Our Mission Really Matters
by Daryll Ward, Ph.D., associate professor of religion
This is the second in a series of articles in which college personnel explore the mission of Kettering College.

Because Kettering College is an Adventist institution of higher learning, it faces the permanent challenge to integrate the content of its convictions with the daily privilege of offering education. It really matters that we achieve all that is possible in meeting this challenge.

A story may help understanding. A student walked into my office to apologize for her absence from class.

“My sister is missing,” she said. “She’s been gone for more than a week, and we have no idea where she is. I just haven’t been able to think of anything else.”

And then the blow that literally took my breath away: “It’s so much worse than when my children died,” she added. “As bad as that was, I knew what had happened. Now, I don’t know, and it is just unbearable.”

You may be sure we talked for a good while, and I counted on God’s grace to provide courage, hope and patience where my feeble words could not. We prayed. I am happy to report the missing sister was found, unharmed. My student had missed class, but what she needed much more than instruction was solace.

From the earliest days of Adventist education, the conviction that persons are an indivisible unity of mind, body and spirit has informed institutional purposes. Few students must suffer in the dramatic ways the student in my story did. But every student must endure the threats, losses and failures–the pain that is part of every life. To educate is to cultivate the mind, but it is also to nurture the spirit, to bind up the broken hearted and to set at liberty the captive.

To believe persons are a profound unity demands that our educational efforts deliberately accept the responsibility to care about more than test scores.

Does it mean we should care more about persons than policies? Clearly it does.

Does it mean our expectations must be tempered by the limits of physical endurance? Certainly.

Does it mean we will devote real time and resources to worship God? Absolutely.

Does it mean we will respect the limits of our own intellect, strength and faith, serving with humility? By all means.

Does it mean we will learn as gladly as we teach? Yes.

What an astonishing privilege we all share in this great adventure.

And there is joy in it. Last summer, at the invitation of another student, Medhanie Kifle, I took the opportunity to go to Columbus, Ohio, to worship with him. Medhanie comes from Eritrea and is a member of The Eritrean Orthodox Tewahdo Church. I could not understand a word of the lengthy liturgy. I was an awkward participant. But across the great gulf of our linguistic and cultural differences and the not-so-great differences between our theologies, I recognized and rejoiced in the infinite beauty of the Spirit of Him who fed the hungry, forgave the wayward, healed the sick and raised the dead. He has promised to return. May He find us faithful to His calling to care for students – our whole students.