A letter from President Phipps
Messiah College’s theme for the academic year is “Promoting the Common Good.” While creating our strategic plan for 2016-2020, we identified this theme as a means to communicate internally and externally how the members of the Messiah College community work together to promote the common good. At Messiah, we define the common good as advancing human flourishing in a distinctively Christian way that’s rooted in the Old Testament meaning of shalom—wholeness, completeness and generativity.
In this present moment, we are called to nurture shalom as we prepare our students (and ourselves) to live, learn and serve in a context that may feel, at times, like exile. U.S. culture is rife with discord and distrust of most institutions, including colleges. Confidence in churches and organized religion is at its lowest point (38 percent) since Gallup began surveying on the topic in 1973. In the midst of this difficult environment, Messiah College is faithfully fulfilling our mission and demonstrating that members of our community are advancing shalom in our region, nation and world.
At Messiah College, we are preparing our students and graduates to be agents of shalom as they live, serve and work in church and society. Scholar James Davison Hunter calls Christians to respond to the skepticism toward Christians and faith-based institutions by being faithfully present where they are. For a model, he points to the story of the Israelites who had been taken from Jerusalem into Babylonian exile where they would remain for several generations to “build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters … . Also, seek the peace and prosperity [shalom] of the city to which I have carried you into exile (Jeremiah 29:5-7, NIV).”
As people of faith living in a pluralistic society that is increasingly negative in its assessment of religion, we may often feel very estranged. Yet, we can and should commit to steadfastly work for the good of all of our neighbors even as we confidently profess our faith. God’s shalom inspires us to cherish our deeply held beliefs and teach our students to embody those beliefs, by actively loving and serving their neighbors. A commitment to shalom requires that we live generatively, advance wholeness, nurture faithfulness and embrace a hope-filled future.
In his book, “Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good,” author Steven Garber references Walker Percy’s image of “hints of hope” when talking about promoting the common good. “In the daily rhythms for everyone everywhere, we live our lives in the marketplaces of this world: in homes and neighborhoods, in schools and on farms, in hospitals and in businesses, and our vocations are bound up with the ordinary work that ordinary people do. We are not great shots across the bow of history; rather, by simple grace, we are “hints of hope.”
Let us commit this day to be “hints of hope” who cultivate trust as we educate our students and ourselves to be bearers of shalom.