millions ofpeople.

Christianeducation in America can be traced back nearly 400 years, when theNew England Puritans founded Harvard College in 1636.  Thoughyou wouldn't know it by visiting Harvard today,when it was first established, the school pledged to teach everystudent that the primary purpose of life and study"is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternallife, Joh. 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as thefoundation of all so und knowledge and learning."This noble beginning marked the beginning of Christian highereducation in North America. 

By the earlyeighteenth century, some Puritans sensed a decline in Calvinistorthodoxy at Harvard, prompting Congregationalist clergy to foundYale College in 1701 as an alternative.

Most othercolonial colleges were also distinctly Christian, several of whichwere motivated by the First Great Awakening.  ThePresbyterians founded Princeton, the Baptists founded Brown, theDutch Reformed founded Rutgers, and the Congregationalists foundedDartmouth. These institutions not only trained students in theBible, but in the liberal arts, as well.

The second half ofthe nineteenth century brought the Second Great Awakening, and withit, spiritual renewal to colleges like Yale and Princeton, and animpulse to plant new Christian institutions in the Midwest and theSouth. During this timeframe, education and evangelical revivalismwere connected, and Christian educators explored the integration offaith and learning in order to come to terms with the Enlightenmentgoing on in Europe.

Between the CivilWar and the Great Depression, state institutions increasingly leftbehind their Christian heritage.  Seminaries were set upseparately from the colleges and universities, making it difficultto relate Christian doctrine to academic disciplines. Some collegesdid retain their Christian roots during this time.

The emergence ofBible colleges began in the 1880s, many of which were identifiedwith fundamentalism and battling modernism by the 1920s. During the 1930s and 1940s, most conservative Protestant collegeswere barely getting by on the scant resources during the GreatDepression and World War II. After the war, however, evangelicalhigher education began to recover.

Through the 1950sand 1960s, Christian colleges improved their academic standards,gaining credibility.  In 1971, the ten-member ChristianCollege Consortium met for the first time, declaring its intent"to promote the purposes of evangelical Christianhigher education in church and in society through the promotion ofcooperation among evangelicalcolleges…"

What is now knownas the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU)began as a parallel association to the Consortium in 1976, and wasthen named the Christian College Coalition.  Thirty-eightChristian colleges comprised the membership at its founding underGordon Werkema.  The same year, the Coalition launched theAmerican Studies Program, a one-semester study program inWashington, D.C., open to students of member colleges. By the endof John Dellenback's presidency in 1988, Coalitionmembership had grown to 77.  In 1995, as the baton was passedfrom Myron Augsberger to Bob Andringa, there were 90 membercampuses.

Here we are in2006, and as I took office as the fifth president of the CCCU, theCouncil has 105 member campuses in North America and 75 affiliatecampuses in 24 countries around the world. Indeed, Christian highereducation is now a global movement, with Christian universitiesstarting up with increasing frequency in the rest of the world.

The CCCU operates12 student programs in Australia, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, Russia,Uganda, the United Kingdom and the U.S. There are 28 distinctdenominations represented within the Council'smembership and more than 350 majors. More than 1.5 million alumnifrom these institutions are now leaders in fields ranging fromministry to marketing, from engineering to entertainment, frombiology to business.

Abilene ChristianUniversity, too, has grown remarkably since its genesis in 1906,with a student body of more than 4,800 students, including about550 graduate students, representing 50 states and 60 countries.

The impact of whatGod is doing with students and alumni of Christian colleges anduniversities is huge.  The graduates of Abilene ChristianUniversity are leaving a distinct legacy of following Jesus intheir fields for you students to follow.

ACU grad  MaxLucado will tell you he is first and foremost a pastor at Oak HillsChurch in San Antonio. He has also sold more than 40 million booksworldwide, he is the first author to win the Gold MedallionChristian Book of the Year three times and the only author to have11 of his 12 books in print simultaneously appear on paperback,hardcover and children's CBA bestseller lists. He has set a newindustry record by concurrently placing nine different WordPublishing titles on the CBA Hardcover Bestseller List in bothMarch and April 1997; a Max Lucado title has appeared on the CBAhardcover bestseller list every month for the past eight years, andhe has appeared on the Publishers Weekly, USA Today and New YorkTimes bestseller lists. His inspirational radio show,"Upwords," is heard in more than1400 radio markets around the world.

With all thesuccess, Lucado's priorities remain intact."I've realized that my life isabout the message of Christ, so what I do both from the pulpit andin books is to give shape to that message," Lucadotold Today's Christian. "Whateverhappens to my writing, I think I'll always want tobe a teacher."

David Leeson,another Abilene Christian University alum, is a Pulitzer Prizewinning photo-journalist who has captured poignant portraits ofsome of the horrors of this world - poverty,disease, and war. Leeson has often gone back to the people hephotographed and created programs to minister to their needs. He's helped start over 100 food lines in churchesto serve neighborhood poor, founded a school supply support programfor children in need, and a weekend lunch programs for needykids.  But listen to the spirit of this Pulitzer Prize winner:"As Paul said, 'It is no longer Iwho live, but Christ in me.  Take Jesus Christ out of my lifeand I'm afraid of what you'dfind.  He provides me with the ability to move with a mission,to find power to go beyond anything I could normallyaccomplish.'" 

Other graduates ofACU have become state judges, big-city mayors, researchers,Hollywood movie producers, teachers and superintendents, topNashville musicians and music producers, college professors,business owners, nationally-renowned physicians, and winners ofEmmy, Dove, Grammy, Inventor of the Year and Teacher of the Yearawards.  Abilene's 86,000 alumni are part ofa much larger cohort of Christian college graduates who arechanging the world in positive ways every day.

Alumni from otherCCCU member schools include evangelists Billy Graham and TonyCampolo; award-winning Christian musicians Sara Groves and Jars ofClay; Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert;best-selling authors Rick Warren and Richard Foster; Administratorof the Environmental Protection Agency Stephen Johnson; and EugenePeterson, author of The Message. Countlessothers give their lives in service through the arts, business,international relief organizations, law and government, science andtechnology.

This is yourheritage, and it's worth celebrating. You are allpart of this magnificent story of Christian higher education. Hereat Abilene is where you will begin to find your role and write yourown story. And all of this began with a chapel service 100 yearsago today- Sept. 11, 1906.

Of course, thedate Sept. 11 holds a different significance for all of us here,too. Today, the United States and the rest of the world remembersthe terrorist attacks that took place five years ago in New YorkCity and Washington, D.C.-attacks which changedthe way we as Americans think and feel and live and govern. The last four years of my life have been spent serving our country,our president, and our Attorney General as the Assistant AttorneyGeneral for Administration of the United States Department ofJustice - the only federal agency with a moralvirtue for its name.  Living with daily confrontation of evilin the world in that position, I believe I have learned more aboutman's injustice to other mankind these last fouryears than all the rest of my life combined.   

It is with thatexperience still fresh in my mind that I give myself to the causeof Christian higher education. I can think of no endeavor morecritical for our country than that of graduating young people fromour institutions who have a strong orientation to values andcharacter- indeed, who can be a moral compass for the rest ofsociety. After spending time at the Department of Justice,I've never been more convinced of the incredibleneed for you to go out from this place upon graduation and to showthe rest of our culture what it means to follow Christ in allthings. This is the legacy of those who have gone before you, andit is the challenge I give you as you begin one of the most pivotalyears of your lives here at college.

More than 400years ago, Christian higher education in America was born. One hundred years ago, Abilene Christian University came tobe.  Today, we celebrate your rich heritage of Christ-centeredacademics and the world-changing alumni who have come from thiscampus.  One hundred years from now, none of us will behere.  But the results of your choices and actions will liveon.  My hope and prayer is that you will give futuregenerations a legacy upon which they can build, as well."