President's Message
The Mission Thing
Bad title.

Mission is the point, and a phrase that sounds dismissive — a la “Oh, yeah. Can’t forget the mission thing”—is madness. It’s like saying “dude” when you meet the Dalai Lama. Mission demands respect.

You’ll see a good bit about mission in this issue. I fret about mission imperfection — ideals outrunning performance — but I’m also proud of what we accomplish. And I’m proud, too, of how our sense of mission spills so easily into daily conversation.

As I wrote this letter, I got another sign of this. I told the faculty, staff and board about what happened recently in Tennessee. Kettering’s sponsoring faith is the Seventh-day Adventist Church; in March, leaders of Adventist colleges got together to ask: “What would the ideal graduate of one of our schools look like?”

The conversation was high-minded. The ideal graduate, they said, should “practice the Way of Christ.” How? By God’s “grace.” And also through careful thinking, “wholeness” of life and “educated servant leadership in community and congregation.”

The list went on. The ideal graduate pursues truth, lives an authentic life and embraces “compassion, peacemaking and the stewardship of God’s creation”; takes time for holy rest; makes hope the “basis for witness and action.”

Whew! Couldn’t graduates aspire to something easier? Like staying sober before breakfast, or telling the truth for ten minutes?

Back at KCMA, I asked for comments. The first person to respond — a teacher whose faith is not Seventh-day Adventist — said, “I wouldn’t change a thing.” Many, including the first responder, made qualifying comments, either to draw out further implications or to say how challenging it would be to make good on such an ideal.

That last was satisfying, too. If it’s dumb to be unmindful of mission, it’s also dumb to be dreamy about it. You have to make the mission happen.

What came out of the meeting in Tennessee was “provisional” — a draft, not something to carve into stone. It was the start of the conversation, not the end.

I think the same of our College’s official mission statement. Our statement says we’ll graduate “health care professionals of high character” who reflect the spirit of “the Master Healer.” Someday, the college will think of a better way, I suppose, to express its purpose. Meanwhile, the implications of the statement — and the challenge to living up to it — should occupy us every day.

So think of the mission-related words you read in these pages as part of a never-ending
conversation. This is not just “the mission thing.” It’s the point. It’s why we matter.