The start of a new academic year always brings excitement and anticipation. At Covenant we begin with a grand Convocation, with all our students gathered in the Chapel and the faculty dressed in their colorful regalia. Singing hymns, offering prayers, welcoming new students, introducing new faculty, and listening to a formal address by one of our faculty, we are reminded why we are here, and we look forward with eagerness to what God has in store.

Then, of course, we settle in to the ordinary work before us — ordinary in the very best sense of the word: not inferior or second-rate, but following the common, repeated, beautiful pattern which gives order and normalcy and daily assurance of God’s providence and provision.

For sure, from time to time God may choose to demonstrate his extraordinary providence through special blessings, miraculous interventions, surprising turns of events. But mostly, when students awake in the morning, their rooms look pretty much like they did the night before; the food in our Great Hall dining room is there just like yesterday; classes and athletic practices start and end at the designated times. And so on we go, amidst the ordinary providences of God.

It is a good and gracious thing, this ordinary, “do-the-next-thing” life, in which and through which we live out the extraordinary educational calling to pursue in our studies the mind and heart of Jesus Christ, who is preeminent in all things.

All of which brings us to the consideration of Psalm 19, a psalm which presents God’s people with a beautiful pattern for grasping, and rejoicing in, the order and pattern of God’s revelation – both general in nature, and special in the Scriptures – and our proper response to such grand and convicting truths.
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This blog posting is a slightly edited version of a chapel message which I gave at Covenant earlier this spring. The message grew out of an increasing sense that Christians are highly susceptible to the same degrading trends that characterize the larger culture, and that we need to be reminded yet again that the gospel of Jesus Christ has profound implications and applications for daily life. The apostle Paul’s instruction to the young pastor Titus includes authoritative and perhaps surprising counsel about the linkage between the gospel and our regard for others in word and deed. On Covenant’s campus, as well as in Christian contexts of all kinds, I believe this gospel-grounded truth must be trusted and obeyed, for the glory of Jesus and our effective gospel witness.

William Wilberforce is probably best known for his four-decade effort to bring an end to slavery in the British Empire. Converted to Christianity as a young man, he recognized the radical call of the gospel, resolving to be fully at God’s command and to risk his career, his relationships, and his life for biblical truth and justice. On his deathbed, he heard the news of Parliament’s act to free slaves throughout the empire. The resolute and purposeful direction of his life, fueled by his understanding of the gospel and the call to radical obedience and action, provided a legacy described by one writer as “proof that one man may change his times.”

But there’s another aspect of Wilberforce’s impact on British life and culture, described at length in Garth Lean’s biography. Just as his heart was broken by the wickedness of slavery and the suffering of slaves, so was his heart broken by the immorality and degradation he witnessed in British culture. It was an age of hedonism and coarseness, at all levels of society. Among the wealthy classes were many who were profligate, urbane, lewd, brutal, and heartless. Among the working classes and the poor, who suffered enormously under this regime of calloused selfishness, many drowned their sorrows in an ocean of gin, sought gross entertainments, abused and brutalized one another – it is said that townsfolk were kept awake at night by the screams of victims of assault and rape.
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It has been a bit more than a week since Covenant’s Board of Trustees officially accepted my resignation from the presidency of the College as of June 30, 2012. (You can see online a letter from the chairman of the board and an article in the student newspaper.) I am very grateful for the many conversations of the last several days, including expressions of both appreciation for these past nine years and also encouragement for God’s calling which lies ahead.

As important as it was to move forward with the announcement so that the College could have sufficient time for a presidential search, fifteen months is a long time to be a “lame duck!” After briefly answering questions about the Maclellan Center for Global Christian Education, I have been quick to clarify that I am now committed to focusing on the work of the College during this next year so that, in God’s providence, I might finish well and the College would be stronger in June 2012 than it is today.

Toward that end, I want to provide a broad summary of the areas which will have my attention, certainly in cooperation with others at the College whose work will carry on as the next president begins his service. Click to continue »

This past weekend the Chattanooga newspaper carried the story of the addition of a branch location for Niedlov’s Breadworks, the local maker of artisan breads established several years ago by Covenant alumnus John Sweet (class of 2000). The recently opened Niedlov’s Deli will serve the St. Elmo and Lookout Mountain neighborhoods with a full deli menu as well as John’s wonderful array of fresh-baked breads and pastries. Those of us who live nearby are really happy to have Niedlov’s treasures now even closer to where we live! And we’re not the only ones who appreciate what John has created: In 2010, in recognition of the success of his business and its contribution to the community, John was named Small Business Person of the Year for the state of Tennessee.

Actually Niedlov’s is just one of many examples of Covenant alumni putting their Covenant education to work in creative, entrepreneurial, community-serving ways. In fact, the list is rather long and includes both for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises. The following is a partial list of enterprises which Covenant alumni have founded or played a major role in founding: Click to continue »

One of the distinctive aims of Christian education is an integrated life in which thinking, feeling, relating to others, working, playing, worshipping, serving – all the dimensions of our God-created humanity – partake of a biblical unity grounded in the truth and grace and beauty of God displayed in and realized through the person and work of Jesus Christ and his gospel. The lyrics of Covenant’s college hymn tell it well:

All for Jesus, all for Jesus,
All my being’s ransomed pow’rs;
All my thoughts and words and doings,
All my days and all my hours.

Let my hands perform his bidding,
Let my feet run in his ways,
Let my eyes see Jesus only,
Let my lips speak forth his praise.

Christian educators are deeply concerned, therefore, not only with knowledge and understanding shaped by biblical truth, but with our students’ entire lives shaped by biblical truth, i.e. comprehensive spiritual growth and discipleship. In recent years, a phrase commonly used for this growth and discipleship is “spiritual formation.” Programs of spiritual formation have sprung up at Christian colleges across the country, in both academic and student-development areas, highlighting a perceived and probably historically real gap in Christian educational programs which, while intellectually sound, have been rather weak in addressing the whole person as the Bible surely does.

A Christian school or Christian college is not, of course, the church, and spiritual growth and discipleship are most foundationally to be directed and pursued through the ordinary means of grace for which God was pleased to establish and empower the church. But other life contexts, including families and schools, can and must be partners in this discipleship enterprise. This is a particular blessing for Covenant as an agency of the church, specifically the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) – not replacing the church in its primary teaching and sacraments and care, but complementing and serving the church in the specialized arena of higher education. In this task, Christian educational institutions play a vital role in extending the grace and truth of our faith into every academic and co-curricular endeavor, so that, indeed, all our students’ thoughts and words and doings might be, by God’s grace, all for Jesus.

But this recent concern for spiritual formation has not been confined to Christian or even more broadly faith-based educational settings. We are living in an increasingly “spiritual” age, when anti-spiritual secularism seems to be on the run. Virtually everyone – actors, athletes, politicians, educators of all stripes, and even corporations – is “spiritual” these days, pursuing a stunning array of spiritual pathways and providing contemporary evidence for that quip attributed to G. K. Chesterton: “When men cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything.” Click to continue »

It’s been a challenging start to the spring semester at Covenant! Unusually heavy snow accompanied by continuing cold temperatures forced us to postpone the beginning of classes by several days. Students who were able to return to campus before or in spite of the snowfall have surely enjoyed sledding and other snow activities, but it seems that everyone has been really, really ready for normal college life to get underway. And that happened today, at last.

Each spring semester is the final semester for those soon to graduate. It’s an exciting if bittersweet season, as seniors who’ve been part of our community for three and a half years now prepare to move on to what God has in store for them next. A few weeks ago, Kathleen and I were invited to dinner by a group of senior men who are looking forward to new jobs and, in several cases, weddings in the next few months. We left that house thanking God for the privilege of having a part in preparing them for the pathways of God’s callings.

The spring semester begins on a very positive note, with healthy enrollment numbers, a budget that is on track with our projections, and fund-raising results which are in line with our annual year-to-date average. Click to continue »

In my last posting, I focused on the ironies of the Christmas story: that God chose to use surprising means – which “normal” human wisdom would probably find futile and even ridiculous – in order to accomplish his redemptive purposes for his world: an ironic person in an ironic place, in an ironic situation, with an ironic faith, as means to his ironic salvation. In fact, God delights to work through the weak and the foolish and the humble, those who are poor in spirit, who fear him, and who believe and obey his word.

How easy it is to get this wrong, to come to think that we must seek out extraordinary positions and do extraordinary things – that we must aim to be extraordinary leaders and “movers and shakers” in order for God to get his redemptive work done.

These thoughts have been especially important for us at Covenant as we seek to prepare our students for the pathways of God’s callings – not necessarily in positions of visible leadership, although God will surely choose to lead some in that way, but more often in ordinary paths of daily work and service and sacrifice and contribution. The phrase extraordinary callings in ordinary places captures our conviction, pointing to the reality that all callings from God are, indeed, extraordinary, flowing as they do from his sovereign, gospel purposes, and yet lived out for the most part in beautifully common and even mundane manner.

After that posting in mid-December, I came across another posting, this one on the Gospel Coalition website and written by pastor Kevin DeYoung, in which DeYoung rightly critiques Christian college marketing schemes which appeal to only-too-common obsessions with how “special” we are and how indispensable we are to God’s accomplishing his purposes. Click to continue »