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president's column

by John K. Sheriff

The alumni featured in this publication – including Jennifer Koontz, John Paul Lederach, Rick McNary, Peter Miller and Beth Elaine Preheim – are all people who evoke our respect for the way they are living their lives. A life is a precious gift. What to do with it, how to live it, is the question and opportunity we each face.

Many other Bethel alumni also evoke our respect and awe. They include those who have volunteered their time and skills to alleviate the suffering after the devastating earthquake in Haiti in January, but also hundreds and even thousands of Bethel graduates who are teachers, school administrators, pastors, nurses, missionaries and, yes, business persons, farmers, accountants, engineers, lawyers and government workers. Bethel graduates in every profession and in all walks of life characteristically are people who seek justice, love mercy and walk humbly in their daily lives, who live as if they have cosmic – or at least global – significance.

Why is it that Bethel graduates are likely to give themselves to building peace, alleviating pain and suffering, showing concern for the poor and disenfranchised? Why are Bethel graduates likely to support other people, organizations and churches personally, financially and prayerfully?

I do not suggest that Bethel College can take the credit for all that its graduates accomplish in life. I do submit that what happens to young people during their time at Bethel influences greatly the quality and character of their subsequent lives – the reflections of three students who studied in Ecuador (page 8) give only one example of how this happens.

Bethel and other private liberal arts colleges are acknowledged, even by people in state and Ivy League universities, to offer the best undergraduate education available, even apart from any concern with Christian values or character development. Private colleges are student focused; have small classes; produce per capita twice as many students who ultimately earn doctorates; provide students with the skills most in demand in the marketplace (communication, analytical and teamwork skills); and are generous with their aid. Bethel excels even among other private liberal arts colleges in providing these advantages.

But Bethel’s product – its graduates – is shaped by the college’s prevailing values of discipleship, scholarship, integrity and service; by an open, accepting, supporting and collaborative learning environment; by the challenge and invitation of the Anabaptist Christian vision to follow Jesus; by the values of professors, staff and classmates who question the culture’s prevailing assumption that the best goal of education and life is to immerse oneself as soon as possible and as deeply as possible in the dominant consumption culture that promises happiness but typically delivers forced conformity and life-long indentured service.

What if your life is too precious to sell to the highest bidder? What if you want to ask the big questions of meaning and to choose a lifestyle that gives personal satisfaction and contributes to the lives of others and the environments in which we live? What if you want to know about other places, other cultures, other people, other living things, not in order to exploit them but in order to broaden your capacity for understanding and empathy and expand your relationships and the meaning of your life? What if you want to live life to the fullest of your potential instead of choosing a script already written?

It is not a question of doing this instead of preparing for a job or profession, although these are highly fluid and rapidly changing. It is a matter of habitually putting the decision of what to do with the precious gift of life in a broader perspective. What if...?

Bethel College throughout its history has encouraged students to ask “What if?” What if you – reader, alumna/nus, friend – could multiply the kinds of people featured in this issue of Context – would you do it? You can – by making Bethel College a higher priority in your own lives, in the allocation of your resources and in the education of your children. More accurately, we can do it, together, if you will. What could be more meaningful and satisfying?