For his college. He’s the president. And he’s 66 years old.

College presidents don’t usually bike across country these days, but Judson Baptist College President Herb Anderson is an unusual man. At an age when most presidents would be settling down to retirement, Anderson, 66, biked 2,300 miles to Washington, D.C., last summer, to save his central Oregon college from financial collapse. The only Conservative Baptist liberal arts college in the country, Judson is over $1 million in debt.

Judson must show it has the means to erase much of that debt by next month to prove financial stability to a regional accreditation commission. Anderson’s bike trip, from which he hoped to raise $250,000, showed the thin thread on which the college’s future hangs.

On July 31, he and 15 Judson students left the college in The Dalles, Oregon, and arrived at the Capitol steps in Washington one month later. Trip supporters requested 1,116 Conservative Baptist churches across the country to pledge money for each mile bicyclists rode.

Anderson, an avid bicyclist who leads yearly trips up and down the West Coast with students, made the trip on a Schwinn bicycle donated by two businessmen. He visited Conservative Baptist churches along the route, got police escorts through small towns, and appeared on radio and TV talk shows. He called the trip his “last hurrah.”

“I wanted to bike across the country once in my life and here was the opportunity,” he said. “Even if we hadn’t needed the money, I would have done it, anyway. But 1982–83 is our crisis year. Either we make it or we don’t. We’re just treading water now.”

Anderson’s gamble seems to have paid off. Although the bike trip directly resulted in only $40,000 in pledges and contributions, trip publicity caught the attention of the Murdoch Foundation of Vancouver, Washington, which is linked to Tektronix Inc. of Beaverton, Oregon. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of computer terminals.

The foundation, which also donates to other private Oregon colleges, recently awarded Judson a $200,000 grant. It will give the college another $190,000 providing Judson can raise a matching $190,000. The total $580,000 would, said Anderson, “bring us close up to our current expenses.”

Christians along the bike route gave the bicyclists royal treatment, putting them up in private homes, providing meals, and taking up offerings. After Anderson was interviewed on broadcast evangelist Jim Bakker’s PTL Club, he was handed a $10,000 check. “I burst into tears,” the president admitted.

Anderson praised the hospitality his group experienced as they crossed the country along the 1976 Bikecentennial bike trail. Biking to Boise, Idaho, they drove over the Rockies, then rode their bikes through Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky. Detouring to North Carolina, they headed north through Virginia to Washington, D.C., where they were greeted the morning of August 30 on the Capitol steps by Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson.

“Judging from the people we met from all walks of life, America is stronger morally and spiritually than is thought,” Anderson observed. “As the media is avant-garde, we get the idea that America is slipping from its foundations.”

When Anderson became college president in 1981, he inherited some immense problems. In the fall of 1980, Judson relocated from Portland, the largest city in the state, to The Dalles—population 12,000—a city one-twentieth Portland’s size. Faced with having to renovate its smaller Portland campus for $10 million, the college was offered a 64-acre campus in The Dalles for $1.4 million. It sat on the site of a former tuberculosis hospital.

College officials snapped up the bargain, found a savings and loan bank to lend them the funds, and prepared to move east to the other side of the Cascade mountains. Judson was in the middle of spending over $1 million to remodel the old hospital into a college campus when the savings and loan backed out of the arrangement. Unable to secure another loan. Judson had to rely on trustees and friends to borrow money on their names from banks, then loan it to the college.

Despite this setback, the college went ahead with the move and in the process lost half of their faculty who were unwilling or unable to leave Portland. When former Judson president C. Neil Davis left in the spring of 1981, Anderson, a familiar name in Conservative Baptist circles, was made president.

“They asked him to take on Judson because of the high regard Conservative Baptists have for him,” said Russ Shive, general director of the Conservative Baptist Association of America. “He can instill a sense of trust and warmth toward the school. He’s held in high esteem and has a good track record.”

“Anderson is so well known throughout the U.S. that he was one of only two or three persons who could have brought credibility to the school,” said businessman Lorne Richman, a trustee who chairs the development committee. “That guy is so humble. When he came here, money started coming out of the woodwork. People figured that if Herb Anderson was for Judson, they would back it, too.”

Anderson has held six pastorates in Oregon, the presidency of the Conservative Baptist Association of America, the general directorship of the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society, served on the boards of various Conservative Baptist groups, and been involved in youth work and college instruction. He had been chairman of Judson’s Bible and philosophy department one year when he was asked to become president. After his appointment, money didn’t start coming out of the woodwork right away. Beginning in the fall of 1981, salaries for Judson’s 25 faculty and 15 staff members were late, and since last April, they have not been paid at all. The college offered faculty and staff free meals at the college cafeteria and the chance to draw small amounts of money from the business office in case of emergencies.

“Their response was mixed, but overall good,” said Anderson, who is living off social security. “They are very loyal. They believe the Lord brought them there.” Several faculty are driving wheat trucks and working the cherry harvest; others are living on savings.

Anderson said the lack of salaries “gets to you” every so often, but “there’s that assurance that we’ll make it; that all those bills will get paid.” His confidence comes from a lifetime of difficult situations, he adds—situations from which no one but God could have rescued him.

As an example, he cites his stint as general secretary for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship soon after he had graduated from Wheaton College in the 1940s. He went on missionary recruiting trips with never enough money to complete the trips. Always, the money was supplied during the trek, such as the time he was short $8 and a stranger handed him a $10 bill.

Despite the economic woes, Anderson’s commitment, self-effacing demeanor, sense of humor, and willingness to serve has won him the admiration and support of Judson faculty, students and staff, according to Dr. Charles McKinney, Judson vice-president for fiscal affairs.

Some 70–80 students may leave Judson if the college does not receive a four-year accreditation in December, said Martin Bush, Judson vice-president of academic affairs. (The school has 300 students.) In Oregon, teachers must be certified by an accredited school, and if Judson fails to meet the accrediting commission’s financial standards, many students would have to go elsewhere to graduate.

Although Judson’s financial woes could prove its undoing, its academic program is quite strong, said Bush. Its class of 1982–28 seniors—scored high in their Graduate Record Exams, whereas these same seniors had entered Judson with average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores.

“It’s obvious we’re doing a good job,” said Anderson. “We should do everything to maintain. Why shouldn’t [Conservative Baptists] have our own colleges to develop our own leaders and missionaries? Judson is for our denominational strength.” (The denomination has two seminaries and three colleges).

“In a recession, the educational enterprises get cut first,” said Earl Radmacher, president of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland. “If anything could do it for Judson, Anderson’s grand gesture [the bike trip] would do it. That’s the level of his enthusiasm.”

Anderson and other Judson supporters are not going to let the college go without a fight. When the president announced the bike trip along with a plea for funds this June at the national gathering of Conservative Baptists in Roseville, Minnesota, he told delegates, “Give me Judson or give me death.”

Anderson receives much support and ideas from trustee Richman, who suggested Judson move to The Dalles. Ten years ago Richman, an incurable optimist, founded the JBC 500 Club, which solicits people to donate $500 to the school in the form of $100 yearly increments. This technique has raised $500,000 so far.

After Richman volunteered as trustee development director a year ago, the trustees dreamed up ways to coax funds out of Judson’s constituency. They concentrated on personal contacts on the premise that people will give to an organization their best friends are involved with. A Circle of Friends campaign aimed at the 100 closest friends of the college raised $75,000 in two months. A JBC 100 campaign soliciting students to ask friends and family for money netted $25,000. A Christmas letter appeal for funds brought in $220,000.

Judson invited a team of retired Portland Trail Blazers to play the Judson team in two games. The event brought in many residents from The Dalles, who rarely have the chance to see professional-level basketball. Although the venture netted only $8,000, Judson beat the Trail Blazer alumni both times and gained credibility in the community.

City officials have been cooperative, said Anderson, partly because Judson is the city’s only four-year college, and The Dalles benefits by $2.6 million yearly in school business.

Also of help has been Stewardship Bank of Oregon, a Portland bank owned by Christians. The bank will eventually tithe its profits to Judson and other Christian schools. So far, it has lent Judson $400,000 through trustees and is willing to lend out more.

Judson’s income has thus risen to meet current expenses, but what it needs is money to meet its backlog of debts. Not included in these immediate debts is the $1.2 million purchase price it will pay the state at 6 percent interest for the next 33 years.

When asked why he took on such a formidable task when he could be relaxing in retirement at his 58-acre farm in Monmouth, Oregon, Anderson said he likes college students and sees much potential in the school. As for jumping on what could be a sinking ship, well, “That’s the story of my life,” he said.

“I gravitate to need,” he explained, “and I’ve often left a safe and comfortable place to meet yet another need. I’ve never been able to stay comfortable for long in one place; I’ve always moved on to a needier place. Had I to live my life over, I’d stay longer in each place, but I could never say no when there was a need.”

Every morning Anderson jogs to a hill overlooking the campus, looks down on the college, the city on the banks of the Columbia River, and Mount Adams in the distance, and prays that Judson will survive.

Besides, “how far do you go to where you want to close a school?” he asked. As if he couldn’t imagine reaching that point, he replied, “We’ll make it. God is our source. There has been a growing confidence that we’ll make it.”

Perdonslia

John D. Jess, founder of the “Chapel of the Air” radio broadcast, has announced his retirement after 43 years as speaker on the daily quarter-hour program. Jess began the broadcast in 1939, at the age of 26. He was heard six days a week until 1977 when failing health caused him to cut back. Five years ago, Jess’s nephew, David Mains, took over some of the broadcasts. The program is now heard on nearly 300 radio stations nationwide.

NEWS

Its pastor is jailed for persistently defying state law.

The Faith Baptist Church School of Louisville, Nebraska, has quarrelled with state authorities for five years. State laws require that all schools be licensed, but the Faith Baptist fundamentalists have refused state licensure because it violates their religious conviction, they say.

Last month, the struggle erupted again. For the second time in two years, the county judge ordered the church—where school is held—padlocked except during regular worship hours. Some 85 fundamentalist pastors from throughout the nation, protesting the lockup, were bodily removed by 18 lawmen. Two days later, the church was reopened for a Wednesday evening service. The ministers vowed that, once inside, they would not leave the church. County Judge Raymond Case suspended his order to have the church relocked after the service, but he did not promise chains would never go back on the doors. Classes resumed in the building the following day.

Roy Thompson, a Cleveland pastor, and Moral Majority national secretary Greg Dixon, an Indianapolis fundamentalist pastor, negotiated with authorities for a resolution. CT assistant news editor Rodney Clapp went to Louisville while Faith pastor Everett Sileven was jailed for violation of court orders and then released. Here is his report:

In Nebraska, the Louis in Louisville is pronounced as it is spelled—no French frills. Louisville is situated on the Platte River, just off Interstate 80 between Omaha and Lincoln. The Ash Grove Cement Company is Louisville’s only industry. The downtown business area stretches all of two blocks, with the Cornhusker Country Music Theater (dances on Saturday nights) dominant on Main Street.

Some have said this town of 1,000 seems more of the Appalachians than the Great Plains. Louisville is built amid sharp hills, and in autumn fallen leaves rollercoaster down the streets, which climb and dive through the community. A sign outside town speaks of Louisville’s quiet advantages: “Six local churches, good schools, reasonable taxes, picturesque setting, picturesque community. A WONDERFUL PLACE TO LIVE AND GROW!”

But journalists and television cameras have been coming to Louisville, and their coming has nothing to do with reasonable taxes, picturesque settings, or the fact that Louisville surely is a wonderful place to live and grow. It does have to do with one of the six local churches.

The Faith Baptist Church has been in Louisville eight years. Five years ago Everett Sileven sat in his church office as both pastor and school administrator. Until late October, he sat some 15 miles away in a county jail cell. It was in the fall of 1977 that some members of the fundamentalist church told Sileven they were not content only with Sunday school. What about Monday (and Tuesday through Friday) school? In public schools, the parents complained, their children could not pray or study the Bible. Discipline was lax, authority disrespected. Were five or six hours at church enough after letting “the world” have their children 35 hours a week? Sileven agreed. He visited a public school in the area and, he says, smelled marijuana in the halls. The principal said stopping the smoking would only cause more trouble. That was incentive enough.

Faith Baptist Church, with 150 members, started a private Christian school and enrolled 17 students.

The Faith Baptist Church school may be school to the 29 students now attending, but it is not a school in the eyes of the state of Nebraska. Nebraska requires that all schools be licensed and staffed by state certified teachers. Faith’s school is not licensed, and no teachers are certified.

The church has, in the last five years, found itself in court nearly two dozen times—an average of almost one court appearance for every 10 Sunday meetings. It has floated down legal channels, losing judgments, all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court—where it also lost. Ultimately, on September 3, Sileven was asked to leave his pulpit, where he had been leading one in a series of protests. Once outside, the sheriff took Sileven to the Cass County Jail and jailed him for contempt of court orders to close the school.

“Unless the problem is solved, I could stay in here a lifetime,” Sileven observed from jail. He, like his parishioners, believes he stands on a principle that cannot be compromised.

The principle, to the fundamentalists, is religious freedom. Their creed compels them to be separate from the world. With their private religious school, they believe they have built a thought-tight submarine, uncontaminated by the secular humanism that they think floods public schools. Now that the school is built, they believe seeking state licensure would make as much sense as drilling holes in the submarine: state licensing opens the way to state control, and state control means slavery to humanism.

Pastor Sileven will elaborate. “In 1776,” he says, “the citizen was sovereign in a republic. Now he is a slave in a democracy.” Democracy, he wrote in Fundamentalists on Trial, “is one step from total anarchy and lynch mob tactics.” It is closely linked to socialism and communism, and amounts to “government by the strongest pressure group.” A republic, on the other hand, is government according to a constitution. “Aren’t you glad we are not a democracy?” he writes. “We would have no such constitution or guarantee.”

Sileven was busy in jail. In a little over a month, he handwrote four books on legal pads. One, called From Sovereignty to Slavery, explores the drift of America from republic to democracy. Another, The Christian Bartender, considers the sort of civil disobedience that lands a Christian behind jail bars. The preacher was in a common cell with 5 to 11 cellmates and lost no opportunity to witness and lead Bible studies. The cellmates were interested, he says, even the one who somehow acquired marijuana to smoke in the cell.

Finally, Sileven led his church in absentia, seeing streams of parishioners during daily visiting hours and advising his assistant pastor (also his son-in-law) on legal and ecclesiastical matters. With the assistant pastor, Phil Schmidt, Sileven is attempting to organize a coalition of disenchanted Americans—like the John Birch Society, he says—who want to “rectify the system.”

Sileven seemed to have accepted imprisonment. While in jail, the pastor has maintained his weight, and friends say his spirits were up. But Sileven still professes some shock that he, a preacher of the gospel in his beloved United States of America, was imprisoned.

He believes Nebraska’s judges are “all humanists” and do not know how to deal with a real Christian. “I’m a strange breed to these people,” Sileven insists. “The religion of humanism is negotiation. All things can be compromised except life and liberty. They’ve never had anybody say life and liberty can be compromised instead of our position. They believe I will buckle and take a license.”

It is “appalling” to Sileven that President Reagan complains of human rights violations in other countries but allows a pastor to be jailed in Nebraska. Yet there is a bright spot. “This is the best witness for Christ we could have,” Sileven believes.

But to the Nebraska state government, the issue is not faith or religious liberty. It is education, and the state’s responsibility to see that its citizens are properly equipped to function in a society that demands intelligent participation. Nebraska courts believe that state licensing and teacher certification are “minimal intrusions” on religious practice.

Not all legal opinion agrees. The Nebraska Law Review, published by the University of Nebraska College of Law, said rulings on the Faith Baptist case were a “severe blow to religious freedom in Nebraska.”

William Ball, an eminent constitutional lawyer, believes Nebraska’s requirement that teachers in private schools be state certified is unreasonable. He calls state licensure of such schools “entirely wrong” in light of previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

Ball says Sileven’s attorneys, David Gibbs and Charles Craze of Cleveland, have failed to bolster Faith Baptist’s case because they refuse to use the Constitution’s “big gun”: the First Amendment’s clause stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (CT, April 10, 1981, p. 48). Ball has successfully used that clause to argue against “excessive entanglement” of government in religious education. Sileven and his lawyers believe that an argument against “excessive” entanglement implies that some entanglement is legal, which they will not concede.

Ball hopes to undo the damage done by representing a friend of Sileven’s, minister Carl Godwin, who is in a similar predicament. Godwin’s Bible Baptist Church operates the Park West Christian School in Lincoln. Park West Christian is also under state scrutiny because it is unlicensed and most teachers are not state certified.

Godwin is a leader of nuance, less confrontational than Sileven, and has built a church of 500 members from four (himself, his wife, and parents) in eight years.

He is given to restrained lobbying at the state capital, spending hours patiently explaining his position to legislators and journalists. “The important issue,” says Godwin, “is that we are reasonable people who recognize the compelling interest the state has to make sure children have a quality education. We are willing to meet that, but at the same time must protect the autonomy of the church.” Though staunchly fundamentalist doctrinally, Godwin has none of the fundamentalist relish for a fight. “I’d give my eyeteeth just to pastor again,” he says.

But even Godwin’s subdued approach has not kept his family immune from the turmoil. Godwin’s first-grade daughter has seen television news showing Sileven in jail. “Last night she asked me why I wasn’t in jail. She thought all pastors were being put in jail,” Godwin said.

The fundamentalists argue education cannot be separated from religion. “Two plus two equals four because God made it that way,” Sileven offers. “Two plus two equals four is religious.” The school, furthermore, is a ministry of the church. The fundamentalists would no more have the state license their school than they would its pastor. It is a matter of lordship, say the Faith Baptists; and Christ—not the state—is Lord of the church.

The “lordship” phrase comes from the writings of one in a cluster of theoreticians the Nebraska fundamentalists read (CT, June 18, p. 46). John W. Whitehead is a Virginia attorney, and a chapter in his The New Tyranny considers “Licensure: A Question of Lordship.” In the chapter, Whitehead traces the etymology of “license” and observes the word comes from the Latin meaning “to be permitted.” It is also, he believes, a term with “religious overtones,” implying “the permission to exist, issued by the religious lord of those who seek approval.”

Accordingly, say the fundamentalists, it is not for the state to give a church ministry (such as a school) permission to exist. That is for the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Like Godwin, Sileven and assistant pastor Schmidt will agree the state has a reasonable interest in education. They say they will provide the state results of standardized tests showing their children are educated well, and proof of school attendance. “But the state has no right to regulate what we teach, how, and when,” says Schmidt. As Godwin puts it, “The state says the proof is in the recipe. We say it is in the pudding.”

If that is so, why are fundamentalists only now insisting on such a right and opening more schools? “Christians have been duped and unwise,” says Schmidt. “They have not read their Bibles. And up until the last 20 years the government has been benevolent so that Christians did not see the need for separate schools.” The Bible gives Christian parents the responsibility for their children’s education and “reprobates”—homosexuals and adulterers—are teaching in public schools. They are also teaching evolution, not creationism, and other tenets of secular humanism.

Faith Baptist parishioners are as steely as their ministers. Despite threats of fines, they have continued sending their children to the school. They are experienced at receiving court subpoenas, with their ministers instructing them to “smile, give them a tract, and accept the subpoena.” Legal costs during the past five years are said to be about $30,000, and these farmers and small businessmen have given sacrificially. (The expensive legal battle has been eased by fundamentalist churches nationwide. Jack Hyles’s Hammond, Indiana, church has contributed $14,000, according to Schmidt.)

Some of the nonfundamentalists in Louisville are offended by Faith Baptist. Faith Baptist women, the townspeople note, are not supposed to wear slacks, only dresses. Sileven, they say, must approve which movies parishioners will see. In a state where University of Nebraska football beats out motherhood and apple pie, and in a town that still remembers its state high school basketball championships of 1959 and 1975, Faith Baptists forbid organized competitive sports.

The sports, Schmidt explains, tend to “glorify man’s body and not God. We give trophies for Bible memorization. The person who gets the biggest reward is the best Christian. It’s not an incentive to live for football, but Christ.”

Then there is the public school issue. To townspeople, the public school teachers, far from being insidious humanists, are likely to be people in the next pew each Sunday. Town activities revolve around school clubs, plays, concerts, and sports. “And besides,” says one woman, “I’ve got two pretty good kids, and they both graduated from public schools.”

The Faith Baptists say they are persecuted by the state. Louisville citizens fear the good name of their town is getting smeared. They also think outside clergymen like Jerry Falwell, who led a rally in a cold rain last year, are intruders. Rhetoric and rumors fly. The Faith Baptists call legal action “Nazi-style police activity” and “the most hideous type of child abuse.” Townspeople hint that Sileven exercises a mysterious control, and they drop names like Jim Jones and Jonestown. The reality, of course, is not at either extreme. It is a serious struggle, however, and everyone is tired.

It is said Thoreau, jailed once for civil disobedience, was visited by Emerson. “What are you doing in there?” Emerson asked. “What are you doing out there?” Thoreau answered. To him, the contested issue was so significant that any right-minded man would go to jail for it. Sileven and the Faith Baptists, like Thoreau, have decided the issue is paramount and will not give. The citizens of Louisville, like Emerson, wish they would see things differently, stay out of jail, and peacefully get on with life.

RODNEY CLAPP in

Louisville, Nebraska.

You can always tell the size of a man by the size of the matters he deals with. It is said that Cutzon Borglum, who blasted the granite of Mount Rushmore into magnificent men, was approached by a sculptor who had worked through a magnifying lens to carve a bust on a small sliver of ivory no larger than a pin. Borglum was not unkind in his evaluation of his colleague’s microscopic testament. Still, he confessed that men were excited by bigness and not littleness, and so he confronted a mountain.

For the last 14 years of his life, Borglum dangled spider-and-fly fashion to make the stones speak, and thus to illustrate that mountains speak better than molehills. They speak louder and make statements as bold as they are great. Best of all, they vindicate what Jesus said in Mark 11:23: that whosoever says to a mountain, be moved into the sea, it shall be done. It is nice in a world of molehill movers to see once in a while someone who does confront a mountain.

Ayn Rand once defined art as man defining himself. It is a good definition. Matters to which we commit our lives also become our definition. Many Christian lecturers in our day work on reasons not to dance, drink, or listen to rock music.

But men who carve mountains are better regarded in time than those who do little works even though they are works of excellence. There are many things that may be the works of God, but God may well consider as universal priorities huge tasks whose attainments put our lives to the test, and in years to come we vindicate ourselves, knowing we gave our time to those things that God considered great.

The key to greatness before God is not being remembered by history as one who moved a mountain. But it is important to dream as great a dream as possible. It is to our discredit that we only ask God for something to accomplish in his name. Perhaps it would be better to ask him for the greatest possible achievement we are able to bear in his name. Remember the wisdom of Jessie Rittenhouse:

I bargained with Life for a penny,

And Life would pay no more, …

I worked for a menial’s hire,

Only to learn, dismayed,

That any wage I had asked of Life,

Life would have paid.

Our openness to the whole counsel of God is even halted by our small vision and our feelings that we are not capable of acting in some greater way in his service. Like Moses, we are so content with shepherding that we quail before the greater channels of ministry.

We preach long and loud that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Phil 4:13), and then really only do what we can comfortably attend to in life without divine participation.

Author Calvin Miller is pastor of the Westside Baptist Church in Omaha, Nebraska.

The chaplain at the center of our nation’s power looks at our personal powerlessness.

For more than 18 months I have I been serving on the Hill as chaplain of the U.S. Senate. They have been totally fulfilling months. It has seemed that everything I have ever learned, or believed, or preached, or taught has somehow come into focus in greater depth than ever before. All of the beliefs and convictions of 45 years seem to be in place.

Two fundamentals have emerged, stronger than all the rest of the convictions I have believed, taught, and preached. They are prayer and presence. Prayer is basic, imperative in everything else we do. And the ultimate revelation of God in history is in the person of Christ, the divine presence.

I am reminded of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, when he said to his magicians and astrologers: Tell me what I dreamed, and interpret it. What a predicament! He warned that he would cut off their heads if they failed to tell him what he had dreamed. In their response to the king, the astrologers said, “No one can reveal the dream to the King except the gods, and they do not live among men.”

There you see the fundamental distinction between the faith we profess and all other religion, all other truth. Only in the New Testament faith does God dwell among men in this special way. My thesis is that this is the maximum, the ultimate, the consumate revelation of God in history—incarnation: God dwelling in a human body, first in the body of Jesus, but now in the bodies of all who believe.

This happened once in history. God did dwell among men in the person of Jesus. But since Pentecost, God continues to dwell among men in your body and mine. This revelation of God in history through the bodies of believers is the greatest single fact we need to grasp today—that and the necessity of prayer. And we’ll never make it any other way if we do not realize this.

Powerlessness?

My awareness of these two fundamentals, prayer and presence, has arisen out of a profound sense of personal powerlessness in my job as Senate chaplain. There is no way to describe it fully. I am “a nobody” in the Senate; I wasn’t elected there. I’m simply a servant in the most exclusive club in the world. I cannot speak on the floor of the Senate, except for my two-minute prayer. I have no power, no authority. I’m like a nonperson. If I could not believe that Jesus Christ, who has all power, dwells in me, I would be utterly frustrated by this sense of personal powerlessness. I realize how subjective this is, but it is very different from being a pastor, being in the midst of a congregation that loves you, cares for you, defers to you. It is totally antithetical. And yet, the experience has been thoroughly renewing and exhilarating.

So the question is: In what does my personal effectiveness for Christ lie, or, for that matter, the personal effectiveness of followers of Christ who are senators? This is especially important because more than ever I’ve been made aware of the essential powerlessness of human best (individual or collective)—whether in the Senate or the Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department—to deal individually and corporately with issues of great magnitude.

In the Senate, that center of such awesome concentration of human power, futility seems to overshadow everything. Nothing seems to work. It is almost as if economic problems, social evils, and international tensions are snowballing, getting larger despite the best that the most powerful human beings can do to prevent disaster. The essential powerlessness of human nature, individually and corporately, is very real.

Prayer

These emphases of prayer and presence both appear in 1 Timothy 2.

First, Paul gives prayer top priority in his instructions to the young pastor. He says: First of all, or more important than anything else I am going to say, “pray for everyone, but especially for those in authority.” Notice in his instruction the intimate connection between prayer, godliness, honesty, and peace. Peace! “That we may lead a quiet and peaceful life, godly and honest.” Furthermore, he teaches a close connection between prayer and evangelism. “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who desires all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” Godliness, honesty, peace, mission, and evangelism: all are intimately connected by Paul and the Holy Spirit to prayer.

You can organize until you are exhausted; you can plan, program, subsidize all your plans. But if you fail to pray, it is a waste of time. Prayer is not optional for us. It is mandatory. Not to pray is to disobey God. Not to pray for the President and the Supreme Court and the Congress and governors and the state legislators and the mayors and the county executives is to disobey God.

I ask the question over and over: Why do we not pray? There are at least five reasons.

1. Unbelief. Some of us simply do not believe in prayer. It is seen as a religious exercise reserved for the sanctuary with very little practical value.

2. Indifference. We have no real concern about a problem until it impinges upon us. As a pastor I have watched this. Parents do not get excited about drug abuse as long as their children are not involved, but once their child goes on drugs, suddenly they are crusaders. Until then, it is just academic; they are indifferent.

3. Priorities. We do not pray because other things are more important to us.

4. It is work. We do not pray because prayer is hard work. It is easier to do almost anything except pray. It is hard work to accept responsibility to get under a burden and lift it by intercessory prayer. Suppose, for example, that you and I really believed that the prayers of God’s people are more important even than the decisions made in the White House and Congress and the Supreme Court. Just imagine the difference that would make. Because ours is a government of the people, I believe the people of God have a greater responsibility than government and that our prayerlessness is more responsible for failure than are our public servants.

5. We hope in the wrong things. Our hope is centered in this life, in this world, in a particular political party, in a particular leader of a legislative body. Our hope is in the kingdoms of this world rather than in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are simply not kingdom-of-God oriented. Our decisions, our efforts, our aspirations are directed to earth, not to heaven; to this life, not eternity. We are citizens totally committed to the affairs of this life, not pilgrims here with a commitment to the kingdom of God. Our goals are no greater than what we think we can expect in the here and now.

We have all prayed, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Have we meant it?

A Humble Attempt

J. Edwin Orr tells about a Scottish Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh named John Erskine. In the early 1700s he published a book pleading with the people of Scotland to unite in prayer; a copy was sent to Jonathan Edwards. This great theologian was so moved that he wrote a response that grew longer than a letter, and so he finally published it under the title, A Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, pursuant to Scripture Promises and Prophecies concerning the Last Time.

This was prayer, a humble attempt. And the result of that humble attempt was the Great Awakening.

Today, we evangelicals have never had it so good. We have tasted political power, and each year we are gearing up for elections. We have recognition. The “born again” phenomenon is news. Christian books are best sellers. We enjoy the incredible success of the electronic church. And we are very comfortable in our world; the only change we desire in the status quo is for things to get better. What more could we want?

What place does the kingdom of God have in all of this? In our interests, our priorities, our value systems? Etched in my memory is a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as he cried out, “I have a dream!” I sometimes think we do not have any dreams: we have arrived.

The apostolic church dreamed of the kingdom of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. They believed in it, lived for it, laid down their lives for that kingdom. There was nothing in this world good enough for them. That’s not true today. We never had it so good.

Why should God visit us with renewal—with a cleansing, purging awakening that would issue in righteousness, godliness, honesty, purity, simplicity of life, peace—when we’re not interested? We don’t really want it; why should God give it? Consider Revelation 3:15–17: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”

Christ’S Presence In Believers

The second imperative is presence. In the words of King Nebuchadnezzar’s frightened counselors, “What the king asks is too difficult. No one can reveal it to the king except the gods, and they do not live among men” (Dan. 2:11, NIV). Here is the central reality of New Testament faith: Incarnation! God living among men.

The experience of these past months in the Senate and 40 years as a pastor tell me that there is more potential power in this reality than in all the television broadcasts, radio broadcasts, evangelistic crusades, pulpit preaching, and classroom teaching put together. There is potentially more power in that one fact in terms of God’s impact on human history than in any other fact.

The Epistle to the Hebrews opens thus: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He [the Son] reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power.”

In time past God spoke but now God reveals himself through a man, Jesus.

John’s Gospel starts, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the begining with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory …).”

Nebuchadnezzar’s astrologers had never seen anything like that. This is the unprecedented fact of history: God entered history and dwelt among us.

In John’s first epistle he refers to “that which we have heard, which we have seen … and our hands have handled.” He records the sheer visible, tangible nature of the divine revelation in history—God in the midst. Words were not enough for God. And they will never be enough in this culture, where we are bombarded daily with an avalanche of words. Obviously words are important or I would not be preaching or writing this, but they are severely limited in communicating reality. They were insufficient for God, so he revealed himself in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. But that is not the end. God’s revelation began with incarnation in Jesus Christ. It continues with his “incarnation” in the body of Christ, the church, or to put it more precisely, in the bodies of believers who are the members of the body of which Christ is the head.

Jesus said in his last discourse, “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do because I go to my Father” (John 14:12), and then he gives the promise of Pentecost. Notice he said, “the works I do” not “the works I did.” Luke opens Acts with, “In my first book I wrote all that Jesus began to do and to teach.” What Jesus began in his human body was going to continue after Pentecost in the church, his body in the world, which is the reason for the Pentecost event. Jesus said, “You shall receive power when the Holy Ghost has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses everywhere.”

Why did they have to wait for Pentecost? They had all the information. They had spent three intimate years with Jesus, hearing everything he said, seeing everything he did, and in addition they had 40 unforgettable days with him in his resurrected body as he taught them about the kingdom of God. They had all the data, including his resurrection. Why could they not now rush off and proclaim it? Because the gospel is infinitely more than information. The gospel is incarnation! The gospel is a person—God in human flesh.

Jesus dealt with each person differently during his incarnation. He never spoke in the same way to two people so far as the record shows. But there was a constant in all his relationships with people, and that was Christ himself. He was always there. In this lies the essence of the believer’s witness. Wherever there is a true believer, in the infinite variety and diversity of believers, there is one constant: Christ is present. He wants to show himself in as many ways as there are those in whom he dwells. He is present wherever we are. He desires to reveal himself in whatever we say, how we say it, and in what we do. That is the essential witness everywhere, in a hundred million places. That is the point of Pentecost.

Contemplate the immeasurable effectiveness of this witness of presence. Wherever there is a disciple, Christ dwells within, and as the Spirit works through that one, there Christ himself is present, continuing the work he began in his own incarnation. But now he is doing his work in a hundred million places, simultaneously, wherever he places a believer.

I have emphasized prayer and presence. I should add one more word: power. It is the power of God released through the prayers of God’s people, the power of God actually present wherever there is one who believes in Jesus Christ. Each of us is someplace every day, every hour, every minute of every week. Believe this! Believe what the Word teaches, that wherever you are, at any moment, Christ is there. Allow him to do his work through you.

To me, Ezekiel 22:30 records one of the saddest incidents in the Bible. God says, “I looked for one to stand in the breach so I would not destroy the land; but I found none.” God looks where you are. He looks for a man or woman to stand in the breach by prayer, to believe that the Almighty God dwells in his body, releasing his power by the presence of Christ in him. Will you be that person? When God looks where you are, will he find no one? Or will he find you? Will you be that one where you are?

Not to pray for the Congress and governors and state legislators and mayors and county executives is to disobey God.

Richard C. Halverson has been chaplain of the U.S. Senate since February 1981. This article is adapted from a sermon he preached earlier this year, at Washington, D.C.’s Fourth Presbyterian Church of which he was pastor prior to his Senate appointment.

Or have Christians been spooked out of celebrating a Part of their rice tradition?

“I’d like to see you gain a few pounds,” I said to our tall, lanky son.

“No way,” he replied. “It would be just that much more to haul up the rock.” Rock climbing had become his latest enthusiasm.

I watched him chin himself, using only his fingertips curled over the top of the kitchen door frame. Then he repeated the process, using only one arm. Finger grips are important in rock climbing and so is keeping in shape. And I was learning as I listened and watched.

The Christian life is a climb. For some, it is a somewhat sloping ascent; for others, it is more like attacking the north face of the Eiger. Christina Rosetti wrote:

Does the road climb uphill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Does the day’s journey take the whole day long?

From morn to night, my friend.

For Christians, keeping in shape spiritually and traveling light are important. To keep in shape spiritually we need spiritual nourishment and exercise. We need less to read about the Bible and more to actually read it and study it. Then we need carefully and vigorously to live out what we are taught.

The definition of traveling light may vary from one individual to another. For example, I couldn’t get my work done if I had to carry around a rock climber’s backpack loaded with rock-climbing gear. But most of us need to trim off some excess weight. We have too many social involvements, an overabundance of good but unnecessary meetings. We are on more boards than one person can adequately or usefully serve. Remember the caution to “beware of the barrenness of a busy life.”

Young David refused Saul’s armor when he confronted Goliath (1 Sam. 17:39–40).

Gideon (Judges 7) had to trim down the size of his army.

The disciples really traveled light when they were sent out two by two: “without purse, and scrip, and shoes” (Luke 22:35).

Situations vary, times change, and God’s orders to his followers are individualized. It is only the need and the message that continue the same—and the goal.

It is up to us to keep in shape and travel light.

In this interview, Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson discusses the symptoms and antidotes for secularism and pragmatism.

Richard C. Halverson is the current chaplain of the United States Senate. Born in North Dakota in 1916, he has been pastor of churches for over 40 years, including most recently 22 years at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C. Halverson serves as chairman of the board for World Vision, Incorporated, and is a prolific author as well as frequent participant in Christian leadership conferences throughout the world. Barbara Thompson conducted the following interview for CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The current age is frequently disparaged as “the me generation.” Do you think this is a fair assessment of contemporary society?

Yes and no. There is of course a strong hedonistic strain in our culture, which I would identify as the selfish pursuit of pleasure. But the new generation, which didn’t grow up during the depression, reject the straightforward materialism of their parents. Instead, they pursue self-fulfillment, often through public service or the giving of themselves for others. The old narcissism was selfish and carnal; the new springs from a higher motivation. But to my mind, it is still based on the same self-seeking principle.

Do you think the church today is a healthy exception to the “self-seekers” that surround it?

I wish I could believe that. Instead, I think the so-called worldliness of even conservative evangelicals is far more subtle than it was 25 or 50 years ago. We are badly infected with secularism, with the materialism that says, “Live for the now.” Generally speaking, the people of God today are living to get as much as they can out of life this side of the grave. The eternal reference we profess in our theology we deny in our practice.

For example, if you could pin people down, I think you would find very few longing for the return of Christ. His return now would instead constitute an interruption in our plans. Of course, if we had to choose, we wouldn’t choose “the now” instead of eternity, but that’s why the problem is so subtle. We are living without an eternal frame of reference and not even realizing it.

As a result, there is very little kingdom-of-heaven interest. There is no real longing for an “awakening.” God is sovereign in all these things, but to the extent that conditions have to be met for God to send an awakening like the past great revivals, I think all the conditions have been met except one: the desire on the part of God’s people for an awakening that would issue in righteousness, in selflessness, and in authentic piety.

Why do you think the church today is so vulnerable to the values of the culture that surrounds it?

It always has been. Think how vulnerable Israel was to Egypt. The Israelites were set free, and they kept yearning to return to the life they had left behind—despite the fact that it was slavery. They were constantly being enculturated by the nations around them, and God was constantly warning them not to go in that direction. They did anyway, and not just once but over and over again.

It seems it is the nature of a sinful society, even if that society is the church, to identify with this world and its pleasures and values. It is just one of the dangers of living in this world, and it is always there. That’s why Paul has to exhort us in Romans 12 to present our bodies a living sacrifice and not be conformed to this world. The Phillips translation says, “Don’t let the world around squeeze you into its own mold.” The world is a constant, seductive danger.

Many times all that stood between the Israelites and their return to Egypt was Moses and a few other leaders like Joshua and Caleb. Do you think the church is having a leadership problem?

I would be very careful about identifying specific leaders as the problem. But the success orientation of our culture has clearly infected even the principles of church growth. We are enamored with numbers; all the criteria of success today for a pastor are materialistic. If a pastor has a big church building, a big congregation, and a big budget, well, obviously he is successful. You can’t argue with it. And I can say for myself as a pastor, it is very difficult to resist that kind of motivation.

The whole so-called electronic church is built upon the effectiveness and success of television and radio. And it is very successful; so it becomes more and more difficult to draw a line between what is really of eternal value and what is only temporal.

Do you think the mass media in general are playing too large a role in the shaping of our minds and values?

There’s no question about it. We want and accept the predigested answers those media give. As a result, we think much more horizontally than perhaps ever before. Our values are shaped largely by modern advertising, and we receive our truth piecemeal, as in a cafeteria. We aren’t constantly processing biblical truth, or any truth, for that matter. So we don’t get the vertical, the divine perspective.

God says in Isaiah 55 that his thoughts are not our thoughts, that as high as the heavens are above the earth, so his ways are higher than ours. This means we think 180 degrees opposite from God. And it is very easy for us, as it was for Israel, to let tradition become our truth, rather than the Scripture in which the tradition is rooted. If you go back far enough, the tradition is grounded in the Bible, so in a sense it is biblical. But it is far enough away from the root that it is almost unbiblical, or even antibiblical. It’s no longer God’s thoughts or God’s way.

Can you give an example?

Evangelism. If we could scrap momentarily all the evangelical tradition about evangelism and ask ourselves what the New Testament teaches, I think we would be absolutely amazed at what we would discover. Instead, we bring together all the successful methods of evangelism and start with the assumption that “it works, therefore it’s good.” That’s pragmatic, but it isn’t biblical. In a world where the Devil, “the prince of the power of the air,” is in some way in charge, just because a method works doesn’t make it right. But when an evangelism method is successful, no one dares challenge it.

I don’t want to condemn the evangelistic tradition of the past 100 years. Thank God for whatever is helping to proclaim the gospel, for whatever is making the lost aware of their lostness and of the remedy in Jesus Christ. But I don’t sense that this evangelism is building community as the New Testament speaks of it. Nor is it developing relationships, maturing believers, and making disciples.

In what ways do you think New Testament evangelism differs from the way evangelicals do evangelism today?

Part of the answer is in the way you put the question. Evangelism today has become something we do, like a department or a program in the church. In the New Testament, evangelism was something that happened when the church was healthy, when its members were in right relationship with each other.

In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit, who was very economical in language, caused Luke to record four things about the apostolic church that I see as the irreducible minimum: the church devoted itself to the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, to the breaking of bread (which I see as worship), and to prayer. Now, their fellowship was just as important as the apostolic doctrine because it was the apostolic fellowship, the sum of their relationships with Jesus Christ, with God the Father, with the Holy Spirit, and with one another. “And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.”

I know this is oversimplifying somewhat, but reproduction is normal in a healthy marriage. Reproduction is normal when the bride of Christ is rightly related to the groom. You never find Paul or any of the other apostles exhorting the church to do evangelism. The Great Commission isn’t even mentioned in the Epistles—not because the writers weren’t aware of it, or that it wasn’t important, but because the burden of the Epistles is the relationship of believers to one another and to Christ. When we work on these relationships, when we are nurtured in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in worship, and in prayer, then evangelism is going to be a normal result.

As the evangelical community becomes more socially and politically conscious, emotion-laden issues such as abortion and nuclear disarmament threaten to divide believers. How do you think the church should balance the demands of Christian fellowship with the demands of Christian conscience?

I struggled with this question for 22 years as a pastor in Washington, D.C. I had to ask myself and others, “Do you really want the church to be so identified with a certain issue or cultural position that a person has to hold a particular view to be in church? Or is true Christian community a microcosm of the community at large where all kinds of positions are held?”

Civil rights and Vietnam were very important when I was a pastor. I had to decide whether to divide my congregation over these issues or to insist that our relationship in Christ transcended them. Many people felt that I was a cop-out in these areas, but that’s the way I was led and I really believe it was right.

Try to imagine what it was like for Simon the Zealot, who was committed to overthrowing the empire, to have to live with Matthew, who represented the system. Jesus chose them both, and it isn’t recorded that either of them changed instantly. Simon probably assumed that Jesus was going to lead the revolution. I don’t know what Matthew thought. But the point is, here are two totally opposite points of view among those closest to Jesus. There must have been violent discussions and arguments, and Jesus had to deal with them. But he never threw either man out.

There is a real tension here. We want to believe that the Bible, at least in principle, is not silent on the potentially devastating issues that face our society. Yet if we maintain silence to preserve unity, don’t we somehow imply that the Bible isn’t relevent?

It’s just very difficult; I don’t really know any answers. Perhaps part of the explanation is that all of us hear God’s truth a little differently. We hear it in terms of the way we are made, our backgrounds, our genes. The result is that the body of Christ is very diverse. And I suppose there is a sense in which we have to honor individualism within the church.

One historical example might help. Before the conversion of Constantine, the church was intensely persecuted. Then suddenly, with Constantine’s help, it was acceptable to be a Christian. Now as far as I can tell, neither of these positions is correct, because there is a sense in which the Christian always has to live in tension with his culture. And in somewhat the same way, believers have to live in tension with one another. That’s why it is so important that our allegiance be to Jesus Christ himself, and not our interpretation or methods of evolving doctrine.

Do you think the church has anything to say to a society that puts its trust in chariots and believes absolutely in the power of the sword for protection?

The church cannot support this view; absolutely not. But we have to recognize that there are those in the church who do not share our opposition. Rightly or wrongly, two people can be equally committed to Jesus Christ and be on the opposite sides of this issue.

At the same time, I don’t think the church can officially support a war, or aggression, or violence. Ron Sider has pointed out to me that until Constantine, the church was completely pacifist and opposed capital punishment. This was in the disintegrating days of the Roman Empire and there was no way to look at the government in an encouraging or resourceful manner.

I can envision a similar situation here, where our love for violence on television grows into a love for violence in the stadium. We are so numb now, how long is it before we will pay money to see two Roman-type gladiators kill each other? It isn’t unthinkable anymore. If our culture were to reach that point, it is very possible that true believers would find no intelligent, realistic alternative to total pacifism and voluntary martyrdom.

Is there any particular lesson you feel God has been teaching you since your appointment as chaplain to the U.S. Senate?

Over these months, everything I ever taught, preached, or believed has come together for me. There are two points that hit me strongly. One is the importance of intercession for people in public life. This work is mandated to the church by the Word of God.

The second is the witness of presence, which is very important to me now, the witness of a life that has a Christlike quality. For the love of God to be shed abroad in my heart, for me to be everybody’s servant, for Christ to display his presence wherever I am, that is the maximum witness, the witness of incarnation.

Barbara R. Thompson is a free-lance writer who is a farm worker with His Farm Fellowship in Berne, New York. She is a coauthor with F. Kefa Sempangi of A Distant Grief (Regal, 1979).

The future of a hypothetical college is cast into two scenarios, one leading to success, the other to failure.

Future scenarios” allow an organization to examine the different futures that could result from the interaction of possible future conditions and actions. These two contrasting scenarios about a fictitious Christian college are based on likely environmental factors and “reasonable” actions a Christian college might take. They are simply examples. “Futuring” is primarily about flexibility and readiness; it does not depend on predicting the future.

Mariner College: 1982–90

Mariner College is a fictitious Christian college of liberal arts and sciences that combines the rigorous integration of faith and learning with a rich program of sports and other cocurricular activities in the context of warm and supportive Christian friendships. The beautiful tree-covered campus offers the 1,000 students and 60 faculty members an ideal setting in which to learn and grow together. Total student charges for tuition, room, board, and normal expenses for 1982–83 are $6,000, and the average ACT (American College Test) score is 20, slightly above the national average.

Scenario One: The College That Fails

The opening fall enrollment in 1982 declines 2 percent, ending a 12-year string of increases. The unexpected loss of student revenues is absorbed by deferring several maintenance projects, which include carpeting and redecorating a large dorm and reducing faculty travel allowances.

To make up the loss, and as protection against the chance of further enrollment slippages, President I. M. Fine obtains trustee approval of a 12 percent increase in student charges for 1983–84. He also decides to phase out the popular but expensive music major, to install a computer major in its place because of more student demand in that area, to develop a new set of classy student recruitment materials and magazine ads, and to increase student aid funds in response to curbs in government aid.

The enrollment declines another 2 percent in 1983–84, but the higher charges actually produce an increase in gross student revenues. Most of the increase is set aside for student financial aid and the rest is spent on urgently needed repairs to the campus heating system. With inflation under 5 percent, students grumble about the “huge increase” they must pay, and the faculty wonder aloud why they are getting only 6 percent salary adjustments. College teaching jobs are scarce and few faculty leave, but the standardized indicators of innovation and morale sag noticeably as the 1983–84 school year ends with the scheduled release of one of the music professors.

Student charges are increased 8 percent for 1984–85. Despite lower academic admissions standards, the enrollment continues to follow the general population trend for 18-year-olds and declines again in the fall of 1984 by another 3 percent. The admissions director claims that much of the loss is the result of dropping the music program. The new computer major, with two part-time teachers and three small microcomputers, mainly draws students away from other majors. The program grows slowly because the college fails to find a qualified computer scientist and cannot afford more elaborate equipment.

In the 1984 national elections, the pressures of continued bad economic conditions produce a marked shift. “Pump-priming” bills are quickly passed, and by spring of 1985 the economy is coming to life. Inflation, however, is also surging toward double digits as the federal budget deficit starts to balloon. President Fine tries to anticipate the situation by raising student charges 12 percent for 1985–86. The smaller student body requires cutting at least four more faculty positions. The foreign language requirement and the major in romance languages are both dropped, and two of the three language teachers are released. It is hoped that eliminating the language requirement will help attract students. A very popular history teacher resigns and one of the two sociology teachers leaves when she is denied tenure. Neither is replaced, but the director of admissions is.

The high tuition combines with the continuing decline in the number of high school graduates to produce an unexpected 5 percent drop in the 1985 fall enrollment. That puts the college at 880 students. Additional personnel cuts are rejected in hopes that the worst is over, but Mariner’s student attrition rate has been rising 6 to 8 percent each year as students transfer out because the college cannot live up to its advertising. For the first time in 20 years, Mariner College has to borrow to cover a budget deficit, a whopping $340,000.

Despite inflation running at 15 percent, student charges are only increased 12 percent and more money is put into student aid. Salary increases are about half the inflation rate, and faculty complain bitterly. The new admissions director completes some research that indicates many people think the college is “slipping” academically. Students who inquire but do not apply report that the college is not as current in computer and video learning technology as its two main competitors. There are also strong complaints about the bad condition of the dormitories and the high cost of attendance. Some people interpret the low morale as weak spiritual and religious life on campus, a reputation the college has trouble shaking; contributions from churches slow noticeably.

The enrollment holds steady in 1986, but then slides again in 1987, and in 1988 to about 800, while the average ACT score sinks almost 2 points below the national average. Five more faculty are released and 7 of the 34 majors offered at Mariner now have only one professor each. The president and development officer frequently hear potential donors say they do not want to risk putting money into a college that appears to be sinking. The local bank refuses to lend the college any more money for renovating the dorms, so the small endowment is “borrowed” and the work begun. The placement officer reports that a glut of low-level computer programmers is developing, and only students from high-powered departments will have much chance of finding jobs.

A regional accreditation evaluation during 1988–89 places the college on provisional status because the stated goals and standards of the college are not being met and its financial future seems questionable. The report specifically mentions lack of endowment, declining contributions from churches, badly deteriorating facilities, outdated equipment, very low faculty and student morale, low faculty salaries, inadequate library and learning resources including access to computerized information services, too many weak majors, and too many faculty who have not kept current in their fields because of inadequate travel and development funds. The negative decision of the accrediting agency is announced by the local newspaper, and a nearby television station makes the college the central example in a news special on “disappearing colleges.”

At their fall meeting in 1989, the board of trustees accepts the resignation of President Fine. The uncertainty created by his sudden departure further reduces confidence in the college, and the fall enrollment in 1989 is a disastrous 740. The budget is slashed and four more staff are released during the year. Everyone agrees to an across-the-board pay cut of 2 percent. A complete curriculum revision is attempted by the faculty in order to use the remaining teachers better, and new advertising is prepared emphasizing that Mariner is a small, friendly campus with nice-looking dorms. The student charges are over $10,000 for the fall of 1990 as the fifth graders of 1982 decide where to attend college. Not many of them show much interest in Mariner College.

Scenario Two: The College That Succeeds

During the summer of 1982, when it becomes apparent that the fall enrollment will drop about 3 percent, President I. M. Fine initiates a backup plan developed during long-range planning sessions. Six part-time teachers with contingency clauses in their contracts are not hired, reducing the faculty by a matching 3 percent. At the October meeting of the board the president challenges the trustees to help him present Mariner’s Christian philosophy of education to 100 potential major donors in an effort to raise a $2 million endowment by Christmas of 1984. A few object to this new responsibility, and three resign. Most stay on campus for an extra day of planning and instruction.

In the fall of 1982, President Fine appoints a committee to assess the quality of each academic program and determine how important it is to long-term achievement of the institutional mission. The faculty object strenuously to participating until the president explains that program reductions will be unavoidable because the college has expanded beyond its projected resources, even if the endowment campaign is a success. The only question, he says, is whether he will have the benefit of faculty wisdom in making cuts.

The president receives the committee report at the start of the spring semester. After studying it, he obtains trustee approval to phase out the majors in chemistry and business/economics. The best of the three chemistry teachers accepts an offer to remain on the faculty; the other two take jobs in industry. The weakness of the chemistry program is well known to the faculty and they offer little resistance to its elimination.

The business/economics decision is messier. The chairman of the business department seeks to arouse faculty and trustee support to save the major. His strong statements in the student newspaper and in faculty meetings polarize the campus community, and he sends a steady flow of information to the faculty, especially emphasizing the strong demand for business majors. Eventually he and two others decide to leave. Campus morale is seriously eroded.

The economist who stays is a knowledgable but famously dull lecturer. During the summer of 1983 he and a writing teacher are given grants to devise courses that make use of computers and video terminals. President Fine’s competence is questioned in the college rumor mill when the fall 1983 enrollment slides another 3 percent. Some accuse Fine of overkill in cutting faculty by 9 percent, and others of failure to advertise aggressively enough to attract students.

Criticism intensifies when much of the net savings from the faculty reductions is “wasted” on small computers, videotape equipment, videodisc units, and library computer services. The rest of the money is used for a marketing consultant who spends most of 1983–84 working with three social science professors analyzing Mariner’s competition and sending questionnaires to Mariner students and alumni, pastors, and parents of high school students. The expression “Fine Folly” is the campus joke.

With some scraping, the college ends the year without a deficit. The 1984–85 budget is balanced with the third 7 percent tuition and fees increase in a row, despite inflation of 12 percent. At the fall faculty workshop the president announces the trustees and administrators have helped bring in $1 million of endowment, with another half-million pledged. The fall enrollment shows no decline. The dean of admissions reports that the reasons are unclear, but it appears to be spillover from the trustees’ endowment-raising activities.

The marketing report suggests that current students are satisfied with the college except for the food service, a rule against wearing jeans to classes, and required daily chapel. It also indicates that Mariner is recruiting 45 percent of those who inquire from Christian high schools but only 8 percent of those in public schools. The competing colleges are a cheap but low-status community college, two state universities, and seven Christian colleges scattered throughout a five-state region. The parents of prospective students rank security above all else—spiritual, physical, and emotional—with job placement and financial aid right behind.

Faculty displeasure over the loss of colleagues is largely forgotten in the excitement surrounding the year-end push that enables them to reach the $2 million endowment goal. Nine profesors return a week early from winter break to work with President Fine and others on marketing strategies for promoting Mariner’s educational and religious purposes. The college begins systematic revision of its advertising and develops different viewbooks for students in public schools and Christian schools. The dress code is revised, budget is increased for better chapel services, and the cost of more expensive food service is passed on to students.

During the spring term a TV station does a local news report on “The Electronic College” that features the courses in writing and economics aided by computers and video terminals resulting from summer faculty grants. The publicity helps recruitment noticeably, and so many more professors request similar development that a grant is obtained to offer training to all interested faculty.

Enrollment climbs slightly to 950 in the fall of 1985, and the average ACT score begins a slow rise that is to continue for three years. Student charges and staff salaries both go up 6 percent for 1985–86 on the expectation that inflation will fall rapidly. Instead, inflation averages 9 percent and the endowment income is less than hoped for, but income from the extra students cover the problem and even produces a surplus, used for preventive maintenance work.

From 1986 through 1988, fall enrollment increases and student attrition declines as the marketing effort takes full effect. No additional faculty are hired because the growing use of electronic learning media is allowing teachers both to handle more students and to improve the quality of instruction. These improvements allow salary increases well above the 10 to 12 percent inflation rate, and keep tuition charges to 8 to 10 percent. The improved salaries help the college attract several outstanding professors, and Mariner College receives high praise from the accrediting agency.

By the end of the decade, Mariner has over 1,000 students. It is a leader in electronic learning technology and has a beautifully maintained campus. Its prestige is rising and it has become moderately selective in admissions. With excellent financial aid available from a growing endowment, the $10,000 student charges make Mariner the first choice of many 1982 fifth graders headed for college in the fall of 1990.

It was on a shopping trip to San Francisco last January with his wife and daughter that Tom Younger suddenly fell ill. He was so sick that the women had to drive home with him in the back seat. At first it was thought that he had viral pneumonia, so Younger soon started playing hard at racquetball again. But his doctor changed his mind about the diagnosis, and he blanched when he heard about the racquetball. It hadn’t been pneumonia. It had been a mild heart attack.

Younger thought that perhaps it was time for him to step out of his job as president of Western Baptist College in Salem, Oregon. The school is typical of many small Christian colleges in the 1980s. Its student population, now about 300, is dwindling, it has no endowment, and occasionally it can’t meet the payroll for faculty and staff. The school is affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and money matters have been a constant drain on the time and the energy of its president.

In the nine years Younger held that job, the cost of educating students rose awesomely. In 1973, the year he arrived, it was $2,376 per student. By 1980 it was $5,752, and by 1981, $7,190. Because Western has no endowment, 92 percent of the operating budget comes from student tuition, and the student body has dropped by about a hundred in the last decade. The per-student cost has tripled in that decade because there are fewer and fewer students to bear the load.

Younger spent his entire last 12 months as president wrestling with presenting his board a balanced budget for the next 12 months. He didn’t make it. In a total budget of $2 million, there was still a gaping hole of $90,000.

That is why college presidents have to raise outside money, and it is a task distasteful to many men cut from academic cloth. Younger, however, liked it and was good at it. In the last three years donations rose from $433,000 to $484,000 to $569,000.

Younger himself is not a scholar. He is 54, and had finished his bachelor’s degree at Fort Wayne Bible College only two years before he was named president of Western. Despite his success in fund raising, the pressure to bring in increasingly greater amounts continued. Last June Younger resigned and returned to the pastorate, from whence he came.

The stress of bringing in money for his college kept Younger on the road about half the time. He believes earnestly that he was able to impart at least as much in spiritual witness and friendship to prospective donors as they were able to give him financially. He is not in the least apologetic about the business of raising cash—perhaps an unseemly occupation for a college president.

Western Baptist College has been in business since 1935. Never has it had an endowment—that is, a pool of investment money that earns interest, which is spent to help keep costs down. Younger thinks the school might have been able to develop an endowment if previous administrators had done more straight talking with people about the true expenses of educating students.

Younger is convinced of the value of a Christian college because of the philosophy that is at its heart, but also because of the role model that a Christian professor can be to a student. “Long after they’ve forgotten exams and the texts they’ve studied, the influence of a professor in students’ lives can have a lasting impact. I know it was true in my life.”

It takes special dedication to be a professor at a small Christian college where the average salary is $15,000. “I would say, generally speaking, men and women who are in Christian colleges have a commitment to the Lord that is noble,” said Younger. “They make greater sacrifices than many pastors.”

Despite the headaches facing Western Baptist College, Younger believes it will survive. He does not wish to leave an impression of despair, and notes that his reason for resigning was twofold. One was the strain of the job, another was the call to return to the pastorate. Leaving was already on Younger’s mind before the heart attack. The board has appointed a search committee to find a replacement, and it is conducting its business with such dispatch and professionalism that Younger wonders if he’d be found qualified to replace himself.

Given the tasks facing the president of the small Christian college in the 1980s, it seems that more and more people like Younger, who are good at fund raising, will be needed for those jobs.

Fewer funds and students put small liberal arts colleges on a collision course with increased costs.

Consider the fifth graders, how they grow. There are about three million of them in the United States this year. Most of them will finish high school in 1990, and assuming that about 20 percent come from evangelical homes, almost a half-million of them could be ready to start college that fall. Consider a 10-year-old: a grandchild, a niece or nephew, your friend’s child, or your own. Consider someone with a quick mind, eagerness for life, and a spiritual curiosity that make you assume, “Someday that one will go to college, maybe a Christian college.”

When such promising young people are ready for a Christian college education, will they be able to afford it? And which Christian colleges will still be able to provide it? Will the Christian colleges have withered from the harsh convergence of all the negative forces now gathering against them, or will they have emerged as a vibrant and more visible element in American higher education? Some observers fear that the surviving Christian colleges will be of just two types: either so expensive only the rich can afford to attend, or so educationally impoverished only marginal students will consider them.

These resilient institutions have already outlasted numerous predictions of their disappearance and have provided a special kind of education to millions of evangelical college students. To survive, they have mastered the art of living hand-to-mouth on penny-pinching budgets. Few of them have accumulated much endowment, but the relative abundance of college students and mortgage loans during the sixties and seventies, plus the “visibility” of evangelicals in the society, did enable many Christian colleges to expand their enrollments, faculties, facilities, and programs. Government student aid was plentiful, and tuition rates increased enough to allow improvement in the traditionally low faculty and staff compensation levels. But during the remaining years of this decade the Christian colleges expect to be facing a truly impressive array of problems, including fierce competition from one another.

Fewer Students

Both the mission and the financial survival of Christian colleges depend on students. The number of students graduating from high school has already entered a long decline that will produce a 20 percent reduction during this decade, and it will stretch well into the 1990s as well. In addition, it is widely assumed that small private colleges will bear more than their proportionate share of the expected enrollment reduction. Some areas in New England and the Midwest will have to cope with 30 to 40 percent declines in the number of high school graduates available for recruitment by 1990.

Christian colleges typically obtain 80 to 90 percent or more of their revenues from student charges. Their operations are commonly so tight that even a small drop in student revenues can seriously affect the quality of education offered. On the other hand, the favored few with significant endowment income could benefit from an enrollment reduction that spreads the endowment over fewer students.

Less Student Aid From The Government

The cuts that have been made in federal student aid programs have raised significantly the net cost of college for the middle-class families from whom Christian colleges draw most of their students. The total aid reduction for students in the 65 schools of the Christian College Coalition has been estimated at well over $100 million per year. Unless Congress alters the situation by approving one of the much-discussed tuition tax credit programs, many students are expected to choose a cheaper public institution instead of a private Christian college.

Inflation

Because a college spends most of its income on salaries and wages, and sets its price only once a year, it has a tough time “passing on” the results of rapid currency debasement. Although such inflation would tend to help a college trying to pay off indebtedness with the cheapened dollars, it also hurts the college by creating both financial and psychological resistance among potential students as the advertised price of a college degree escalates.

Many colleges are still trying to play “catch up” from the recent period of double-digit inflation when student and gift revenues could not match inflationary increases. The brunt of renewed high inflation probably would be borne, as it has in the past, by giving the teachers and staff subinflationary compensation adjustments, and by deferring campus maintenance. Both actions gnaw away at morale and quality.

Deteriorating Facilities

Many Christian colleges have found it difficult to find money to maintain the quality and appearance of their dorms and academic buildings. Major donors often show little interest in such “unromantic” projects as steam lines, roofs, and energy-efficient windows. Many of the colleges have delayed normal and necessary maintenance work to put funds into salaries, student aid, and new buildings. This deferred maintenance has been dubbed a “ticking time bomb.” Sooner or later it will explode as a financial crisis, a health and safety crisis, or a student marketing crisis when potential students are turned off by unattractive dorms, outdated labs, and shabby classrooms. The push to construct new buildings will be replaced by efforts to raise endowments to maintain them and student aid to fill them.

Higher Student Charges

There is a wide range of total student charges among the Christian colleges, but assuming a typical 1982–83 figure of $6,000 a year, increases compounding at an average of 8 percent annually would put total charges at $11,100 for the fall of 1990. To the extent that family incomes would lag behind or exceed this rate, the real cost of college would either go up or down. For many colleges the student charges have actually been declining in relation to the median family income during the recent years of high inflation.

The more urgent concerns of most Christian colleges are that the gap will widen between public and private higher education and that the advertised price will scare prospects away even before student aid can be explained. Christian colleges have a special concern not to exclude poor students, but some of them also find it difficult to justify the common practice of charging the “richer” students enough to help subsidize those who cannot pay as much.

Reduced Contributions

Tax considerations influence the contributions colleges receive, and any reduction in the tax-related benefits available to donors is expected to lower the gift income that keeps the students and their parents from having to bear 100 percent of the cost of a Christian college education. Most of the tax-reform plans now being considered retain a charitable contribution advantage for the taxpayer. Those options that eliminate or greatly reduce it, however, could be devastating, especially to the great majority of these institutions that have little or no endowment.

Low Endowment Income

Even those few Christian colleges that do have significant endowment funds have found it impossible to make their investments keep pace during periods of rapid inflation or when stock prices are falling. Because of their traditionally conservative investment philosophy, they do best during periods of economic and political stability, with steady growth in the gross national product. Analysts are predicting many things for the rest of this decade, but few are predicting stability.

High Cost Of High Tech

The entire Western world is in the throes of a fundamental shift from an industrial to an information and services society. The results will be felt in chronic high unemployment and major political, financial, and economic dislocations, but they will also be felt very directly by higher education. The way knowledge is generated, communicated, stored, organized, retrieved, taught, and learned will change dramatically as computers and other electronic media merge into one integrated system of interrelated technologies.

The lines separating the academic disciplines are expected to blur as the structure of knowledge becomes more unified. Liberal arts curricula will undergo extensive revision as the world of knowledge merges with the worlds of work and play. The definition of knowledge will be expanded to include not just “facts” but also how to find information in the universal electronic data base.

College libraries are already into the first phase as they computerize their card catalogs. Before this decade is out, the leading institutions will have computers and other electronic information media available to every student, teacher, and administrator. They will have instantaneous access not just to indexes and catalogs, but to everything from the telephone directory to the texts of magazines, professional journals, and encyclopedias. Video discs will offer “the best” of everything, from a famous philosophy lecture to science experiments.

All these advances cost money, lots of money: money for high tech experts who make more than some Christian colleges now pay their top administrators, money for complicated hardware and software systems, money to retrain traditional faculty whose main skill has been delivering lectures, money that many small Christian colleges will have trouble obtaining. But unless they keep up, the competition will bury them.

Competition

Christian colleges are used to competing with the large universities, community colleges, and secular liberal arts colleges. Though the task is not easy, they have learned through trial and error how to reach enough people with the right messages. But now as the pool of high school students recedes, and as fiscal restraint hits both federal and state legislatures, the public institutions are meeting the private colleges head-on in the student recruitment battle.

In addition, the competition among the Christian colleges themselves is becoming more intense. If there are 20 percent fewer Christian college students in 1990 than in 1980, then there will be 20 percent fewer Christian colleges or they will be 20 percent smaller, or a combination of both. Few Christian colleges are openly planning to reduce their student bodies and staffs in proportion to the expected decline in the number of traditional college student prospects. Each college is implicitly planning to maintain current enrollment at someone else’s expense or at least to insure that it does not decline any more than the other Christian colleges.

Marketing is gaining rapid and widespread acceptance in this struggle to survive, and will increasingly replace simple reliance on more advertising, more fund raisers, and more student recruiters. Some of the more aggressive colleges have already combined student and donor affairs in marketing units that report directly to the president. The intensified battle for “freshmen, friends, and funds” is raising the costs for all the combatants, at a time when they are already hard-pressed.

Which Christian colleges will prevail? The ones with a large endowment share for each student have some obvious advantages, even though endowment performance may be erratic. Those with that elusive element “prestige” in their public image should do well, especially if they are also good at marketing, not just advertising. A Christian college with a good educational and religious reputation, but priced markedly lower than its competition, should be able to maintain a strong position. And it should be an advantage to have an exclusive, or at least a favored, position with an identifiable constituency such as a denomination, geographical area, specific segment of the student market, or a television audience.

A history of balanced budgets and strict financial controls not only reassures potential donors but also avoids the morale problems caused by forcing college personnel to adjust suddenly to unaccustomed levels of hardship. A campus with mostly new and easy-to-maintain buildings will help. Many small Christian liberal arts colleges have tried to be miniature universities by offering a wide range of majors and special programs. The pressures of this decade of decline will tend to favor the colleges that are willing to focus on those few things they can do best. Quality will be more valued than ever.

Colleges with faculties, presidents, or trustees who cannot make major adjustments rapidly and easily will find themselves on a very rough road, but those with a clear vision of their mission to the church and the society, and a flexible plan for achieving it, should emerge stronger than ever. It will be a great advantage to “buck the trends” during this decade.

The life force in Christian colleges is immense and only a few of them will actually die. The sense of high purpose and accompanying survival instinct will carry most of them through these difficult years. But when the flood recedes, there likely will be a very different landscape in Christian higher education with at least two and possibly three distinct layers in the system. The future will be much more precarious for those at the bottom than for those on top when this fall’s fifth graders log onto the electronic college information and application system. It will give them facts and quality ratings on all the colleges that meet their interests and cost criteria. It will allow them to complete applications at the computer terminal, and then send them electronically to the colleges they select. The selections of those students will complete the answer to the question now being asked about the future of the Christian colleges.

Richard Kriegbaum is director of planning and research at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. He is coauthor of A Marketing Approach to Program Development (1979), published by the Council of Independent Colleges.