Greetings in the name of our Lord. On behalf of our staff here from our three-building campus on the screen, and from several student program sites from around the world, WELCOME!
Tonight is a thrill for Sue and for me. Our six and half years with the CCCU have been beyond compare. In planning for this Forum, I was reminded in so many ways of the solid foundations laid down by my three predecessors. Could I ask Gordon and Jacklyn Werkema, John and Mary Jane Dellenback and Myron and Esther Augsburger to stand for another expression of our gratitude to them?
In a couple minutes I want to highlight two major themes which our board adopted for very intentional work in the years ahead: First, a new emphasis on racial harmony and diversity -- what we need to do on campus and off campus for the sake of our students, the Church and society.
The second theme has less to do with catching up with the rest of higher education than with leading it in helping our campuses to be more global in every respect.
But first, a couple questions as we celebrate our silver anniversary: Where were you 25 years ago? In what shape was your institution? By all known measures, we can say that God has been faithful. As an organization just turning 25, we have moved from a modest club of several presidents....to a professional association serving almost all the institutions who would qualify for membership in North America ... to a budding movement of diverse, but Christ-focused institutions in 17 countries and counting.
Where will we be 25 years from now? As one whose motto is "peak at 80," I expect to be relaxing just a bit more in the year 2026, and hopefully up to attending our 50th anniversary Forum to celebrate with many of you when I'm 85.
Where will our institutions be in 2026? I actually get asked several times a year, "what is the future of Christian colleges?" In response to such a question recently, I replied that I'm always surprised at how God does the unexpected exceptional thing with the unsuspecting average person or institution. It's hard to know what God will do.
"No," this person said, "really, where do you see Council institutions 25 years from now?" OK, let's put the time machine on fast forward until the year 2026. I'll predict that 25 years from now 25% of our campuses will have merged or closed down....50% will still be competitive and showing excellence in many areas...and 25% will have made the necessary changes and commitments to become truly transformational.
Where would you put your institution? One popular definition of leadership is to define reality. I hope I am wrong, but my sense of "reality" is that in 25 years around 25% of CCCU campuses will not have survived as independent institutions. They will have put up the good fight to justify their required price for their average product. Oh, people still loved the Lord at these campuses, but the combination of poor geographical location, low salaries, marginal facilities, lack of vision, state financial policies, cost of maintaining necessary technology, competition, and other variables just made it impossible to continue as they were.
This is a huge challenge for boards of trustees. When are you strong enough to invest in the future versus looking for a merger before you have no assets to put on the table and others are not interested in a merger? From a biblical worldview, I don't think closing down an enterprise is all that bad. It may be good stewardship and the most fair thing to do. Leaders in these vulnerable schools will need godly wisdom and courage beyond the normal to do the right thing.
While I see this as a realistic scenario for approximately 25% of our campuses, be very sure that Council leaders will work hard to help those institutions move into the middle 50% of stable and effective campuses. We will do that through our 90 programs and services which will improve every year. And I know our several peer networks will give their best to share ideas and strategies that work.
In the middle 50% of our campuses, assessing where they are at the time of our 50th anniversary Forum, I think we will see campuses whose boards and administrators maintained the support of faculty and staff to adjust to new technologies and methodologies to serve a learning society of all ages. They will have benefitted from state student aid policies that provided a somewhat even playing field with public institutions. . Even if rural, they will have found ways to give students experiences that prepare them for a dynamic, changing society and economy. Quality faculty will have been recruited and retained, probably focusing on fewer majors and more cross-disciplinary studies. Enrollments will have grown in a managed way, but these campuses will have had to improve their marketing and financial management every year just to stay even.
What about those 25% which I predict will reach 2026 as truly transformational institutions? These campuses will have most of the characteristics of the middle 50%, but will have more. These top tier campuses will have had two or three new presidents by our 50th anniversary Forum, each of whom brought the right kind of godly leadership at the right time in the developmental cycle. They will have strong boards who embrace the mission and bring wisdom to an active involvement in the process of change. Their faculty will have that wonderful combination of scholarly inquiry, love for teaching, and a world perspective that embraces matters of the heart and mind beyond any narrow discipline.
These transformational institutions will find the balance between media-rich technology users and those community-minded, relational learning centers where faculty view themselves as co-learners with students. At these institutions, output measures will have replaced input measures as the way to assess progress. Many will have found ways to serve adults and distance learners around the world almost as effectively as traditional students. As donors perceive that something rich and important is happening on these campuses, endowments will build. As among most sectors, the strong will get stronger and the weak will try to hang on.
Now, I assume that every one who came to Orlando wants to be part of a transformational campus when we meet in 2026. Will your institution still be one of the Shining Lights in higher education on that day?
Now let me return to the two thematic goals which our CCCU board of directors established last July. By themselves, they will not guarantee that an institution will be among the top 25% of our campuses when we gather in 25 years. But without them, it is hard to see how any could make that first quartile.
First, we must be more global in our thinking, praying, planning and actions. With the partnership of affiliate campuses in 15 nations outside of North America, we have a chance to provide enrichment experiences for students beyond the capacity of most secular institutions. The Council has a major grant request pending to facilitate exchanges of faculty and students from different countries. We hope to facilitate ideas of how to make our curricula more reflective of the global economy. Certainly God's kingdom knows no national boundaries. Christian worldview learning should help all students be thoughtful, informed citizens of the world.
The second priority theme for Council staff is, again, such a natural for Christ followers -- to be intentional and consistent about advancing racial harmony and diversity. The biblical mandate is without question. Employers are crying for graduates who know how to work for and work with people of increasingly diverse racial, ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds. Enrollment officers know that almost all the growth in traditional higher education this decade will come from people of color. And Council students have registered, in our surveys, a disappointment in the lack of diversity on their campuses.
Friends, the time has come to take affirmative action -- yes, I believe colleges and universities need to make intentional, creative, funded, well-led efforts to reach out beyond anything we have seen to date. In 1999, as an association, our members enrolled about 12 % minority students and employed about 6 % minority faculty.
We can do better
It's time for more honesty and less defensiveness on this issue. If I could speak for all of our campuses to minority leaders in the US today, I would beg their forgiveness for our lack of sensitivity to the continuing, albeit more subtle, racism in America. I would apologize for our lack of interest in studying the history of slavery and for our timid efforts to reach out to churches and communities where Anglos are in the minority. Dear God, help us get this right!
These two timely I would say urgent themes only add to the many challenges facing private higher education today. But in this postmodern world, we above all campuses have the calling to seek honestly for truth. We, above all campuses, have the calling to honor every person with human dignity and worth. We, above all campuses, have the person and the presence of the Creator and Redeemer God to show us the Way and to lead us to true life together.
Leaders and friends of intentionally Christian colleges and universities -- and all our friends in corporations, foundations, churches and parachurch organizations, we can meet the challenges of the next 25 years by continuing to work collaboratively through the Council FOR Christian Colleges & Universities.
With respect to ending racism and thinking more globally, we need to get it right.
When one campus leader gets it right, others on that campus get it right. When a whole campus gets it right, it helps other sister campuses get it right.
In these and every other critical area of integrating quality scholarship with biblical faith and character development, we need to learn from one another...ask God to bless us beyond our expectations...and commit to love and serve one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.
That's why we are here! May God be pleased.
. But the diversity we need to model goes well beyond mere numbers. We need to model the love and acceptance and inclusion and understanding that comes only with hearts focused on the Creator of all.