February 3, 2003

Words of Gratitude

As Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I bring a word of gratitude to those of you who have been called to lead. You know the joys and the burdens of leadership. I appreciate the incredible challenges you face. You face concerns regarding financial stability with grants and endowments declining. You face competition for students. You must guide your faculties as they increasingly feel tugged by various constituencies that make up a college. You have staffs that feel undervalued and underpaid. You have relationships with alumni that require your attention.

I am thankful for the Lutheran Education Conference of North America and for this joint Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and ELCA gathering. As a church body, the ELCA is committed to all the places we continue to build our shared relationships with the LCMS through social ministry organizations, Lutheran higher education, Lutheran Services in America, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Disaster Response, and through our military chaplains. At the same time, President Kieschnick and I are committed to conversation addressing our significant differences.

Finally, I bring a word of gratitude for your colleges and universities. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to be on the campuses of several ELCA colleges and look forward to more visits in the future.

Words of challenge

I want to share some words of challenge, acknowledging that these challenges are neither unfamiliar nor unique to this presentation. I am indebted to several people for their work as I prepared these remarks: Dr. William Frame, Augsburg College; Dr. Darrell Jodock, Gustavus Adolphus College, and Dr. Stan Olson, ELCA Division for Ministry. The words of challenge which follow are spoken to all of us as together we strengthen the role of Lutheran higher education in the church and the world.

May we who share leadership in the ELCA and LCMS share a commitment to make Lutheran colleges and universities:

• Communities of faith formation in an increasingly pluralistic, multi-faith context. If this commitment is to continue and grow, it will mean: 
  • A vibrant worship life on the campus, for as Lutherans, we are clear that it is the Holy Spirit working through Word and Sacrament that creates and sustains faith. 
  • Dynamic campus ministry and connections for students to neighboring congregations. 
  • Clarity that the Christian faith is central to the identity and life of our colleges and universities. I find it a bit perplexing that, in the midst of the current cultural phenomenon of increasing talk of spirituality and the growth of conservative churches, Lutherans continue to exhibit great ambivalence about how central their relationship to the church should be to the identity of institutions. 
  • Douglas John Hall talks about a questing people: questing for meaning, questing for authority, questing for transcendence, questing for purpose. Are not the communities of colleges and universities places where such questing is expected and encouraged? 
  • Even though the cultural response to religious diversity is often tolerance of difference and the privatization of faith, we need more public conversation regarding what it means to profess Christ in an increasingly pluralistic context. Krister Stendahl's notion of "holy envy" calls us to be open to the possibility that God is involved in the faith of others in ways that we can't imagine, but without diminishing our devotion to Christ. 
  • Place for those who doubt. We think of doubting Thomas, whom Jesus did not doubt in return. Thomas was passionate about his doubts. Faith hung in the balance. The community of Jesus' disciples kept him in their midst, a model for Lutheran colleges and universities.
• Communities of moral deliberation in an increasingly conflicted world. I realize that some would argue that colleges and universities should be about moral formation, not moral deliberation. I'm not sure they are mutually exclusive. This will mean: 
  • We do not know how to engage in public conversation that is centered in moral discourse. The current possibility of war with Iraq gives us a marvelous opportunity for public conversation about just war theory. We should be having lively public discussions about what makes for just peace in the complex world in which we live. 
  • In the words of Dr. Chris Thomforde, president of St. Olaf College, colleges and universities need to "create safe space" for moral deliberation. 
  • What are the rules for civil discourse? We need models other than the culture's argumentative approach, where others debate for us.
  • In the Affirmation of Baptism in the rite of confirmation, we say that to live in the covenant God made with us in Holy Baptism means to strive for justice and peace in all the earth. We ask what we mean by justice: restorative? retributive? distributive? utilitarian? What is the way to peace? Colleges and universities should be centers of formation as the baptized live out their vocation of striving for justice and peace. 
  • We need to claim sexuality back from the culture, for sexuality is God's gift to every human being. What does it mean to be stewards of this mysterious, powerful, wonderful gift? Colleges and universities can provide rich perspectives on the complex dimensions of the ELCA's current conversation on sexuality.
• Communities of rigorous intellectual exploration in an increasingly anti-intellectual world and church. 
  • John Cobb asks, "Can the church think again?" Let us together answer with a resounding "Yes!" 
  • Think about how central the word "and" is to our Lutheran understanding of creation (good and fallen); anthropology (saint and sinner); Christology (human and divine); the Word of God (law and gospel); God (hidden and revealed; Ruler of the kingdom of the left and of the right). We embrace dialectics and value paradox. Faith and reason define Lutheran higher education. We must not forsake what is central in order to get our market share in the midst of conservative and secular colleges and universities. 
  • Darrell Jodock, who teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College, appeals for an identity for our colleges and universities that is both rooted in tradition and engaged in intellectual expression and in the world. 
  • Joseph Sittler wrote, "What I am appealing for is an understanding of grace that has the magnitude of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The grace of God is not simply a holy hypodermic whereby my sins are forgiven. It is the whole giftedness of life, the wonder of life, which causes me to ask questions that transcend the moment." Lutherans ground catechesis in the pedagogical question, "What does this mean?" Our commitment to higher education is shaped by the same searching curiosity.
• Communities of continuing reformation in a church ambivalent about change.  
  • Lutheranism, a reforming movement within the church catholic, now seems terrified of change. Let us recapture the origins of the Lutheran reformation. 
  • The Holy Spirit is always at work through the gospel, creating the church, calling us to faith, and reforming the church. 
  • Having been reconciled to God in Christ, we are sent into the world with the message and ministry of reconciliation. We are about reforming the church, reforming communities, reforming the culture, reforming the world, and reforming the academy.
  • My greatest fear is not that historians might say I presided over a church body that was divided over sexuality, but that a church made up of the descendants of a once immigrant people from Europe failed to welcome either the new immigrants to our land or the descendants of Native Americans and African slaves and consequently withered and died.
• Communities of vocational preparation in a culture preoccupied with careers and consumption.  
  • I do not need to convince you that one of the many gifts we as Lutheran Christians bring to the church catholic and the world is the Lutheran understanding of vocation. 
  • Almost all ELCA colleges reference service in their mission statements, using the language of service or servant leaders. Lily Endowment dollars will accomplish what pleading presiding bishops have not been able to: reclaiming the word "vocation" as central to the identity and work of Lutheran colleges and universities. 
  • In his article, "The Marks of an ELCA College: One Bishop's Reflections," Stan Olson writes that the word vocation " . . . is helpful because it implies service and direction but also places the summons outside the self. For the church, of course, the call comes from God . . . even if our students do not have or want religious faith as a centering element in their lives, our colleges should intend that they be drawn out of themselves toward the world. The language of vocation is useful here." 
  • Vocational discernment is essential. Vocational exploration through immersions and internships is a marvelous addiition in recent years. May schools continue to challenge students to be stewards of their varied callings in personal relationships, church, community, and the world.
• Communities that not only prepare leaders for the future, but exert leadership in the present.  
  • Yes, we are about raising up, equipping, preparing individual future leaders for the church, society, business, and government. 
  • How is the college or university corporately a leader in the church? In the community? In the world? The notion of the institution as leader may be underdeveloped. 
  • Servant leaders who claim power have the capacity to act. Leaders who discern their power, gifts, identity, and self-interest will seek to know when to provoke, when to evoke, when to revoke, when to invoke. I encourage you to continue being stewards of these various dimensions of vocation in your role as leaders.

Word of Commitment

My first commitment to you is personal. I will: 

• Tend to the relationships with your colleges and universities, with you, and with those in leadership in your institutions.
• Challenge you when I believe our relationship is weakening, affirm it where it is strong, and explore it where it is ill-defined.

My second commitment to you is as presiding bishop. I am committed to:

• Helping our colleges and universities define ways in which you are competitive and ways you can be more cooperative. 
• Giving attention to institutions and agencies of this church-including the colleges and universities-as one aspect of the five spheres of my leadership as presiding bishop.

God's blessings on your leadership and the strengthening of our partnership.

Mark S. Hanson 
Presiding Bishop

 

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