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president's column
The Bethel way
by John K. Sheriff
If you could communicate the essence of Bethel College in a few words that are so accurate and motivating you would like them to become the college’s identifying signature, or “tag,” on its various marketing and communication pieces, what words would you choose?
With the help of consultants and the participation in focus groups of many students, faculty, staff and alumni, Bethel has settled on the following: Seek. Serve. Grow. All active verbs, all offering a challenge to pursue an educational experience that need not end when the degree is earned. On reflection, this is more than a tagline. It is a guideline for making life whole and holy. It is a lifeline.
Seek: not only personal goals for achievement and success that once attained leave us a little deflated and empty, but also high, long-term goals that can be reached, if at all, only by being part of a community committed to common goals. To be a part of believing community committed to high goals gives purpose and meaning to all relationships and endeavors, to all of life.
Serve: not only on service day and special projects, not only during or after college, but also as a way of life, a mode of being, a lifestyle, an attitude and practice of selflessly serving others, of experiencing the life-affirming wholeness that comes from the simple act of giving attention.
Grow: learn continuously. Be awake to the moment, to the opportunities of each relationship, each event, each person, each work of art, each worship service, each class, ready to see new possibilities and to integrate the majestic, the humble, the most diverse, into a synthesizing perception, into oneself.
As a campus, we celebrated in one event the launching of the tagline and the grand opening of Sand Creek Community Gardens, also new to campus this year. On that occasion, there were already 32 garden plots, representing more than 32 student and community gardeners and their family members. The very name “Community Gardens” suggests a natural landscape being shaped by the human community into an environment in which nature and humans can thrive together. There was tangible evidence that members of the community had indeed been planting and weeding, fencing a compost pile and planting rose beds at the north and south ends of the gardens.
The garden illustrates that the words in the new tagline can refer to actions of the individual and the community, to the social and the natural, to the spiritual and the physical. One can “Seek, Serve, Grow” in every moment, in every place, in all relationships. The people gathered for the grand opening and the launch of the new tagline planted pieces of white paper in the shape of a dove in which wild flower seeds were embedded. We all knelt on rich, cultivated soil with our dove of divine blessing, planting our seeds of hope, believing that in the days and weeks and months and years ahead we would see the beauty that we collaborated with each other and with nature to grow. And what blooms here will be emblematic, a looming of what will blossom as the local and dispersed Bethel College community continues to Seek, Serve, and Grow together.
Alumni and friends of Bethel College, if these words express the experience and goals of a Bethel education that you value, please make them your own and continue to support with your prayers and resources this dear college that continues to impact the world through its graduates. We are counting on you.